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.
The State of the Open Social Web
A comprehensive look at Mastodon, Bluesky, and the growing ecosystem of open, interoperable social networks.
Bluesky: An Open Social Web - Bluesky
We’re excited to announce that the Bluesky network is federating and opening up in a way that allows you to host your own data.
BlueSky - The Future of Social Media
Watch BlueSky's user base grow in real-time. Innovative, decentralized social networking is here!
Looking AT the Blue Skies of Bluesky
The pitfalls of centralized social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter/X, have led to concerns about control, transparency, and accountability. Decentralized social networks have emerged as a result with the goal of empowering users. These decentralized approaches come with their own trade-offs, and therefore multiple architectures exist. In this paper, we conduct the first large-scale analysis of Bluesky, a prominent decentralized microblogging platform. In contrast to alternative approaches (e.g. Mastodon), Bluesky decomposes and opens the key functions of the platform into subcomponents that can be provided by third party stakeholders. We collect a comprehensive dataset covering all the key elements of Bluesky, study user activity and assess the diversity of providers for each sub-components.
Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media
Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 10 million registered users by October 2024. In this paper we introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: to enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; to make it easy for users to switch providers; to give users agency over the content they see; and to provide a simple user experience that does not burden users with complexity arising from the system's decentralized nature. The system's openness allows anybody to contribute to content moderation and community management, and we invite the research community to use Bluesky as a dataset and testing ground for new approaches in social media moderation.
feeds.social — Minimalist Bluesky Client
Overview
What is Blacksky? Blacksky Algorithms is building the future of self-governable online communities with tools that make complex infrastructure simple to deploy. Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities […]
Overview
What is Blacksky? Blacksky Algorithms is building the future of self-governable online communities with tools that make complex infrastructure simple to deploy. Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities […]
Blacksky Algorithms - Open Collective
Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.
Introduction | Blacksky Documentation
Blacksky Algorithms builds open-source, community-driven infrastructure for decentralized social media. Our mission is to empower communities with tools for safety, governance, and control over their online spaces. This documentation is designed to help new users understand what Blacksky offers and how to get started with our feeds and moderation services.
Bluesky's Moderation Architecture | Bluesky
Moderation is a crucial aspect of any social network. However, traditional moderation systems often lack transparency and user control, leaving communities vulnerable to sudden policy changes and potential mismanagement. To build a better social media ecosystem, it is necessary to try new approaches.
A new paper examines blocking on Bluesky: "…blocking does not decrease the popularity and activity of the blocked users and has a limited effect on the social graph." There is a lot more nuance in here. h/t @index.internet.exchangepoint.tech.ap.brid.gy openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/36822/
City Research Online - Open or Blocked Skies? Community Moderation Practices in Bluesky
openaccess.city.ac.ukBluesky’s statement deriding Threads users as “guinea pigs” is not representative of Blacksky Algorithms, the atproto ecosystem or the open social web more broadly. Communities form around communication networks. And communities should never be trolled for whatever tool helps them find each other.
A new paper examines blocking on Bluesky: "…blocking does not decrease the popularity and activity of the blocked users and has a limited effect on the social graph." There is a lot more nuance in here. h/t @index.internet.exchangepoint.tech.ap.brid.gy openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/36822/
City Research Online - Open or Blocked Skies? Community Moderation Practices in Bluesky
openaccess.city.ac.uk
