Bluesky isn’t a Fediverse player. It’s a Jack Dorsey project, currently ‘incubating’ until it’s ready to be sold to an oligarch.

Technically? No. (ActivityPub)

Culturally? No. (Venture capitalist for-profit and already beginning the resulting enshittification)

I don’t see any reason to consider them part of the Fediverse.

It’s Twitter in a trenchcoat saying “whats up fellow fediverse apps”.

You can’t have your own server to connect with other users on Bluesky, it’s centralized so I don’t consider part of the Fediverse

If it isn’t able to federate to other servers and/or services, like kbin to lemmy and such, without 3rd party tools like the bluesky bridge thingamajig, absolutely not.

No, because I can’t see anyone’s posts outside of Bluesky.

Not really. You’re strongly funnelled down the bluesky owned instance, most uses of ATProto are more or less mere plugins for that main instance. Can I migrate my account to another instance? Unclear.

The VC funding also adds another layer that implies they’re going to trap people into their monetisable market share sooner or later. This seems incompatible with fediverse principles.

So while they present themselves as a more technically refined iteration of the fediverse, the whole thing is a big trap. Enjoy it while it lasts would be my advice, but if you’ve got the sway then try to get those close to you to migrate to mastodon before it goes wrong.

Is it federated? It only works with its own protocol, so it can’t be part of the fediverse by definition.

In terms of technology? Sure. There’s projects that are considered “Fediverse” and don’t use ActivityPub.

… But the more important question isn’t if it’s “Fediverse”. Sure it is. It’s a federated network. The important question is is it part of the Indie Web, since the Fediverse started as a smaller part of the bigger indie web movement, and then the answer is a big no, because it’s a VC-owned for-profit.

I’d say no.

I don’t think they federate. Least ways, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post from a bluesky account, on lemmy or mastodon, and SDF hadn’t blocked them server side last I checked.

I think they’re a bit like truth social, not federating and off doing their own thing.

Nope. If I create a post on Bluesky, my posts aren’t going to appear on other sites unless I or someone else shares them.

No, because I can’t use it on entirely third-party infrastructure and interact with BlueSky users. It should be possible in theory, but if it was practical in reality, somebody would be doing it.

Partially, just because there is the ability to bridge it (ex: https://fed.brid.gy/), but I expect them to pull the rug at some point.

Yes.

Here are some complaints people have.

It doesn’t use ActivityPub. So are we demanding that all applications use a specific protocol? Does that mean email, Matrix, the web, Nostr, Frendica, BitTorrent, etc aren’t part of the Fediverse? Nostr, AtProtocol, ActivityPub, Diaspora are four popular, open protocols for federated social media - there are many more - and they’re all part of a wider Fediverse.

It’s owned by a corporation. Great! So if YouTube started to publish all their videos using PeerTube, that wouldn’t count? If your local supermarket creates their own Mastodon instance and are active on it, is that a no-no? Does GMail not count as part of email, or Amazon as part of the world wide web for that reason? Are corporations not allowed at all? No-one is asking your opinion of corporate culture here.

It doesn’t support federation. Yes, it does. Every part of AtProtocol is open source and free for anyone to implement, allowing you to create your own fully independent instance that fully integrated with both BlueSky and other, independent AtProtocol servers.

It’s not open. Yes, it is. Fully open source and permissively licensed. Anyone can implement their own AtProtocol server, reusing as much or as little as they want. But AtProtocol does a lot more than ActivityPub, leading neatly on to:

It’s too complicated. I see this complaint a surprising amount. AtProtocol’s complexity exists because - let’s be honest - ActivityPub doesn’t provide any good way of discovering or searching. If you saw a load of fire trucks barreling down the street and wanted to know what was happening, a quick search on any AtProtocol relay will tell you if anyone on any instance has commented; ActivityPub doesn’t work like that. Hell, it’s hard enough to even find communities without resorting to non-ActivityPub services. AtProtocol’s Relay Servers and Firehoses are demanding applications, but that is required for a true Twitter/Facebook/TikTok replacement.

So, yes, BlueSky is part of the Fediverse. Does that make BlueSky a good thing? That’s a separate debate. But there are a lot of comments in this thread which amount to “no, because I don’t like it” and it’s important we don’t let our personal hangups override our ability to be rational. Maybe instead of moaning about AtProtocol we should at least give a thought to why it’s needed.

No, because it’s not