The following post was made with an indie app social Media poster that shares the same messages to various platforms such as #bluesky#mastodon#X and #tumblr
I also note here in #Mastodon (as with #Pixelfed) a lack of multiple account management. Social networks like #X and #BlueSky allow you to manage multiple accounts simultaneously and easily switch between them without having to log out and back in each time.
21.09.2025 10:05 item (@item@hub.netzgemeinde.eu) @Johannes Ernst It's impossible for the US authoritarian government to put the same pressure on the Fediverse as on Bluesky and to act against the Fediverse the same as against Bluesly. For there are a few important differences.
The ATmosphere is much more centralised. It almost entirely consists of bsky.app, at least as far as the relay and AppView parts are concerned. This means that the ATmosphere is almost entirely at home in the USA and US-owned. The Fediverse is much more spread around the globe. Even mastodon.social "only" accounts for a bit over 20% of the Fediverse.
The AT protocol itself is basically owned by a US for-profit corporation. ActivityPub is not owned by any one corporation. It was not created by Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko, nor is it owned by Mastodon, Inc. If anything, it is "owned" by the World Wide Web Consortium, but the W3C actually has little power over it since the ActivityPub development body has been dissolved. There is no way that US authoritarianism can put pressure on the Fediverse via the protocol.
Mastodon does have a CEO and a for-profit Mastodon, Inc. But Mastodon can work without Mastodon, Inc. because it is owned and developed by the German non-profit Mastodon gGmbH. Also, Eugen Rochko is a German residing in Germany. The US administration has exactly zero power over him.
The Fediverse is far from being only Mastodon. Mastodon's market share has falled under 60%. And large parts of the rest of the Fediverse are entirely at home outside the USA. Misskey and CherryPick, for example, are entirely made in Japan. They don't have for-profit corporations, they don't have non-profits, they don't have CEOs. They only have developers. Neither has an official app in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Friendica is now maintained by two Germans. It doesn't have a for-profit corporation, it doesn't have a non-profit, it doesn't have a CEO. It only has developers. It doesn't have an official app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Play Store, and third-party apps are only available for Android. Hubzilla is now maintained by a German and a Norwegian. It doesn't have a for-profit corporation, it doesn't have a non-profit, it doesn't have a CEO. It only has developers. There are no apps for it at all in the Apple App Store or in the Google Play Store. (streams) and Forte are made in Australia. They don't have a for-profit corporation, they don't have a non-profit, they don't have a CEO. They only have one main developer. There are no apps for them at all, full stop, so it's literally impossible for Apple and Alphabet to do anything against them. The only way that US authoritarianism could act against them by acting against the people behind them would amount to acts of war against NATO members. At this point, a special mention goes to Pixelfed, Loops, the Fedilab app and the FediDB. They're all developed in France. And the USA had better think twice before sending a SEALS team into a nation with nuclear weapons just to shut down social apps.
Essentially, if Apple and Google wanted to remove all apps that can access the Free Social Web from their app stores, they'd also have to remove Safari and Chrome.
US authoritarianism can paint the Fediverse leftist, even communist or anarchist. But there's little it can do to actually do to shut the Fediverse down.