"When infrastructure providers bundle hosting with specific ideological positions or community identities, they create a new form of power over users."
When I first heard Rudy talking about Blacksky on Rabble's podcast, my first reaction was "this should have been a Mastodon instance." This only solidifies that view.
Like a lot of "VC Blockchains", e.g. Solano etc, they might be "decentralized" on paper but the cost of participating in the network is great. It seems like a similar thing with ATProto.