I think the AT protocol is versatile in that users can acces each others data once authenticated without any centralized service (granted the aggregators and some other things may still be centralized).
Is there any auth necessary to pull data from a PDS? I know the main relay is a public firehouse so I would be surprised, but maybe the PDS can put relay servers on an allowlist?
As far as I can tell, all content on ATProto is fully public without auth
Does it federate or anything? Wonder what up to date summaries exist of it’s capabilities
If by federate you mean "is stored on content addressed, signed merkle trees that can be mirrored and served from more than one domain" then yes
Also it's uh, atproto.com
So the recent push to artists to move there to protect their rights against AI training is not only false but a trap since anyone can point their cannons to train data on Bluesky.