So, again today we get another crystal clear example of how #Bluesky is not decentralized. The company just blocked all users from an entire US state and those users are completely cut off. No other way to interact with the Bluesky network.
BECAUSE BLUESKY IS A CENTRALIZED PLATFORM.
Folks on Bluesky. There is a decentralized alternative. Just create an account on any decentralized Mastodon server. You will love it here. Promise.
Listen, some are saying it is not Bluesky's fault. They are just victims of a terrible age verification law which left them no choice.
OK. Yes, they are a small company and if they are prosecuted for violating this crazy law it could be ruinous.
BUT THAT IS ENTIRELY THE POINT.
It doesn't matter whether or not they are forced into this. This is not a good guy bad guy thing. It is a reality. It is not defensible because it is a vulnerable US corporate platform and it is not decentralized.
@mastodonmigration Could someone explain what the big diff here is? Is it vastly easier for grandma to spin up and manage a mastodon instance or something? Is it just because fewer people have done so with atprotocol so grandma can't really go find a different instance? Isn't it integrated with the fediverse though???
I see a holy war going on but I don't understand the squabble.
it is wildly, wildly expensive & complicated to spin up a bluesky (atproto) instance. Wildly.
No it isn't integrated.
There is a lengthy thread somewhere by @cwebber that explains why Bluesky isn't a DIY project.
@botvolution @cwebber They're probably not going to have much motivation to make that better for a while. Kinda on those of us that could actually do it to make it easier for those who'd find it way too much. We have lots of orchestration tools and stuff to help.
Similar to the way you can spin up your own Mozzilla accounts server. Undocumented complex process. So someone made a github repo to document the process and made some scripts.
yep! It’s due to the new Sync 1.1 mechanism - rather than needing a full copy of all data ever to validate data as it passes through, relays can now simply hold the previous commit of each repo to calculate if the new one is valid. this brings the cost down massively to raspberry pi levels
@crazyeddie @mastodonmigration Isn't the issue here that on the Fediverse, there is a rich ecosystem of instances run by all kinds of people. Sure, there is m.s, but it still only hosts a minority of all users (I think, I haven't checked the current numbers).
This is not the case on BS. Almost all users are beholden to the whims of BS, and there really are no freely accessible options.
Whether it's possible to actually create such freely accessible options, I don't know. My understanding was that you couldn't federate with arbitrary users on BS unless your instance was registered somehow, but I could be wrong about that.
@loke @mastodonmigration Mastodon and Blusky have different beginnings. Mastodon wasn't a funded operation to create a new commercial app. Mastodon has also been around way longer. WAAAAYYYY before many people saw the main networks as a problem. Blusky comes more after that.
I also don't know the details but looked into it a bit. I may leverage some of their protocol. Grabbed a .directory domain. Blusky is closer to what I think the end result of all this will be.
@crazyeddie @loke @mastodonmigration You don’t have to know anything about the technical differences to understand the problem.
There are lots of instances to choose from if you want to use Mastodon, and no one entity can shut down the communication between them. This is also what some people find strange with Mastodon.
With Bluesky you only have one instance to choose from, Bluesky, and if Bluesky doesn’t want you communicating, you can’t communicate on Bluesky.
This is it in a nutshell. Bluesky enthusiasts will tell you there are options on the Bluesky network, but whether that us true or not, there are certainly no viable options for wide scale decentralization.
Account migration is an important feature of atproto, and has been possible in the live network since February of this year, but is still a bit scary and developer-oriented. As part of documenting the migration process, I recently implemented basic account migration in the goat CLI tool for atproto...
@mastodonmigration Weird post in my timeline just now.
I wonder if the people yapping about Bluesky today realize that many entire Mastodon instances have disappeared overnight with absolutely no way for people to port their data.
Mississippi
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/22/bluesky-blocks-service-in-mississippi-over-age-assurance-law/
In a blog post published on Friday, the company explains that, as a small team, it doesn't have the resources to make the substantial technical changes this type of law would require, and it raised concerns about the law's broad scope and privacy implications.
The age check thing is about to happen in Australia, soooooo......
@kaffando @mastodonmigration @santiago Mississippi's law's apparently particularly onerous, requiring keeping and storing/securing detailed records on *all* their users, permission slips, and excessive penalties for any slipups.
Leaving the centralization issue aside, "lol screw that" is a reasonable response.
No. It is in Wired and TechCrunch too.
I would recommend one located outside of the US which the biggest ones are fortunately.
I have an account there. I love stux as an admin.
@mastodonmigration fortunately the network that Bluesky is built upon, the Atmosphere, is actually a decentralized network of hundreds of servers with dozens of relays, appviews, and client apps.
And it is easy for users to swap providers of any components while seamlessly maintaining ownership of their identity, data, and social connections with all other inter-operating servers using the same open open protocol.
As mentioned in the the article that you yourself linked to!
Baloney. What are your instructions for users in Mississippi tonight. Where do they sign up?
Edit: And the article is misleading because it continues to regurgitate your 'decentralized' marketing nonsense. Where does the average user go tonight Bryan? And don't say fire up their own PDS.
@mastodonmigration depends on what those users are trying to do in the atmosphere!
If they want a novel microblogging experience interoperable with Bluesky, they could check out https://anisota.net/ or https://keik.info/
If they want a great blogging experience, I would send them to https://leaflet.pub/home
For live video streaming, they could check out https://stream.place/
https://bibliome.club/ is a social tool for book readers
etc
No. They want to use Bluesky. A microblogging network that you told them over and over ahain was decentralized so they'd be safe. They want to continue to interact with there follows and followers. They don't want to learn a new app. They don't want to be cast adrift. They have invested time and energy in your platform. They do not want to be cut off from their network.
Keep digging Bryan. Completely understand there are cool things going on with ATProto. But you are running a social network with millions of users and you just cut off a huge chunk of them, and have not been able to provide any guidance as to how they can keep using their account. Not on a different app. These are Bluesky users. They are your users.
Indeed. The callous disregard for his users is palpable.
@mastodonmigration Grandma is totally going to look up other apps and know that would get her around the random blocks on the official app, don't ya know?
In other news, it's going to suck to move this site, at least I only have a couple dozen users.
Where are you moving from/to?
the point is that bluesky is centralized de facto
we all understand the amazing decentralization of atproto that exists... somewhere. it sounds really awesome
but
bluesky is centralized
so get back to us when you replace your quasireligious excitement with cold hard reality
@benroyce @bnewbold @mastodonmigration I was looking at ATProtocol stuff and noticing that it seems like a pretty decentralized architecture to me. Decided to look into what other versions were around. Ran into this: https://blacksky.community/
They cloned the repo and customized it a bit somehow. I figured I'd look into it more someday.
Not just sad, infuriating. But yes, really sad too, because we are running out of time.
That is simply not true.
@mastodonmigration While I agree with the centralisation problems of #Bluesky, I wouldn't say the Fediverse is resistant against #ageverification mandates. Such laws can easily be applied to small #Fediverse servers as well and then all located in that jurisdiction would have to comply while those outside it could be force-blocked by ISPs.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we cannot decentralise our way out of this, we need to fight human rights non-compliant laws wherever they appear.
Absolutely, but some systems are more resiliant than others to authoritarian attacks.
@mastodonmigration So Mississippi's version of the #osa has as I have predicted such laws to have, an immediate #chillingeffect even without any court cases.
@TCatInReality Just as an explanation Bluesky cut off all users in Mississipi, just because their cool new child protection law went into effect (and it's tame compared to the OSA). They don't even argue that it's impossible to fulfil (I haven't checked if that's because they are optimistic, or the law specifies odd shortcuts), but they
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