But control of the protocol - the definition and development - is still controlled by the for-profit company, right? It hasn't been handed over to a nonprofit governance committee, has it?

Federation or not, if Bluesky dominates the protocol, they can decide to stop federating and essentially kill the independent servers. Much like what Signal did. Sure, you can run your own Signal server, but without access to the dominant player's market, and using a protocol that's controlled monopolistically, it's practically useless to do so - which is why almost nobody does it anymore.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is running a pds really equivalent to running your own instance? As I understand it, 2 friends running their own pds cannot federate without the centralized relay which still can't be self hosted.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're right, while there are advantages to hosting a pds, it doesn't seem you can run a fully fledged instance at this time

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Thanks for clarifying

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Bluesky has no documentation for running a relay (indexing node). It doesn't seem like they intend to have any documentation on it any time soon. But it is possible to set one up yourself. I don't know anyone that has done so.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

And you'd still have federation issues, so doesn't solve OP's problem.