Interesting to look back at this five months later ... here's what's currently happening today in terms of decentralization the ATmosphere.

• @rudyfraser.com announced today that Blacksy feeds and moderation service are now powered by our own atproto relay -- and it's an independent implementation, not using Bluesky's reference code. It's really worth reading the thread, which has a great analogy for how a relay enables custom feeds.

• @edavis.dev has configured deer.social (a third-party app) to to point to a self-hosted bsky appview which reads from a self-hosted relay which subscribes to a self-hosted PDS which is where this -- as he says, "Bluesky independent from Bluesky".

• @bnewbold published A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month, updating his post from last summer. The network size has increased by close to an order of magnitude since his first post; the cost of a realy

• #FreeOurFeeds is donating a $50K to the AT Community Fund to support the #IndieSky working group. The notes from last week's Ahoy IndieSky Europe give a sense of the energy here -- and also link to a bunch of other projects that sure look decentralized to me and discusses the prospects of Eurosky.

Of course, like I said in the article,

""Decentralization" means different things to different people. As the links in the Appendix highlight, people who are focusing on the (very real) concentration of power in the ATmosphere today, or the potentially-centralizing architecture of AT, find it more useful to describe Bluesky as centralized."

And the power concentration -- or "operational centralization" as Bluesky folks were calling it at the ATmosphere Conference -- is still very real. Bluesky still runs almost all of the infrastructure for the ATmosphere, and it's by far the most popular app, and most other apps (as well as Bluesky) use the Bluesky AppView, Relay, and labeler.

Then again, that's clearly in the process of changing, and it'll be interesting to see how it looks six months or a year from now.

@laurenshof @fediversereport @cyrus @cwebber @rysiek @jonny @possibledog @oblomov @rwg @Kye

@atprotocol.dev

I invited them to bridge but my understanding is that progress towards lots of alternative relays so that the network is not reliant on BS has not been good. #FreeOurFeeds estimated it would take million$ to do well and hoped to raise a couple by now, but is only at about $100k.

@mmasnick.bsky.social

totally. that's why I push hard for AP not AT. assuming this ever really works (#FreeOurFeeds seems dead), the option of an indy relay isn't enough if most people don't use it. see what BS did in Turkiye without ever releasing a public statement about it vs what @mondoweiss is already doing. having exits is not enough. using them will still force a cost most users won't accept. running your own social media server/relay must be as normal as your own web site.

@reiver

I've heard of blacksky but I wasn't aware they had a relay. all the other stuff seems to be happening. I wonder how that works.

The alternative relay project #FreeOurFeeds seems to have stalled with $100k of a hoped for couple million by now.

@mia nice to see a mention of Fliipboard there and a quote from @mike ... congrats!

As for #FreeOurFeeds ... well I certainly think there's value in a European-based alternative ATProto infrastructure to Bluesky. It'll be interesting to see how they respong to the feedback they've gotten so far. Not sure if you saw @danhon's excellent blog post about the ATmosphereConf, but I was at the same Free our Feeds session as him and came away with similar questions.

https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s19e08-its-not-2006-anymore-the-useful-vernacular/

NB The European Commission/member states could shift this balance even further by funding development of software and infrastructure to make interop less costly for the gatekeeper /cc @robinberjon #FreeOurFeeds

Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if #FreeOurFeeds incorporates the feedback.

Although, one of the biggest things people were giving #FreeOurFeeds a hard time about was their out-of-touch focus on relays and lack of awareness that they're fairly cheap and becoming cheaper ... a perspective that's very common (and equally out-of-touch) here in fedi as well. And, we've also got boondoggles here, just with somewhat-lower stakes (hundreds of thousands instead of the millions). So, there's a lot of learning for fedi from this session as well, and it'll be just as interesting to see whether the feedback gets incorporated.

@mastodonmigration

@thenexusofprivacy @danhon

Absolutely loved Dan's clear concise summary of the #FreeOurFeeds technical plan. If anyone was worried that this multi-million dollar boondoggle is a hopeless hairball, feel like those concerns are set straight.

The energy at #ATmosphereConf was indeed very positive and optimistic, and there were some great talks and discussion sessions. Dan's got a great summary of @kissane's talk; @rudyfraser.com's talk starting at 1:34:30 in the Sunday livestream is great as well.

And as for the #FreeOurFeeds session Dan describes so vividly ... the session I suggested that hile I very much agree with their goal of European data soverignty and it's great to hear his perspectives that funders are willing to invest in it, the initial focus on a relay - or slightly-broader focus on a relay and PDS - isn't going to get them there, they really need to take a system view. The response was something along the lines of "let me turn it around and ask what you think are the key aspects from the system view." Wait a second, I'm not the one who's trying to raise $30 million here! Oh well, they once again got a lot of feedback, let's see if they incorporate it.

@pfrazee.com @mmccue.bsky.social @mmasnick.bsky.social

my hope for the #SocialWeb is to do for attention what the web did for expression. public control. I can't see how that happens with a central relay, ads and corporate algo. I love that you're helping people leave worse places but I can't say I'll be happy till there's nobody between govts and journos and the people. at least. like email and the web. the threat of exit ala #FreeOurFeeds is not enough.

An verbindliche, strenge Gesetze, die auf europäischen Werten basieren, sollten sich Plattformen aus anderen Systemen halten müssen. Sonst sollten wir sie verbieten."

Sebastian Esser und Heiko Scherer

“that would involve involve cutting back its work on a #Mastodon instance” — #NabhiaSyed, #MozillaCorporate, #Mozilla

And replacing future technical work to improve #Mastodon with this dog pile of AT Protocol concept.

“Free Our Feeds solicits funds to foster AT Protocol that powers decentralized social media”

#FreeOurFeeds / #BlueSky / #Meta / #ATProtocol #ActivityPub <https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/free_our_feeds_decentralized_social_media/>