Bluesky Blog

> where is it then? it might be on https://bsky.social, https://npmx.dev/pds or sitting next to your router in your living room in the form of a raspberry pi (https://atproto.com/guides/self-hosting)

This is a good article [1] to get an overview of the "backend" of the protocol, it's very plug-n-play. One question I have about the setup you describe, how does moderation work? ATProto has the best moderation scheme I know of, "stacked." [2] [1] https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers [2] https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation

I control my domain name and its DNS but I don't have the keys used to sign my DID. I followed the instructions here: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial From my reading of your blog post, it sounds like the DID is the ultimate authority and not my domain name, which sounds like a pretty big problem for user portability.

Bluesky | Senior Go Engineers, Senior Machine Learning Engineers, Senior React Native Engineers, Fullstack Engineers | Remote | https://bsky.social/about/join Bluesky is building an open internet protocol (https://atproto.com) and a flagship social app (https://bsky.app). We're a company of 30 with a strong focus on fostering a high-agency, talented team. The golang roles are focused on building the internal platform with a whole lot distributed systems engineering; the ML is working on our many recommender systems and feeds; the RN & fullstack engineers are working on the social app and internal moderation tooling, respectively. If you think social media - and the internet - could be better, apply here: https://bsky.social/about/join

> Were you paid to moderate those boards? No, none of the moderators were paid, but I do think the ~2/3 admins were paid. But yeah, I did it purely out of the want for the forum to remain high-quality, as did most of the other moderators AFAIK. > Recent social media (& maybe "recent" no longer applies) doesn't have this kind of community run tooling Agree, although reddit with its "every subreddit is basically its own forum but not really" (admins still delete stuff you wouldn't + vice-versa) kind of did an extreme version of community run tooling, with the obvious end result that moderation is super unequal across reddit, and opaque. Bluesky is worth mentioning as well, with their self-proclaimed "stackable" moderation, which is kind of some fresh air in the space. https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation

To be fair, Bluesky hasn't done a great job advertising the fact that you can buy domains from them. It's not even promoted in the app, they only promoted it in a blog post and then never again. https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-05-2023-namecheap

I don't understand all the comments promoting the openness of twitter/x. There's a ton of friction to interact with X without an account. Meanwhile, the alternatives mostly allow third party apps, cross posting, and logged out access. I can follow mastodon and threads accounts on my bluesky timeline using one of many bridge services: https://fed.brid.gy/ I can merge mastodon, bluesky, nostr, and threads one timeline using one of many third party apps: https://openvibe.social/ I can unsubscribe from the default bluesky moderation service and choose one run by a third party: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation The only differentiator for X is the content, and that's an easy choice.

This shows you who blocked you, but more importantly which starter packs[0] you are in. That's a key way people find folks to follow. 0: https://bsky.social/about/blog/06-26-2024-starter-packs

Worth noting this is not truly "choose your own" moderation. People who do things like advocate for a lower age of consent will still be banned: https://bsky.social/about/support/community-guidelines EDIT: though it seems like you could in theory make your own client... I'm unclear how that would work in practice. Presumably content they dislike would not be stored on BlueSky servers?

This short comic is also great - https://bsky.social/about/welcome-to-bluesky-comic

Currently, atproto works probably best for public social apps, like microblogging, forums, etc. So yes, it's definitely possible to build a reddit-like social app on atproto. Part of the change today is that the PDS and Relay[1] now support non-app.bsky record types. This is quite new, so there could be issues, but we're prepared to fix any issues that crop up. 1. https://bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture

> (2) why would I want to leave if it's so great? A lot of people felt burned by the changes at Twitter over the past 14 months or so. They made meaningful connections on there and with new ownership came changes that altered the character of the platform, in their eyes. But because Twitter is centralized, it's difficult to move your social graph to a new platform in a robust way. The promise of the AT protocol is being "billionaire-proof." If Bluesky gets bought out and you don't like the new owner, you can move your entire social graph and all your posts to a new atproto service without needing permission from the old service. That would be the nuclear option. A smaller step you could take before that is use a different set of moderation services to curate the experience you want (more info: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation)

The “Personal” in PDS doesn’t mean it is only for self-hosting. Bluesky has a main PDS instance at https://bsky.social that serves almost all of the Bluesky user base. There is a good overview of the architecture here: https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture Here’s a snippet from the protocol roadmap they published 3-4 weeks ago [1]: Multiple PDS instances The Bluesky PDS (bsky.social) is currently a monolithic PostgreSQL database with over a million hosted repositories. We will be splitting accounts across multiple instances, using the protocol itself to help with scaling. [1] https://atproto.com/blog/2023-protocol-roadmap

Gotcha. I now just get the following text output: { "ver" : "0.3", "name" : "jack", "shortInfo" : "Bridged from bsky.social", "profilePhoto" : "https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:6fktaamh… "postsEndpoint" : "https://bridge.spxp.org/at/did:plc:6fktaamhhxdqb2ypum33kbkj/posts"… "friendsEndpoint" : "https://bridge.spxp.org/at/did:plc:6fktaamhhxdqb2ypum33kbkj/friends&qu… }

That's on the client, not the protocol. A few folks have built clients but for some reason hasn't made this a feature. All posts are publicly accessible though -- here's Jake Tapper's posts for example https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.listRecords?repo=did:plc:upk… EDIT: This client lets you look up any post/profile without logging in https://blue.amazingca.dev/?username=did%3Aplc%3Aupkgvxvhn4ebia3arqy4r…

> "They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:" Err, BlueSky is enthusiastically complying with that one (as you read by clicking through to their corporate statement), > "We work with regulators around the world on child safety—for example, Bluesky follows the UK's Online Safety Act, where age checks are required only for specific content and features... Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children." https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126 It's bold of them to attempt to shift the Overton Window in this way ("OSA is actually moderate and we should hold it up as an example of reasonableness to criticize other censorship laws against"). That happened fast.

