Is BlueSky actually legit? I got rid of Twitter, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord, and as much of the Google Eco as I can right now.
I have both Lemmy (obviously) and Mastadon. BkueSky was always a question mark for me. It’s not federated and it doesn’t show ads and it doesn’t ask for a subscription.
Color me a cynical fuck; but, I am wondering if BlueSky is legit enough with privacy and surveillance.
Anyone smarter than myself able to give me some guidance?
BlueSky is a top-down approach to do the same thing that the Lemmy/Mastodon fediverse is trying to do bottom-up. They are approximately as untrustworthy as the devs and admins of your local fediverse server.
You absolutely should not trust any third party with private data that would destroy your life if revealed. Lemmy and BlueSky are both way better than Meta or Google, but they’ll all comply with government subpoenas and by design most of the data entered on these apps is public anyway.
As to funding, BlueSky says that they’re a “public benefit company” with some VC and cryoto-bro funding, a small registrar business, and some aspirational ideas about selling add-ons to support BSky as an ongoing concern.
I recall hearing about a merchandise sale they had for a bit that dwarfed their registrar revenue, but I think that was time-limited.
https://bsky.social/about
The largest “alt-sky”, blacksky, asks for donations if you use their services and (Iirc) aren’t a person of color.