K. Looks like I've been booted off #Bluesky since I posted this there:
https://mastodon.world/@ginaintheburg/114350985904916574
Seems not to be an outage & really weird. Anybody else have any probs?
bluesky
Hello from my new #Mastadon account. I deleted #Facebook, #Pinterest, #Instagram & #BlueSky. I hope this forum is not so American-centric. Here's to #gardening #nature #flowers and #maincoons !
Edited 156d ago
Gods I hate commentary like this. Like, seriously now, an _iota_ of self reflection. Please. I'm begging you.
What do you do if your host instance is down _here_, exactly?
A robustness analysis could be a valuable exercise, but this seriously isn't it.
Over on #Bluesky there was a bit of a controversy over the suspension of Sarah Kendzior. I thought it was an interestingly nontrivial moderation problem, so I wrote up a little case study on how this would have been handled on Mastodon: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/11/13/Kendzior-Case-Study
I still have #Bluesky (and #Threads) filtered out of my feeds
That said, I've been opening the filtered posts through "Show anyway" and I keep reading to see what the current thinking is
What no one seems to ever mention to the #BlueskyCurious is that Bluesky is Just Another Web Site
Find a valid URL and open it in a web browser and wander around and see if --> you <-- can find whatever is missing from your life here on #Mastodon
I have, twice, for about 45 minutes on two different days
Bluesky is bland, boring, and just like early #Twitter
Here. Have a go. Wander around. You can't Reply or Like, but you can go anywhere you want
See if --> you <-- can find what's missing in your little life
Edited 1y ago
Can a PDS control which relays index its content?
I feel like I've read everything anyone has ever written about #Bluesky, lol. But I still have questions. In "Bluesky is cosplaying decentralized" the answer appears to be no. However, the post is over a year old now and things change.
Last Week in the ATmosphere – The Links -2411.d
A short introduction: I’ve been writing these Last Week newsletters for a while, and they consists of a News section and a Links section. The News section focuses on the social side of the network, along with the more impactful tech news. The Links section gives all the links to other articles, tech and tools that are relevant to the network. Bluesky is growing so much now that it is not really feasible for me to include both sections in a single newsletter; so today you’ll get all the Links, and tomorrow I’ll send out all the News that has happened in the ATmosphere.
Enjoy, I’m sure there is more than enough interesting links in here.
The Links
Bluesky has been doing community outreach this week:
- A second Twitch livestream for Q&A with COO Rose Wan, CTO Paul Frazee and CEO Jay Graber. Hip hop artist Flavor Flav also joined in as a cheerleader for Bluesky.
- Paul Frazee and Emily Liu (who does communications for Bluesky) held a Reddit AMA
Decentralisation remains a point of conversation:
- Christine Lemmer-Webber, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub, wrote a very extensive article, asking ‘How decentralized is Bluesky really?‘
- Bluesky engineer Bryan Newbold wrote a reply to Lemmer-Webber’s article.
While viewpoints differ on decentralisation from a technical perspective, they are in agreement that Bluesky and the ATmosphere is currently not decentralised in a social sense: the vast majority of people exclusively use Bluesky’s infrastructure. This echoes what I wrote about Bluesky and decentralisation here last week. The concept of Relays remains a significant part of the discussion of whether or not Bluesky is decentralised. Because of the increased load on the Relay due to the amount of new people joining, Bluesky stopped taking in posts from the fediverse bridge for a few days this week, indicating the amount of power that Bluesky has over the network.
PDSls, the tool which allows you to inspect and see every PDS on the network, has gotten a variety of updates. You can now log in, and edit and delete posts from your own PDS. Edited posts mostly do not show up on Bluesky anymore, barring some exceptions. For other services such as Picosky or WhiteWind edits do show up.
More organisations are playing with the concept of letting people set their handle on their subdomain, with Newgrounds and Neocities, as well as itch.io already providing the option last week.
Bluesky Tools
- AT Orbital Laser is a tool to instantly block and account, as well as all that account’s followers, similar to Blockenheimer.
- Vanity.blue gives you a variety of free custom handles.
- StarterPacks.net allows you to see and search through all Starter Packs.
- BlueskyStarterPacks.com also allows you to see and search through all Starter Packs, and also shows traffic information on them.
- DarkSky is a Windows client for Bluesky.
- Skitter is a Bluesky client in the theme of the old Twitter web client.
- Analyse your Bluesky statistics with SkyStats.
- Beeskie is a another Windows app for Bluesky.
- BlueHorizon gives you analytics of your account, as well as the ability to schedule posts.
