Decentralization isn't binary. Yes, ActivityPub is more decentralized in practice right now—but it trends toward more control, not less.

Mastodon has no neutral infrastructure layer. Everything runs through instances with their own politics and moderation wars. If your instance blocks you or shuts down, you lose your identity, your social graph, everything. That's not decentralization of power—that's just multiplication of chokepoints.

AT Protocol is technically superior for decentralization: cryptographically signed posts, portable identity, account migration without data loss. Your identity isn't tied to whoever runs your server. The architecture separates infrastructure from moderation, so you can switch hosting without losing your network or content.

But here's the problem: AT's architecture enables decentralization, but nobody's building the neutral infrastructure to make it real. Without that work, Bluesky risks ending up like Mastodon anyway—just with better tech that nobody uses the way it was designed.