Domains are the ultimate identity system for building a more trustworthy internet without handing over control to some kind of verified ID scheme or being forced into publishing your personal details to gain credibility. You can build reputation and trust using a handle, even if it's not associated with your real world identity. For example, I know that if 'ryao' replies to a question about ZFS, the response can be considered trustworthy. I don't know who that is or even what country they live in, but I know they're a contributor that isn't speculating or guessing when they reply and that's all that matters to me. Domains can be used as verifiable, globally unique handles which simplifies things for the average user because it makes it easier to help users avoid impersonation and confusion if you can point them to something simple and verifiable. For example, look at Bluesky [1]. I've been wanting domain based namespaces and handles for a solid 5 years because it just makes sense. Here's my oldest mention of it (asking why package managers don't use domain verified namespacing) I have on HN [2]: > It seems like a waste to me when I'm required to register a new identity for every package manager when I already have a globally unique, extremely valuable (to me), highly brandable identity that costs $8 / year to maintain. You can tell it's old because .com domains only costed $8 back then. IMHO, domain based handles are the #1 reason to use Bluesky over X/Twitter. …

i heard enough about bluesky from an IRL friend that i finally went to check it out and… sorry, but it’s got all the branding of a tech startup whose employees discuss “growth hacking” with a straight face. https://bsky.social is just a giant splash screen where it’s impossible to learn anything more about the platform before signing up. there’s an invite system, yet simultaneously it’s supposed to be decentralized? Google around and you’ll find blueskyweb.xyz with an FAQ page which talks up the decentralization angle massively. search “how would one deploy a Bluesky instance” for an hour and eventually learn that the stack is split into like four different conceptual layers with meaningless acronym names and the parts that actually matter are closed source. so idk, until proven otherwise Bluesky is just a PR campaign promising everything to everyone and what they’ll actually deliver is a complete mystery. still, i wish they would bridge to Activity Pub so that i could peek inside without having to tie myself to it.

Source: https://bsky.social/about/blog/07-10-2026-toni-schneider-ceo (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863121)

ahem, Bain Capital "Crypto", to be exact. Among others. https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-19-2026-series-b Did not know that Bloomberg was into VC now.

https://bsky.social/about/blog/04-21-2025-verification A New Form of Verification on Bluesky April 21, 2025 https://bsky.social/about/blog/09-10-2025-age-assurance-approach Our Approach to Age Assurance September 8, 2025 I'm in the U.S. but not a state that has this requirement. No idea why it's requiring it for me (nor why it's so broken.)

https://bsky.social/about/blog/01-17-2025-moderation-2024 "In 2024, Bluesky submitted 1,154 reports for confirmed CSAM to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Reports consist of the account details, along with manually reviewed media by one of our specialized child safety moderators. Each report can involve many pieces of media, though most reports involve under five pieces of media." If it wasn't there, there would be no reports.

In 2024, Bluesky wrote about their "Stackable Approach to Moderation": https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation Now in 2026, their transparency report says nothing about stackable moderation or moderation services. I guess nobody is using them, at least not in significant enough volumes that it would have a meaningful effect on the at least not enough for them to have a meaningful effect on the Trust & Safety team's job. Likewise, they tout "thousands of Personal Data Servers operated by people across the federated AT Protocol network", but that's out of "41.41M users". It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.

Bluesky allows you to hide replies to your own post (https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-28-2024-anti-toxicity-features), and these hidden replies are exposed in API data as well. So I filter out any posts in that hidden reply array.

Not really. It's very open for everyone to participate. Further, Bluesky has been working on standardizing AT at the IETF [0][1]. They have also made a patent non-agression pledge: https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-01-2025-patent-pledge In short, they're actively working on making AT as neutral as possible. [0]: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf [1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bofreq-newbold-authenticated-transfer…

You're joking right? https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126 Mississpi is a pretty Republican state and has enacted even more stringent and privacy-invasive laws.

Bluesky seems unfriendly to email-alias providers like SimpleLogin. I signed up with an alias and was suspended within minutes. bsky.app email support [1] requested me to contact them via blueskyweb.xyz email instead [2], but mail from aliases appears dropped by blueskyweb.xyz. Gave up creating an account after being given the runaround. In contrast, Mastodon have worked fine for me. [1]: https://bsky.social/about/support [2]: https://bsky.social/about/blog/09-18-2024-trust-safety-update

Original blog post: https://bsky.social/about/blog/07-10-2025-age-assurance I was looking for more details on who is considered in-scope, e.g. if the determination is decided at account creation time or at content access time. Especially considering how the AT protocol is a decentralized protocol that is not exclusive to a single region, it's not obvious how the enforcement will work.

Selling domains is the only revenue model they've offered as far as I know. if they have no intention of making money I'm really curious how they got funding from VCs. https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan

half the comments so far talk about bluesky being similar to x ie private companies. However AFAIK the use of the "AT protocol" seems to me to be a major difference https://bsky.social/about/faq. I am really curious to know how I am wrong in that. As a long time X user and now on bluesky i can tell that there is a huge difference in the content which makes it clear that the platform was pushing accounts with specific political views (or muting others)