The catch is that the whole system is effectively centralised on BlueSky backend services (basically the relay). So while the protocol may be standardised and open, and interpreted with decentralised components, they’ll control the core service. Which means they can unilaterally decide to introduce profitable things like ads and charging for features.

The promise of the system though is that it provides for various levels of independence that can all connect to each other, so people with different needs and capabilities can all find their spot in the ecosystem. Whether that happens is a big question. Generally I’d say I’m optimistic about the ideas and architecture, but unsure about whether the community around it will get it to what I think it should be.

As far as I know, no one has demonstrated that they can successfully run their own instance and have it integrated with the main Bluesky infrastructure as easily as the spec authors have claimed.

Until that happens, all the talk about federation and open standards is just that - talk.

Bluesky people don’t care about federation and the main server is the only relevant one anyway. In theory other platforms like Twitter and Facebook could start speaking ATProto, but I doubt it to be honest.

The web is controlled by the IETF+WHATWG+some other acronyms but that doesn’t stop Google from inventing stuff like WebBluetooth and putting it in their browsers. Just because a standard is run by the community doesn’t mean it won’t be extended with proprietary options, just that those proprietary options won’t break everyone else’s experience.

No