Right now bluesky is a single centralized instance. And it is owned and operated by a corporation, rather private citizens. I understand that's why most people do not want to consider bluesky as part of the fediverse. But right now, bluesky is also synonymous with the at protocol. Their version of ActivityPub. And their stated intent is for that to be a protocol that anyone can support and run their own instance.

I use the word "intent", because I think that's actually what matters. It's not just the tech. The important thing is that the bluesky company promises to interoperate with other servers that they don't own. That's the core of decentralized federation. When you don't have full control, but you still agree to interoperate with other entities in the ecosystem.

The fediverse is not one thing. It's not synonymous with mastodon or ActivityPub. What defines the fediverse is having both tools and norms around compatibility and interoperability. You have your servers that you control, I have my servers that I control. But we can still choose to communicate with each other without entirely giving up that control.

By contrast, with twitter or Facebook, you can't run your own servers. And if you did, it wouldn't work. Because centralized services will not interoperate with servers they don't control. They also have protections that say you can't run a server that pretends to be compatible. If you're speaking their language, it's because you are under their control. Otherwise you're not invited.

Another really important thing to understand is that the fediverse does not mean "no companies allowed". I think many people have been giving that impression. Corporate entities are entirely capable of running their servers that interoperate with the fediverse. Many are doing so right now. Nobody can stop them. Just like they can't stop you from running yours. That's sort of the point.

What we can do is give ourselves the tools to *decide* who we want to interoperate with. And it's not a permanent decision. If we don't like talking to another instance, we can stop talking to them. Our stuff doesn't stop working. Their stuff doesn't stop working. We just don't have to stay connected to them if we don't want to.

Once bluesky's at protocol becomes more viable, people will try to run their own instances. Then Bluesky the corporate entity will have policies about who they talk to and don't talk to. The only difference is that I don't think many people will choose to be part of that ecosystem. It will be a part of the fediverse. Just not a popular part. The fediverse is already littered projects that never gained widespread traction. Including attempts by corporate entities.

The important take away here is that the protocol is not what's important about the fediverse. Bluesky itself could release first class support for ActivityPub tomorrow. There are many other servers already out there that speak ActivityPub but are *not* mastodon servers. Mastodon could also change it's tech so that it will only communicate with other servers who are "real mastodon". But that would be silly. No one is in control of the fediverse. By design.