They limit who can sign in, but openly publish all data via their API.
So one could use an AT protocol client to read, or a web based client like this one:
I just made an account, let's see how this thing works:
@gnod.bsky.social
Bluesky is VC funded and there’s expectations of revenue growth down the line.
You can use your own domain as your identity. Even when you use a service like bsky.app, you can use @yourdomain.com as your handle. And switch to any other service to publish under the same handle.
Anything can just start ignoring traffic and not showing content.
I remember when Google Talk used XMPP federation. Lots of people ran XMPP servers. Then Google turned off federation and only Google Talk users could chat with other Google Talk users.
Unlike email, Bluesky essentially has one service. There's no culture of openness there. It wouldn't be hard for them to decide that they'd become the single service in the future. 99% of users aren't going to leave for a different provider and they could simply black hole stuff from other providers.
I'm not saying they want to do that, but saying there's no lock-in is wrong at this point. Bluesky could shut down their ATProto entirely and just close if off and 99.9%+ of users wouldn't notice a thing.
Bluesky can only be considered open once there are many other home servers and the Bluesky home server isn't the vast majority of traffic. Let's say it's 2025 and Bluesky has 500M users and there are 10 other servers with 5,000-500,000 users. Let's say one of the alternatives seems like it might be a threat to Bluesky's business model. Bluesky simply stops sending its posts via ATProto and then users on those other servers need to migrate to Bluesky. Total lock-in. Now, if it's 2025 and Bluesky has 50M users, ATProtoX has 100M users, SkyNet has 200M users, SocialSky has 25M users, etc., then it's hard to lock someone in. Bluesky couldn't cut itself off from 85% of the network. Bluesky could cut itself off from 0.001% of the network.
Just because Bluesky is using the ATProto today doesn't mean they'll continue to. As long as Bluesky is essentially 100% of the content/users/etc., it's easy for them to pivot away from openness toward lock-in. It's only open if they can't cut others off and as long as they're the source of almost everything on the ATProto, they can always pivot away. Yes, with the ATProto you can move servers. That doesn't mean Bluesky will continue to use ATProto and have openness around posting/viewing content.
the only thing keeping lock-in right now is the PLC directory, which I think has plans to be owned by consortium eventually.
It is unrelated.
It's like insisting blockchain transactions are immutable when Etherium issues updates all the time to reverse transactions that happened due to hacks.
Why waste your time and others posting lies on the internet? Easily debunked ones at that.
BTC had a similar fork in its early days to work around a bug that actually minted illegitimate coins, yet maxis sweep that under the rug.
But you knew this, you knew what the DAO fork was. You know when it happened. You knew it was the first major smart contract. You know the context it happened in. You know the community overwhelmingly supported it. You also knew it hasn’t happened since, yet you still went out and lied.
Why?
Honestly, so many of the comments here are, but what if?? The what-if scenario is built-in to the design and is in fact more resilient than other protocols like ActivityPub.
But if account portability existed and worked, imagine this scenario: Larry Ellison wakes up one day and decides that Elon is having so much fun that he wants a social media site too. The minute the sale is announced, all the account portability APIs are disabled, and the website switches to a hard login wall. They start aggressively throttling and banning users that look like scrapers. They send a DMCA takedown to archive.org, who obliges and removes the wayback copies. They disable viewing followers and following so you can't even get your graph out. Now what?
The problem of trusting someone else to host your social media page is that you have to trust them. If your answer is "Jack wouldn't sell the company", then I can't help but note that he sure sold Twitter to Elon. If your other answer is "Larry Ellison would never do something unethical and customer-hostile" then uh...
But, if the AT protocol even makes it another ~6 months without that happening, it will become impossible. You won't need to "trust" anyone to host anything, and if you want you'll be able to take your data and go somewhere else. That's the vision, and that's so far exactly what the folks at BlueSky have been building.
So no, the answer isn't "Larry and Jack wouldn't do those things" the answer is, "They'll have to act very quickly and in ways that are completely out of character for them, not to mention the staff at BlueSky would have to all sell their souls which is also completely out of character for them as well."
But yeah, if you're a cynic I guess everything is on the table.
for the record it's not entirely clear who are the specific shareholders of Bluesky PBLLC other than a vague mention it was "the team itself".
Strictly speaking, no, they don’t, and neither do regular LLCs. Corporations have shareholders, partnerships have pattners, and LLCs have members.
I'm not sure where to find clear "membership" of the PBLLC but I assume they have to file paperwork showing something where they are registered. I haven't been paying too close attention but I'm sure some people are interested.
It baffles me that this pattern is not better understood in this crowd.
I'm going to make a prophetic statement and say that all digital social networks in the long run limit are not sustainable. The digital content generated on them has no real economic value and probably never will because the social connections they enable are inherently not monetizable.
Same logic applies to bluesky networks and servers.
The reason the model runs the way it does and collapses is because we inherently understand that most communication should not be economically restricted. We don’t have a good social network because capitalism isn’t a good way to create them.
Until they don’t.
> I just made an account
Isn’t BlueSky invite only?
@donohoe.dev
(Email in the profile)