The Astrosky Ecosystem

The Astrosky Ecosystem: An independent online platform for science communication and social networking

While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not `happen in a vacuum'. Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the public, improve extensively from access to good communication tools. Social media has become a key tool for communication in astronomy, being widely used by individuals and organizations alike for networking, outreach, and more. However, traditional social media is reliant on benevolent corporations providing a free service without compromising on quality, and the recent takeover and decline of Twitter has shown how vulnerable these platforms can be. In this proceeding, we present The Astrosky Ecosystem, which is an initiative to develop open-source tools and integrations for social media, principally the Bluesky social network. We explain how our project enables the astronomy community to operate its own social media infrastructure, independent of for-profit corporations. We also discuss some of the project's technical aspects, including its use of the AT Protocol for social networking, before concluding with ideas for the future.

Empowering science communities with open, democratic, researcher-owned infrastructure.

We’re building communities and tech for publishing, curating, sharing, and discussing research online using ATProto and other decentralized protocols.

Empowering science communities with open, democratic, researcher-owned infrastructure.

We’re building communities and tech for publishing, curating, sharing, and discussing research online using ATProto and other decentralized protocols.

Sensemaking Networks: Project Introduction - Cosmik Labs

Incorporating science social media into the scientific process

A new study suggests that scientists are leaving X (formerly known as Twitter) in significant numbers due to its declining professional value. Many now find Bluesky to be a more effective platform for networking, outreach, and staying updated on research.

36K votes, 1.1K comments. 34M subscribers in the science community. This community is a place to share and discuss new scientific research. Read…

A quick and dirty guide to making custom feeds on Bluesky

So, you’ve made it! The remnants of science twitter have at last begun to coalesce around a new microblogging platformed owned by questionable individuals with inadequate content moderation t…

The promise of ATproto is social media without corporate overlords | The Web Dev Podcast Series 1

Developers building apps on ATproto, the technology behind social media apps like Bluesky and Leaflet, are promising us a future where we own our content and aren’t at the whims of a tiny handful of companies. Software engineer Zeu Capua talks to host Jason Lengstorf about the promise of social media where we can actually own our own data.

Open Science Network

Reclaim scientific discourse with federated digital spaces where researchers shape their own conversations, data, and collaborations

FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web:<br>An Online Un-Workshop

Since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk over three years ago, the Open Social Web has been adopted by an enthusiastic community. People world-wide are building and using open social platforms and open social protocols to better interact with others online.

Sensemaking Networks Part 3: building partnerships and prototypes - Cosmik Labs

Semantic cross-posters for re-integrating science social media

Paper Skygest: Personalized Academic Recommendations on Bluesky

We build, deploy, and evaluate Paper Skygest, a custom personalized social feed for scientific content posted by a user's network on Bluesky and the AT Protocol. We leverage a new capability on emerging decentralized social media platforms: the ability for anyone to build and deploy feeds for other users, to use just as they would a native platform-built feed. To our knowledge, Paper Skygest is the first and largest such continuously deployed personalized social media feed by academics, with over 50,000 weekly uses by over 1,000 daily active users, all organically acquired. First, we quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate Paper Skygest usage, showing that it has sustained usage and satisfies users; we further show adoption of Paper Skygest increases a user's interactions with posts about research, and how interaction rates change as a function of post order. Second, we share our full code and describe our system architecture, to support other academics in building and deploying such feeds sustainably. Third, we overview the potential of custom feeds such as Paper Skygest for studying algorithm designs, building for user agency, and running recommender system experiments with organic users without partnering with a centralized platform.