My top Bluesky feature requests for 2024

In 2023 my social media consumption changed dramatically after I DM'd a random mufo on what-was-then-called Twitter for a Bluesky invite. At the time, I was floating between Twitter itself and Mastodon for my primary daily social media experience. On one hand, I loathed Twitter (and

‘Blueskyism’, Political Violence, and Open Social Networks Under Authoritarianism

After Kirk's murder, calls for censorship and the crackdown on political places started to include Bluesky. Open social networks must now fight political suppression as well as platform monopolies.

Recently I’ve been thinking about a couple of... - Adam Wood

Recently I’ve been thinking about a couple of different tech-related things that sort of overlap. One is the (emerging) shape of the new social web; the other is a pull I’m feeling to try and lessen reliance on American companies.  I’ve been interested in / concerned by what became of social media for some time.1 Since the sundering of Twitter in 2022, I’ve kept an eye on the various alternatives, with particular interest in Mastodon and Bluesky. Actually, to be more accurate, my interest has been in the protocols behind those platforms: ActivityPub and AT Protocol respectively. Both have their...

How Bluesky, Alternative to X and Facebook, Is Handling Explosive Growth (Published 2024)

The fledgling social media site has been flooded with new users since the election. It hasn’t all been easy.

The Algorithm, Apparently Chronological

A German court has explicitly named Mastodon and Bluesky as positive examples of social networks that could retain hosting protection. It gets Bluesky’s feeds wrong, but its reasoning about user control might be more useful than it realises.

Benefits of an open network

While Bluesky looks like other social apps, it’s actually quite different. It’s an open network.

Mastodon - Decentralized social media

Learn more about Mastodon, the radically different, free and open-source decentralized social media platform.

Beyond Mastodon and Bluesky - Toward a Protocol-Agnostic Federation

You’ve heard of stuff like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Make an account on one, and it only works there. You can’t send a DM to your friend on Twitter from Facebook Messenger. You can’t browse your friend’s Instagram feed from Twitter. Each one is closed off

Beyond Mastodon and Bluesky - Toward a Protocol-Agnostic Federation

You’ve heard of stuff like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Make an account on one, and it only works there. You can’t send a DM to your friend on Twitter from Facebook Messenger. You can’t browse your friend’s Instagram feed from Twitter. Each one is closed off

How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms

Recently due to various events (namely a lot of people getting off of X-Twitter), Bluesky has become a lot more popular, and excitement for its underlying protocol, ATProto, is growing. Since I worked on ActivityPub which connects together Mastodon, Sharkey, Peertube, GotoSocial, etc, etc, etc in the present-day fediverse, I often get asked whether or not I have opinions about ATProto vs ActivityPub, and the answer is that I do have opinions, but I am usually head-down focused on building what I hope to be the next generation of decentralized (social) networking tech, and so I keep to myself about such things except in private channels.

Mastodon Exit Interview

I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.

How Bluesky, Alternative to X and Facebook, Is Handling Explosive Growth

<blockquote><br /><strong><em>The fledgling social media site has been flooded with new users since the election. It hasn’t all been easy.</em></strong></b...

Bridges & The Last Network Effect

We're in an exciting moment for the open social web. As Elon makes one bad decision after another on X, we've seen waves of users leave the platform for alternatives. Three obvious beneficiaries of these, ahem, lapses of judgment are Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon. What's particularly interesting about these three