Prediction: Mastodon will outlive Bluesky
Disclaimer: I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Mastodon and Bluesky are, in my opinion, superior to the centralized status quo. They’re built on important protocols: ActivityPub for Mastodon and the AT Protocol for Bluesky. These decentralized, interoperable networks sidestep some significant security threats and enable tremendous creativity. I like them both.
But between the two, I predict that ActivityPub will outlast AT Proto. Specifically, I think ActivityPub will be relevant in 2050 and AT Proto will not. (I concede there’s a future where neither is relevant.)
I expect this for two reasons:
- ActivityPub is community-owned. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) maintains ActivityPub. One could hardly ask for a sturdier steward. By contrast, AT Proto is run by Bluesky Social, the company. If the company goes out of business, the protocol will have no owner.
- The ActivityPub network is far more decentralized than the AT Proto network. According to Are We Decentralized Yet?, the biggest ActivityPub server holds 27.24% of accounts. The biggest AT Proto server has 99.36%. If the Bluesky company shutters, AT Proto’s supposed decentralization won’t feel very decentralized.
In other words, tying a protocol to the fate of a startup is a risky bet.
AT Proto has some advantages. Bluesky offers a better user experience than Mastodon in some ways, such as search. Also, the vibes on Mastodon can be bad—half of Mastodon’s posts seem to be white people arguing about Linux (myself included).
Regardless of the winner—if there even is one—both of these systems are better than the dominant centralized social networks. Even if I think ActivityPub is more sustainable, AT Proto is a meaningful positive step. Anything’s better than what Zuckerberg, Musk, and Pichai are cooking.
I don’t think that a corporate-controlled social protocol will outlast a publicly-owned one, regardless of the underlying technology. We’ll see if I’m right in 25 years.