one of the clearest gaps in the ecosystem - working against the lofty decentralisation goals - is how power concentrates in tools: lists/feeds/labellers the implicit decision by bsky rn is "don't let these things become powerful", which also means "don't let these things become *too* useful"
Baldemoto🇵🇸
Moderating @furryli.st always made me feel that something was missing from atproto. If we disappeared, so too would the community we built This feeling’s finally crystallized into this proposal: Composable Trust We created identities that survive platform failure. Lets do the same for communities!
Mar 6, 2026 at 11:28 PM
Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky's team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization, which I consider worth reading.
Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky's team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization, which I consider worth reading.
(PDF) The Power Resources Approach: Developments and Challenges
PDF | On May 31, 2018, Stefan Schmalz and others published The Power Resources Approach: Developments and Challenges | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
On discourse and decentralisation
Over the last year, as Bluesky got more popular, conversations about whether Bluesky and ATProto are really ‘decentralised’ have gotten more “popular” as well. These conversations ranged from high-quality, productive back-and-forth articles to people just saying a lot of dumb stuff on the internet (shocker, I know). As time went on, this discourse has grown […]
The ecosystem is moving
Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize....
Decentralization: Worth The Wait — Open Tech Strategies | Blog
Ethan Zuckerman has a piece in Wired that says building decentralization tools is a sucker's bet. He and his coauthors, Chelsea Barabas and Neha Narula, mention the FreedomBox, which I helped lead, as an example of how difficult this stuff is. They point to a list of things that make decentralized efforts prone to failure and conclude:
How newsrooms, scientific institutions & governments can best use Bluesky
Large organisations need dedicated tools and processes to manage their Bluesky presence and get the most out of ATproto.
Power: A Primer for Perplexed Economists
Let's Assume an Unfettered Marketplace of Ideas! Or Actually, Let's Not.
Ecosystem Plugins - Wesley's notes
Bridging the interop gap and addressing the long-tail of user needs
'Composable Moderation' May Protect Bluesky from Political Pressure | TechPolicy.Press
Shifting enforcement away from a single platform and into a distributed ecosystem should blunt interference by authoritarians, writes Audrey Hingle.
Infrastructure for Interdependence: Building technology in service of collective power - The Algo Rhythm by Blacksky
[This document serves as a memo for investors]
Is Bluesky's "Decentralization" Real? – The Empty Promise of DIDs and the Path to a WordPress-Style Ecosystem - Nightflight
Empowering Users, Not Overlords: Overcoming Digital Helplessness
Disclosure: I’m on the board of Bluesky, so feel free to take as many grains of salt as you want in reading it, though all of it applies equally to other decentralized social media ecosys…
Reclaiming the Computing Commons
Hunter writes: The commodification and exploitation of nature; the enclosure of the intellectual and informational commons in medicine, agriculture, and other areas of technical knowledge; the expropriation of public space to secure profit-all define an economic system supposedly premised on freedom.
Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958
Middleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on Bluesky
arxiv.orgBluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958
Middleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on Bluesky
arxiv.org
