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ATProto is decentralized in that it allows you to choose a 3rd party like Blacksky to do all kinds of things for you. You can use the social media feed this 3rd party curates, use their moderation services like block lists, and even have your data hosted on a 3rd party’s servers.

All while using the same client app everyone else is using, or even a custom 3rd party client.

The nature of the protocol is that everything is connected, but services of the protocol can be decentralized when a user chooses to use a 3rd party to do certain things for them.

The unit of decentralization is the group, not the individual. The client-server relationship is still centralized.

Joining a community is a highly centralizing act. ;-p

It is decentralised in the sense that it is not strictly dependent on Bluesky (in practice, because no-one else has really done this yet, Bluesky-the-network now consists of Bluesky-the-company, plus Blacksky). Most prior Bluesky 'decentralisation' has, in practice, been somewhat dependent on Bluesky.