Calling AP services a bunch of small "centralized" services in this context removes all the meaning from that term. You might as well call any web server centralized while comparing them to clouds.
Proper federation is exactly such bunch of small services messaging each other. On the hand, what ATProto leads to is at most a handful of large-scale providers each running the own portion of the network.
Proper federation is exactly such bunch of small services messaging each other. On the hand, what ATProto leads to is at most a handful of large-scale providers each running the own portion of the network.