Decentralized Social Media vs. Censorship: Bluesky and the Fediverse

This essay examines how decentralized social media platforms, like Bluesky and the Fediverse, handle government censorship. Bluesky's composable moderation services allow clients to choose which services to subscribe to, but its centralized architecture makes it vulnerable to government pressure. The Fediverse, with its interconnected network of independent instances, presents a far greater challenge to censors, requiring attacks on numerous nodes for effective blockage. The author argues that decentralized architecture without single points of failure is key to censorship resistance, but ongoing improvements are needed to withstand more powerful censorship mechanisms.