Gregory's Server
One thing I didn't think to say in the above is that you can imagine a distributed ledger for did:plc and the relay - which doesn't currently exist. If one did exist, then there would be a practical way to keep Bluesky honest.
Bsky proponents seem to think that Bluesky is meant to behave *as if* did:plc and the relay were like this, and if they start misbehaving you can fork the network.
But the fact that Bsky doesn't, and *can't*, be neutral throws a wrench into this.
@cwebber
I would summarize my view by saying that Bsky is semi-decentralized but NOT federated. It's a model of publishing akin to RSS, with the AppView serving as Google Reader / Feedly equivalent.
And like Feedly / Inoreader, Bsky adds a bunch of *centralized* features on top of "RSS", which complicates the term "decentralized".
The problem for Bsky is that RSS is not a social network, and the most "social" of Bsky's features (e.g. global search, DMs) are therefore the most centralized.