But how is that 'decentralized' which was the entire point of Bluesky and the AT protocol to begin with? We're just back to running centralized services. Without decentralization this is just XMPP with extra steps. You might as well just run something like Movim and save yourself the hassle.

There's "decentralized" in the sense that every device runs the whole stack. In an analogy to another protocol, this would be like running SMTP and IMAP on your phone and laptop.

Then there's "decentralized" in the sense that the protocols that govern are open and anyone can plug in without permission. This is how email works in practice. Most people do not choose to run their own email servers, but they nonetheless benefit from the fact that people who are interested can do so and provide email service.

Bluesky is the second kind of decentralized.

> the entire point of Bluesky and the AT protocol

is really to find a good enough middle ground that has competitive enough UX to get people off of the fully centralized, locked in social media providers. In the broader context, ATProto to me means user choice and provenance, which ATProto does better than any other protocol. See all the parts beyond just data hosting, where the entire distributed system is plug-n-play. [1]

ATProto not being purist, preferring pragmatism, is what attracts me over alternatives like AP and Nostr.

[1] https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers