They have said over and over (maybe not in these words) that they think it's essential for apps to have a "guarantee" that they have seen all -- i.e. that users have read all that was written to them, or by someone, or with some tag etc -- that implies that the entire ecosystem of apps should rely on a single "relay". Their architecture diagrams also depict all the pieces talking to a single relay, their codebases all point to a single relay. There is no provision anywhere for an app that uses two or more relays.

Of course they will say it is possible for others to run alternative relays, and they want that only insofar as it will validate their idea of decentralization, but the truth is that if someone is running an alternative relay they will not be able to use any of existing online infrastructure -- they will have to run alternative versions of everything configured to point to the new relay URL.

If someone is running a relay today it's probably for hobby purposes, maybe not indexing the full network, someone trying to make their closed little sandbox of atproto, I don't know, a serious relay is already hard to run today, should get increasingly harder and virtually impossibly hard if Bluesky achieves its world domination plans. 

 Making the assumption that every relay is going to see ~every post is very much not the same as assuming there will only be one relay. You’re just putting words in peoples’ mouths, then. 

 And you are reading only parts of my posts and responding to those parts as if I hadn't said anything else. 

 Not sure there’s much else in that post? Only other point you made is that the only other relays are mostly for hobbyists stuff, which I think is mostly true. Don’t disagree so why respond to it :). 

 To be honest I have no idea of what this discussion is about anymore. If you stated the parts on which you agreed with me it would ease my confusion -- but I'll try to clarify now:

I guess I can say that (1) we both agree Bluesky is not decentralized today; (2) you think it can be decentralized if and when more people start running more BGS and AppViews, I don't think that will happen and even if it does it will be inconsequential; (3) you think Bluesky has some cool features like custom feeds and I agree; (4) you think Bluesky is getting really big because of these cool features and I think they play a very minor role in their growth.

Good summary?

You also seem to think Nostr is broken in many ways and not innovating enough, but these points are vague to me. I would like to know what cool features could or should be added to Nostr and what is more broken so we can try to fix. 

 I don’t *think* it will necessarily become properly decentralized, but rather that it totally *could* and they are working toward it (whether they run out of resources before they get there I dunno), thus I think dismissing Bluesky as “not decentralized, next” is naive.

But I can tell you for sure there the “custom feeds” feature, at a minimum, led to substantial early adopter/evangelist momentum. To a much lesser extent the decentralized labeling/moderation/censorship feature as well.

Even if they didn’t drive material user adoption, they’re cool features we should be learning from, not dismissing the whole thing “because it’s not decentralized”. 

 IOW there seems to be a string desire on here to dismiss Bluesky for trivial reasons (“not decentralized”/“they got MSM coverage so the user growth doesn’t mean anything”/etc) rather than admit they’ve built a product that resonates with a large number of people and that has cool features we should learn from! 

 Censorship resonates with a large number of people! Great! We are building for everyone else. 

 I think having an algorithmic feed resonates with people a hell of a lot more, certainly drove early adopters. 

 But, yea, people love filter bubbles (censorship being just one way to get that), that’s why most people are on nostr, too! :p 

 isn’t it just true to say that it’s not decentralized? There is a board, a legal entity etc. 

it *can* change, but as it is today, it is centralized. Not some “string desire”, seems to be just objectively the case? 

 > that post

You too see the quoted posts?

It seems like a "feature" of the client he is using.

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzprhy9yxf3vst9xv38zej9arxagsvw4sg7452k570z9yjh7djapyuqqsx56hsq8axc3phutmxa0fztjhfw27wrr20y2zglzg2pqn5cnzqvlqsuaks9