- Bluesky User Search allows you to search for accounts with some more accessible search filters.
- Bluesky Follow Scanner analyses the accounts that follow you.
- BlueskyMeter is another analytics tool.
- Blucerne is an advanced search tool for Bluesky that is currently in development.
For Developers
- SDK.Blue is ‘a list of all libraries/SDKs for building things on ATProto, grouped by language’.
- Extending Also Known As.
- Tandem is a tool to create a backup key for your PDS.
- Tech Talk held a session with the creator of the Game Industry Labeler, recording here.
- Browser.blue lists all Lexicon record types.
- DASL (Data Addressed Structures and Links) is a new standard for data formatting that uses the same data structure as ATProto.
- This Website is Hosted on Bluesky.
- Using Bluesky posts as blog comments.
- Hosting Bluesky with Coolify
- A RFC on Lexicon Resolution.
- Posting to Bluesky from a Microcontroller.
- Adding Bluesky-powered comments to any website in five minutes
- Self-hosting Bluesky PDS.
- How to setup a Bluesky PDS Server on Digital Ocean cloud.
- Next steps with Bluesky – hosting your own data and more on the API.
- How to run your own Bluesky PDS Server.
- bsky-bc, a music discovery contraption.
Hosting your PDS on increasingly esoteric hardware:
Updates
- OpenVibe is an cross-platform app that supports Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Nostr. Their latest update supports for tagging users on multiple platforms.
- Bluesky client TOKIMEKI adds direct support for Audio Spaces app Bluecast.
- The SkyFollowerBridge is working on support for Threads.
- Discord has been working on better integration with Bluesky. Discord now also allows you to link your Bluesky and Mastodon profiles.
- Clearsky, the tool that allows you to see information such as blocks, as well as lists and starter packs you are on, is back online after it had been offline for a while due to increased network traffic.
- Third-party Bluesky client Ouranos now shows your profile on other ATmosphere platforms as well, such as Frontpage, WhiteWind and Linkat.
- Blacksky is expanding.
- Blue Badge 0.2.0
An open firehose
ATProto allows everyone to tap into the ‘firehose’, the eventstream that broadcasts every single event on the network. This allows anyone to build tools and visualisations that utilise this data, ranging from serious and helpful to deeply silly. Last week I already covered a long list, and here are some more:
- Show all links to Bandcamp.
- Bluesky WebSocket Firehose – Simon Willison.
- How to Extract Analytics from Bluesky, the New Open Social Network
- Bluesky Mosaic shows an continually updating gallery of all images (note: NSFW images are not filtered out).
- Bluesky hashtag Tracker keeps track of hashtags, but only as long as you got the website open.
- SwearSky shows you all profanity on the network, and helpfully provides a voice-over for all curse words.
Misc
- Social Media Manager Tools for Bluesky
- An open source app we can all learn from
- A very extensive Obsidian website with explainers on how Bluesky works.
- Benefits of an open network – Bluesky employee Emily Liu.
- BlueSheep is a simple game that uses your Bluesky profile to ‘deploy your own sheep’.
- Bluesky has more than 21 million users. Where does it go from here? – Morning Brew
- A Note About the Knight Institute, X, and Bluesky.
- Open-source champion Kelsey Hightower on the promise of Bluesky.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online.
https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-the-atmosphere-the-links-2411-d/
Edited 1y ago
Photo: Branch Out - The golden hour morning sunlight, against the bright blue sky, illuminates the twisting branches of a tree - Color Nature Art Photograph Copyright 2017 Frank J Casella - https://fineartamerica.com/featured/branch-out-frank-j-casella.html #photography #fjcasellaPhoto #fineart #trees #goldenhour #bluesky #treebranches #relationships #nature
大家好，#Fread 现在已经决定开源了，欢迎大家查看代码提交 PR。
Fread 经历了两年多的开发，从开始到现在一直免费使用，之前由于没考虑好到底是付费下载还是免费所以闭源，仓库里也有很多敏感数据一直没法开源，现在主要功能都开发的差不多了，也是时候开源出来了。
虽然这种项目大部分都是业务代码，但是 Fread 还是有些独特之处的，首先使用的是 Kotlin Multiplatform 和 Compose Multiplatform 做跨平台，目前像 Fread 这么复杂的产品使用这样技术栈的其实很少，并且这是比较新的技术，这点 Fread 有很多参考意义。
另外 Fread 因为要兼容多个社交平台以及混合 Feeds，所以架构设计上下了点功夫，目前可以从架构上兼容这些短博客协议。
总之，虽然确实希望通过 Fread 赚钱，但我更希望自己开发了这么久的 App 有更多的人使用和喜欢。
#Mastodon #Bluesky #rss #activitypub #fediverse #FOSS #Android #Opensource #Freesoftware
Edited 1y ago
ICYMI: https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ now has some features that show trends over time so you can watch user data get spread out more as #bluesky goes through some moderation upheaval and credible #atprotocol alternatives ramp up
There was that story last month about the Turks demanding that certain opposition Bluesky accounts be silenced. They were (mostly, sort of, it’s complicated). I dug into it and came away with an essay on what we want and don’t want concerning censorship or no-censorship and how well #Bluesky and the #Fediverse might give us that: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/28/Censoring-Social-Media
#TIL Bluesky has no profile indicator (or even third party labeler that I can find), for determining if an account is a bot.
