People are arguing because ATProto is not open. And that couldn’t be more clear in the simple fact that BSky hosts tens of millions of users, 99.95%, on a single server. While AP has <1% of the number of users and yet they’re strewn across tens of thousands of servers.

We’ve already seen the implications of such closure in the silencing of users by foreign govts, silencing of users in an entire state, and enforcement of draconian ID laws on millions of users in the EU. Meanwhile AP is largely unaffected.

And BSky is still taking the Silicon Valley approach of “we’ll figure out how to make money later”, to which the answers are the same as every other social platform. They’re not funded by donations, they’re funded by investments from investors who expect to see a profit eventually.