> 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