Just over a year ago I wrote this post, drawing on lyrics from The Who and the Rolling Stones to explain my lingering scepticism about Bluesky. After being fooled by Elon Musk, should we trust Bluesky?

I wasn’t fully convinced then, was more convinced in the past 12 months, and I am back to being unconvinced again. Bluesky is not as safe from enshittification as I had hoped it would become a year ago.

What changed?

$15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital. The tone of Bluesky’s news about it is terse. “This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience” they say.

All right, maybe that is true, and all is fine. But if it turns out not to be true, what can you do about it?

Here I refer you to this excellent explainer by Jonny on Mastodon – where they correctly point out that it is not the hosting of a Bluesky instance that is really the issue, it is the Relay(s) in the system. While you might be able to move your own data to a different Personal Data Server (PDS in the AT Protocol jargon – similar to an Instance on Mastodon), the problem is with the Relay – essentially the aggregator of the data in the Bluesky system. At the moment it is that Relay that is central to what users see on Bluesky, and is controlled by Bluesky Social LLC, the recipient of the Blockchain Capital investment.

So the question in my blog post from a year ago is not  – it is not only if I can spin up my own instance (or PDS), but if a future Bluesky with relay(s) other than ones controlled by Bluesky Social LLC is possible and viable. At present it looks like that is not really the case.

Does the Blockchain Capital investment mean enshittification has started? Not necessarily, but it is a warning. Is Bluesky safeguarded against enshittification? Only if and when multiple Relays are possible can we be sure that it is.

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