latest update for #bluesky is legit:
- detaching quote posts
- disable quote posting per post
- hide replies for everyone
bluesky is moving fast, and in the current phase the space of decentralised social network is in this matters
https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-28-2024-anti-toxicity-features
Spent some time this morning getting a cursory understanding of #ATProtocol (the open protocol behind #BlueSky). I have a decent understanding of #ActivityPub and I expected AT to have a lot of similarities.
It’s quite different, and this diagram surprised me.
PDS here is “Personal Data Server”. You might think of it as something like a #Mastodon instance where all your data is stored and posts by those you follow are cached.
Except notice that there’s no arrows between PDSes.
1/5
Sí, les xarxes centralitzades 🫠grinyolen. Però aquí, al #Fedivers, ja estem explorant alternatives: més lliures, més ètiques, més nostres.
Què hi ha (o pot haver-hi) entre el 🐘 mamut de #Mastodon i la 🦋 papallona de #Bluesky
➡️ Debatrem sobre el futur de les xarxes socials i com construir espais digitals que cuidin, connectin i empoderin.
❤️🔥Aquest dj. 8 de maig, en parlem❤️🔥
Vols saber-ne més? ⬇️
Edited 1y ago
Is BlueSky similar to the Fediverse? No.
The Fediverse is owned by the people and communities that use it. A basic server costs $5 a month all inclusive, anyone can make one. It's ad-free, made by volunteers, funded by donations, servers are independent.
BlueSky is a for-profit corporation funded by VC money. Its technical structure makes servers dependent on expensive corporate-run relays. BlueSky's business setup is eerily reminiscent of Ello: https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/
Edited 2y ago
“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse
this is why they focus on blockchains, a technology basically always used at the expense of its users”
@bnrnieuwsradio nodigt @laurenshof uit in hun #podcast De Technoloog om te praten over de stand van zaken rondom X-alternatief @bsky.app
'Kan #Bluesky de schaal bereiken van grote sociale netwerken zoals #twitter? Hoe effectief zijn decentrale netwerken in het behouden van een gezonde en veilige community? Wat zijn de lange termijn businessmodellen voor platforms zoals Bluesky?'
https://www.bnr.nl/podcast/de-technoloog/10561900/de-toekomst-van-bluesky-en-de-fediverse
Edited 1y ago
Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere
https://privacy.thenexus.today/decentralization-and-erasure-blacksky-bluesky-and-the-atmosphere-2/
There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere (the ecosystem using the AT protocol) are decentralized. Blacksky runs three feed generators, a moderation service, and a work-in-progress personal data store (PDS) as well as providing a starter pack. And the vision for Blacksky "extends beyond any single platform".
That sounds pretty decentralized to me!
But as far as I can tell, nobody else in the discussion is talking about Blacksky as an actually-existing example of decentralization. What's with that?
I have to say I don't agree with @fediforum who consider #Bluesky part of the #fediverse. Is Bluesky making any attempts to interoperate with other fedi services that I'm not aware of?
New: Taking Control of Your Timeline - in Different Ways
#Fediverse platforms as well as #Bluesky offer to give the user control of their timeline - in contrast with the control that Big Tech Platforms have with their algorithmic timelines.
But the approach is surprisingly different: fediverse platforms like Mastodon give you control over *how* you see the content you follow, whereas Bluesky gives you control over *what* content you see
https://fediversereport.com/taking-control-of-your-timeline-in-different-ways/
We're proud to support A New Social, a non-profit helmed by @quillmatiq and @snarfed.org. Learn more here about its mission to liberate people's networks from their platforms, and level the playing field across the open social web.
https://www.anew.social/hello-social-web/
#OpenSocialWeb #SocialNetworks #SocialWeb #Bluesky #BridgyFed #PeopleNotPlatforms