That is by design. From a user’s perspective, the only indication that Bluesky is decentralized federated is the option to select a different “hosting provider” when logging in.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that when OP asked about “joining” each platform, they wanted to use each platform natively.

No. For each Mastodon, Lemmy, or Peertube server you want to join, you need a separate account on the server.

There’s way more to Wafrn than that, and it’s extremely interesting.

You can treat Wafrn like an independent ATProto platform (like Blacksky). It has its own PDS and AppView (which uses Blacksky’s Relay), so it’s not at all dependent on Bluesky for obtaining posts (assuming those posts are also published on an independent PDS).

What’s unique is that Wafrn is actually ActivityPub-first, meaning it doesn’t have any issue interacting with Mastodon users, but doesn’t have all the same features of a normal ATProto platform. For example must have your account on Wafrn in order to use it (as opposed to blacksky.community, which lets you sign in with an existing account on another ATProto platform); you can, however, sign into bsky.app (or blacksky) with an account created on Wafrn.

Could people in states blocked by the main network use it through these?

Yes, and they wouldn’t even need to migrate their accounts to do so (although they probably should).

Fediverse Reports regularly talks about updates with ATProto, and I found this blog post mentioned in another blog post from WeDistribute.

The most interesting development as of late is the progress of Blacksky. It is the first major attempt at creating an independent “Bluesky Instance”–where in that it’s functionally the same as Bluesky but doesn’t rely on any of Bluesky’s infrastructure.

There is also Wafrn, which is really hard to explain. @gabboman@app.wafrn.net is in this thread somewhere and will have to explain it.

ideally they would close signups and suggest people signup on alternatives instead

Is that what you would actually expect Bluesky to do if they were committed to decentralization?

Also bluesky isnt part of the fediverse so this doesnt even really belong in here…

There are four other posts about Bluesky or ATProto on the front page of !fediverse@lemmy.world (when viewed from lemmy.zip), so I guessed otherwise.

I’d like to see what the metrics for the Fediverse would look like if it included federated Threads users.

Google really seems to want to disincentivize people paying for YouTube Premium rather than just downloading an ad blocker.

The tradeoffs Bluesky made to achieve that means that Bluesky doesn’t have private posts. In fact, Bluesky doesn’t have private blocks.

Why?

I do wish that Lemmy instances would do this.

Is this it? Do I have to leave the country now?