@[email protected]

That's a deflection again. Nobody doubts that technically both #activitypub and #atproto support decentralization.

But the point is that *in practice* basically all #bluesky users are concentrated on infrastructure of a single company under US jurisdiction, while #mastodon users are distributed over many servers in many jurisdictions all over the world.

The consequences can be seen with Mississippi.

https://mastodon.social/@ikuturso/115124768664434731

https://mastodon.social/@mastodonmigra[email protected]/115125132980066617

@folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

The technique Mike Masnick employs is to ignore the substance of the critique. #Bluesky may technically be capable of decentralization, but in practice it is still highly centralized. Instead, he repeats the mantra there are some examples of decentralization.

Stipulated Mike.

Now move on to addressing the reality that for all intents and purposes, which is what matters for these censorship issues, it is centralized.

https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/

@mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

This is a specious argument, and does not deserve a serious response. Please stop misrepresenting the current degree of centralized concentration of Bluesky PBC on AT Protocol. You are in a perfect position to advocate for actual meaningful decentralization, but instead continue to misrepresent the current overwhelming dominance of Bluesky PBC.

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@mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Rather than making false and misleading arguments you could instead stipulate that the overwhelming dominance Bluesky PBC does currently make AT Protocol a defacto centralized network, but the company recognizes this and are taking specific steps to address it. AT Protocol is designed to facilitate decentralization and list what steps are being taken, against what metrics to achieve real decentralization.

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@mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Specifically, what is the company doing to enable independent instances and provide the type of choice your marketing ballyhoos? What are your goals for achieving a meaningful percentage of the AT Protocol network users NOT being Bluesky PBC users? What programs are you sponsoring to achieve these ends? Are you serious about these goals?

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@mastodonmigration @folkerschamel @[email protected] the only one misrepresenting stuff is you, unfortunately. Bluesky has done a ton of stuff to enable actual decentralization, all of which we're starting to see come into effect as we speak and all you guys do is lie about it.

But you still ignore my point. If we (properly) counted Threads as part of the fediverse, would that make the fediverse less decentralized?

Answer please.

@mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

@mmasnick

@ricci did answer your question very specifically here:

https://discuss.systems/@ricci/115171236116610436

There was also more in depth discussion of the issue. It may be that you are not seeing the entire thread across the bridge.

@mastodonmigration @folkerschamel @[email protected] @ricci No @ricci is making a different (totally valid!) point. I am saying IF he included Threads, would you then say that Mastodon is less decentralized?

That's the only question I am asking. If your answer is yes, I would be confused. If your answer is no, you are admitting that this is not a measure of decentralization.

Which is it?

@mmasnick @mastodonmigration @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social I think a better question here, Mike is *if* Threads had 400M users who were active on the fediverse, would the fediverse be more centralized?

I would say yes.

@ricci @mmasnick @mastodonmigration @[email protected]

But even if all of #threads would be part of the #fediverse and make the fediverse practically centralized, it wouldn't change the the factual situation that
a) #mastodon is #decentralized,
b) #bluesky as being controlled by a single company is completely centralized, and
c) #atmosphere as being dominated by #bluesky is practically centralized.

@mmasnick @folkerschamel @mastodonmigration @mmasnick.bsky.social

I am not a fan of this guy's style of engagement but I do feel the need to point out that his point b literally does not say what your reply says it does.

@ricci @mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Concur. His point b specifically references Bluesky not AT Protocol.

@mastodonmigration @mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Okay to play devil's advocate for my own point :) there are things you could plausibly say are part of bluesky but not the atmosphere that are not controlled by the company, namely third party labelers and feed generators.

@ricci @mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Not endorsing point b, just pointing out it references Bluesky and not AT Protocol. In general the conflation of the two leads to a lot of confusion and ambiguous statements. Think that it is much more useful to look at the overall networks and the relative percentage ownership of the various distributed components, as the Rob Ricci analysis does.

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@ricci @mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

Mike Masnick seems to suggest that it is not the current state of distributed ownership, but some measure of the ease of people moving to other independent nodes on the network. It is hard to see how any metrics could capture this, since it would necessarily involve the creation and rapid expansion of very significant server resources that do not currently exist. This just doesn't seem feasible.

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@ricci @mmasnick @folkerschamel @mmasnick.bsky.social

So, returning to Rob Ricci's point that the current measure, while not dispositive on the subject of potential decentralizability is a useful thing to know. And further, that it can give insight into the ability of the independent network resources to respond to a 'mass migration' event.

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