Bluesky
🦋
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Bluesky is another project with Twitter-like features with its own protocols for and approach to open and decentralized social media that several IndieWeb community members POSSE to.
If you are looking for the open protocol being developed by Bluesky, see:
Why
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Why use or syndicate to Bluesky?
It's another interesting social web protocol experiment that has goals of decentralization and prioritizes user identity and data portability (both account migration and post migration).
...
How to
How to use your domain
The Bluesky blog has steps to use your domain name as directly your handle, either by setting up DNS TXT records or .well-known URL on your site.
- 2023-04-28 : How to set your domain as your handle (archived)
Thread (on Twitter, ironic yes) showing people using their own domains for the bluesky identifiers: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/1650189488394756097
How to federate
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You'll hopefully soon be able to use Bridgy Fed to federate your personal site to Bluesky. Follow this GitHub issue for details.
How to POSSE
(stub - needs to be filled in, several IndieWeb community members are POSSEing to Bluesky, so let's document best practices for POSSEing to Bluesky)
- Bridgy supports Bridgy publishing to Bluesky since 2024-02-05
- Colin Walker has written about how he POSSEs to Bluesky using PHP and https://github.com/cjrasmussen/BlueskyApi
IndieWeb Examples
Aaron Parecki
- Aaron Parecki uses his short domain
aaronpk.com
as his Bluesky handle since 2023-03-06 (https://bsky.app/profile/aaronpk.com) and has been syndicating his posts to Bluesky since 2023-03-06- Since 2023-05-01, removing the
staging.bsky.app/profile
part of Bluesky URLs to his posts will redirect to the canonical post on aaronparecki.com. For examplehttps://staging.bsky.app/profile/aaronpk.com/post/3juasablkof2o
aaronpk.com/post/3juasablkof2o
- redirects to
https://aaronparecki.com/2023/04/25/26/
- Since 2023-05-01, removing the
Ryan Barrett
- Ryan Barrett has a profile: https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.listRecords?user=snarfed.bsky.social&collection=app.bsky.actor.profile , posts https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.listRecords?user=snarfed.bsky.social&collection=app.bsky.feed.post
Manton Reece
Manton Reece cross-posts most of his blog posts to Bluesky using Micro.blog's built-in support for Bluesky.
2023-04-29 : Getting started with Bluesky XRPC (archived)
I’ve done a little work now with the XRPC layer of the AT Protocol, supporting cross-posting to Bluesky from Micro.blog. This post is about what I’ve learned.
Ana Rodrigues
- Ana Rodrigues with her domain
ohhelloana.blog
as handle.- https://bsky.app/profile/ohhelloana.blog
- Currently, some cross-posting happens manually. Still debating if where all posts will live.
Marty McGuire
- Marty McGuire with his domain
martymcgui.re
as handle. - Cross-posting a small set of things manually, like This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition
gRegor Morrill
gRegor Morrill: I set up my account 2023-10-26 using gregorlove.com as my handle. I was going to wait for POSSE support, but when I saw Bridgy supported backfeed already, I decided to try it out. I'm currently manually cross-posting from my site.
First post:
- https://gregorlove.com/2023/10/hello-ladies/
- which has a u-syndication of https://bsky.app/profile/gregorlove.com/post/3kcod6pfy6e2h
Kelson Vibber
Kelson Vibber manually posts links to his new website posts on Bluesky, and plans to automate it eventually.
ben
ben: I set up my account April 2023. Setting up Bridgy in August 2024.
Dr. Matt Lee
- https://bsky.app/profile/mat.tl
- Often posts from micro.blog to BlueSky and Mastodon when seeking opinions on things.
Add yourself!
Add yourself here… (see this for more details)
Previous Examples
capjamesg
capjamesg used to publish manually to Bluesky every so often at https://bsky.app/profile/jamesg.blog/. He is working on a few open-source projects related to Bluesky:
- pyatproto: A Python package with abstract methods for interacting with the Bluesky API.
- bsky.link: A link wrapper service that generates a minimal, embeddable version of a Bluesky post, ideal for embedding in journalism and blogs. Example posts:
Jacky Alcine
- Jacky Alciné uses his main domain
jacky.wtf
as his handle (since ???).- https://bsky.app/profile/jacky.wtf
- Currently, all cross-posting happens manually
Vika
- Vika uses one of her domains,
vikanezrimaya.xyz
as a handle since 2023-06-15. - POSSE is currently done manually, but Bluesky adoption may be a driver for better syndication support in Kittybox.
Features
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Bluesky has been roughly described as Twitter-like, thus has a similar set of features as Twitter.
- create & delete posts (edit?)
- domain as identity / username
- ...
- API / Protocols
- see: 2023-05-05 The Bluesky Team: Federation Architecture Overview
- ... please expand!
- open sign-ups (since 2024-02-06)
IndieWeb Features
- personal domain as identity: https://aaronparecki.com/2023/03/06/18/domains
- "I'm glad to see that BlueSky supports custom domains! I have zero interest in sitting on a username in the bluesky namespace. Setting it up was roughly the same as pointing your own domain to a hosting provider, and a lot easier than Mastodon/ActivityPub!" @Aaron Parecki March 6, 2023
IndieWeb Requests
Requests to add support for building blocks to make the service more IndieWeb friendly:
- IndieAuth: Support signing-in with IndieAuth: #646 Add support for authentication with IndieAuth
Service Examples
microblog
micro.blog supports POSSE to Bluesky since 2023-04-24:
- 2023-04-24 Manton Reece: Why Micro.blog is supporting Bluesky now
and is implementing support to directly federate with Bluesky, expected sometime in 2024:
- 2024-02-23 Manton Reece: Bluesky opening up federation
Any blog hosted on http://Micro.blog would plug into Bluesky seamlessly, with data portable to other AT Protocol hosting providers. However, we are going to go slowly with this. I would say it is several months away.
