How is comparing Mastodon/the Fediverse and Bluesky unfair? Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized by suggesting the AP analog of Bluesky is the largest Mastodon instance rather than the federation of them? This seems to contradict what you and much of the marketing around Bluesky says.
Where do I login to ATProto. It's not an application. It's a network of applications.
Where do I login to Bluesky? https://bsky.app
Where do I login to Mastodon.social? https://mastodon.social
People use apps, not networks of apps. Saying you don't care about the broader ATmosphere is exactly the same as saying you don't care about the broader Fediverse. That's fine, but then let's compare apps to apps instead of an app to a network. How does bsky.app compare against mastodon.social? (Actually let's not do that, because comparing a single app in a decentralized network to a single app in another decentralized network is pretty boring).
> Are you kind of admitting that Bluesky isn't actually practically decentralized
The data is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). The user identity is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). Moderation is meaningfully decentralized (similarly to AP apps). Independently developed applications are meaningfully interoperable (more so than most AP apps, especially leveraging DIDs). People can and do run their own AT infrastructure all the time. Ask questions instead of trying to pin people with gotchas based on incorrect assumptions.
I'm comparing two supposedly decentralized microblogging platforms, Bluesky and Mastodon (and compatible microblogging software.)
The things in your post don't hold up. For example, people log into apps. OK. So when I log into my email account using Thunderbird, that's decentralized. Right? Literally I am using a client to connect to some IMAP+SMTP server. Couldn't be more decentralized.
So now let's say I log into gmail.com. That's still email. Is email still decentralized with the existence of gmail? Well, it is less so than it maybe should be, but absolutely! Because I actually use Fastmail. That's what a federated network looks like.
When I log into Matrix, I still use Element regardless of homeserver. I can use any instance of Element, or install it to my machine. But still, it's Element. That's what a federated network looks like.
Not all decentralized things are federated. Some of them are, for example, peer to peer, and many other architectures.
I am ignoring the broader ATmosphere because it is not part of Bluesky the microblogging network. There are also plenty of ActivityPub applications that are not Mastodon-compatible microblogging networks, and I'm not talking about those either. I'm not talking about, for example, the network of Peertube instances that are also using ActivityPub.
I fully admit that I am not an ATProto expert, but if you're not running a Bluesky compatible AppView that speaks the Bluesky schemas, you are not participating in Bluesky, which is what I am talking about specifically.
I have used the terms "ATproto" and "ActivityPub" only in the context of Bluesky/compatible and Mastodon/compatible. That is it. If you wanted to argue about something else, it is not me pulling a gotcha on you to refuse. I just simply don't care, and you are not taking the hint. It's my damn comment thread, I know what my intended scope was. I know, too, you must know that Bluesky itself is supposed to be meaningfully decentralized, such that you can indeed run your own entire appview stack and still be a part of Bluesky, so you must understand that what I am doing is inherently an apples to apples comparison.
Yet when I log into Bluesky using a Bluesky app, what I get is the Bluesky appview and Bluesky moderation service. This is because Bluesky is substantially more centralized than the Fediverse. You can kick. You can scream. It doesn't matter. Bluesky. Is. Centralized.
> The data is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). The user identity is meaningfully decentralized (more so than any AP app). Moderation is meaningfully decentralized (similarly to AP apps). Independently developed applications are meaningfully interoperable (more so than most AP apps, especially leveraging DIDs). People can and do run their own AT infrastructure all the time. Ask questions instead of trying to pin people with gotchas based on incorrect assumptions.
With all due respect, to the extent that there is any, no thank you.