ATProto Federation is hypothetical at best. Bluesky remains centralized for all intents and purposes.

Founders are all cryptocurrency dorks. The CEO got her start in selling shitcoins and peddling AI slop. Not a lot of confidence in their ability to lead a successful social media company.

It's a for-profit company, and so far their actual profit-generating function has yet to be determined. Maybe it's ads. Maybe it's subscription fees. Maybe they just end up selling all your data off to their 1,000+ data broker partners. Nobody knows yet, but it isn't going to remain free and open permanently.

ActivityPub is already fully federated with dozens of different services, and thousands of different instances. Every instance has its own leadership, and most are run by generous sysadmins, donations, and volunteers. It can't make top-down decisions, it can't go out of business, and it can't be bought.