I think this is a problematic comparison. Comparing BlueSky to ActivityPub doesn’t make sense. One is a company and the other is documentation of a protocol-ish something. Comparing the Mastodon AP-based federation protocol and associated FOSS with AT Protocol and related FOSS is a somewhat better comparison.
In my opinion, ActivityPub isnot people-powered or community-driven. It’s owned by the W3C and even their SocialCG cannot make changes to the Recommendation, much less any “community” external to the W3C. Fortunately, there are efforts like the FEP process to compensate for this protocol “walled garden”.
The AT Protocol and related software is open source, Given the rate of evolution of the platform and the level of community involvement, I think one could claim that it is more community-oriented than ActivityPub.
Just because a for-profit company is involved in the development doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent. There are more than a few for-profit companies involved with ActivityPub implementation, including Meta (but not protocol development because of the tightly-controlled AP spec).
I’m not trying to claim that one is better than the other, but I don’t see the same distinctions that you do.