We moved our Bluesky data to Eurosky

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Self‑hosting Skills and EU Data Sovereignty

  • Commenters note a rising demand for non‑US infrastructure, especially in Europe and government‑adjacent organizations.
  • Experience with Linux, self‑hosting, and “old school” sysadmin skills is seen as newly valuable, amid moves away from US hyperscalers.
  • There is contract work recreating AWS‑like functionality on EU providers (e.g., OVH), but it’s often buried in layers of bureaucracy and slow procurement.
  • Economic uncertainty, the AI hype cycle, stagflation in Europe, and the end of cheap money are said to be dampening new infrastructure investments.

What Waag’s Move to Eurosky Represents

  • The “news” is mainly that Waag moved from Bluesky’s hosted PDS to a European PDS provider (Eurosky), not full self‑hosting.
  • Some argue decentralization doesn’t require most people to self‑host, just that no single provider dominates; others doubt many ordinary users will ever move off default hosting.

Decentralization, Identity, and Keys in ATProto

  • One side argues ATProto structurally incentivizes centralization: most users’ identities and keys are effectively controlled by their PDS (currently mostly Bluesky), so a Bluesky “rug pull” could wipe out the network.
  • The counterargument: identities are based on DIDs, not tied to a single PDS; users can register rotation keys and take control, and the PLC directory is auditable with transparency logs.
  • Critics respond that in practice almost no users will manage their own keys, so the theoretical decentralization doesn’t translate into real user control.

Privacy, Surveillance, and Public Data

  • ATProto is described as explicitly about public replication; it offers essentially no privacy, which some say makes mass surveillance easier.
  • Others respond that public social media is, by definition, public and should not be conflated with private messaging use cases.

Funding Models and “Who Built the Internet”

  • One camp stresses that major parts of the internet, DNS, email, and the web were commercialized and scaled by VC‑backed companies.
  • Others push back, highlighting the foundational role of government and academic research and non‑profits (Internet Archive, Let’s Encrypt, ICANN, Linux Foundation).
  • There’s agreement that non‑profits funded by corporations can help keep core infrastructure aligned with public‑good goals, even if VC‑backed firms build on top.

Alternatives: Mastodon, Fediverse, Solid, Nostr

  • Some ask why organizations don’t simply run Mastodon and join the Fediverse instead of using Bluesky, which they see as a “dead end.”
  • ATProto is contrasted positively with Tim Berners‑Lee’s Solid (seen as too complex), but both ATProto and the Fediverse are viewed as much more centralized than Nostr by some participants.