Tools
- Generate embeddable links featuring Bluesky posts: https://bsky.link
- Real-time stream of every post in Bluesky: https://firesky.tv/ (presumably as long as it can keep up)
Terminology
- "Skeet": 2023-04-27 The Verge: They’re ‘skeets’ now / Paging Lil Jon!
Data Storage
- 2024-02-22 The Bluesky Team: Bluesky: An Open Social Web
When you register on Bluesky, by default we'll suggest that Bluesky will store your data. But if you'd like to let another company store it, or even store it yourself, you can do that. You'll also be able to change your mind at any point, moving your data to another provider without losing any of your existing posts, likes, or follows. From your followers' perspective, your profile is always available at your handle—no matter where your information is actually stored, or how many times it has been moved.
AT Protocol
"ADX" iteration of the protocol renamed to “Authenticated Transfer Protocol” — or the “AT Protocol.” https://atproto.com/
- 2022-10-18 : The AT Protocol (archived)
APIs
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- Search API endpoint is not auth'd and can be viewed from a browser, e.g.: https://search.bsky.social/search/posts?q=indieweb or https://search.bsky.social/search/posts?q=indieweb.org
Articles
- 2023-05-02 The Verge: Bluesky showed everyone’s ass / In many cases, literally.
The question What’s it really like over there? is essentially what is driving user growth. From inside these garden walls, among the 55,000 users, I can tell you it’s absolutely wild.
FAQ
Not Twitter controlled
Q: Is Bluesky Twitter controlled?
A: In short, no.
A separate organization from Twitter was announced 2022-02-07. Twitter also has no equity or other involvement in Bluesky. Citations here. Notably:
Twitter’s funding of Bluesky is not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky is to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation.
– @bluesky on Twitter, Apr 25, 2022
In response to criticism & thread: https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1204791506143457281
- "Jack is many things, but an idiot he is not. He's whip smart. He knows we exist, he literally follows us.
This is not an announcement of reinventing the wheel. This is announcing the building of a protocol that Twitter gets to control, like Google controls Android." @joinmastodon December 11, 2019
Criticism
Handwavy
- https://twitter.com/hallam/status/1536338344665292803
- "It is worth noting that this is the second hand wavy proposal Dorsey has come up with in the space of 12 months. BlueSky promised much the same.
The Stolen Valor of calling it ‘Web/X’ should be a warning as should the fact that CryptoPonzi land is sinking today as Celsius rugs." @hallam June 13, 2022
- "It is worth noting that this is the second hand wavy proposal Dorsey has come up with in the space of 12 months. BlueSky promised much the same.
Addictive
- https://pagan.plus/@siin/111280543307154948
"I've been on BlueSky for 10 minutes and... (An Essay)I get it now. I used to be like "Why can't people just stop using Twitter/Instagram/WhateverTheFuck? If they need social media, why can't they just use Mastodon? Why doesn't Pixelfed get more users? It's literally the same UI".But I get it. I've been on BlueSky for what? 10 minutes? And I can feel my brain chemistry changing. Mastodon is a coffee shop. It doles out caffeine. You still get the little dopamine hit when you get notifications, you get that kind of substitute for human interaction that feels nice. But Twitter and BlueSky and Instagram and these apps from companies with access to inordinate amounts of data to build algorithms designed by psychologists to literally be As Addicting as Possible? These apps are dealing meth. But they've pressed it like ecstasy and made it cute. They've made it socially acceptable.
Substitute for human interaction
- https://pagan.plus/@siin/111280543307154948
Because sometimes in my life I feel isolated and because this substitute for human interaction feels nice.
Invasive privacy policy
- https://pagan.plus/@siin/111280543307154948
… then there's their privacy policy. Access to websites you visit before and after, identifying information about your device, purchases you make, and it goes on. But even that level of invasive access should give us pause, right? I have a lot of things set up on my computer that mitigate *some* of that access, but then let's think about how we give the app access to our photos and videos (all of them, not just what we post in the moment), our device's camera and microphone (not just while we're using it) and so on. And then think about how our society grooms us to believe (and maybe in some circumstances this belief is true) that we *need* these sites for access, for engagement, to make money. The price of not working in a warehouse is every piece of information we can reasonably gather about you to use and sell however we please, for whatever purpose, indefinitely, and it never expires and we don't pay you for it. This *is* exploitation and my ancestry makes me pause, horrified, at what this information *will* eventually come back and do to us when inevitably the wrong person/group gets ahold of it. And that's pretending like we even know who has our data and what they're doing with it, right? Because we don't know. We really don't. Call me paranoid, say that I shouldn't worry if I have nothing to hide, give me all of the excuses you've been programmed to give about why we *should not* worry about a surveillance state that *we* pay for. Then come online and rant about how dangerous governments are and fail to see the irony in it all.
" @siin October 22, 2023
Company Structure
Bluesky is a public-benefit C crop, and project initially proposed by Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO, to “develop an open and decentralized standard for social media”, hired Jay Graber as CEO, and has a board of directors that include both of them and Jeremie Miller. They each have equal voting power. For more info see:
- 2023-07-05 TechCrunch: Bluesky announces its $8M seed round and first paid service, custom domains
...raised seed funds totaling $8 million this summer, when it converted from being a public benefit LLC to a public benefit C Corp. In addition, Bluesky will now offer a paid service that provides custom domains for end users who want to have a unique domain as their handle on the service.
- 2023-04-24 Ryan Barrett: Bluesky corporate ownership and structure
History
After early funding from Twitter, it was spun out as its own company before Elon Musk acquired Twitter. It now operates independently, and is entirely employee-owned.
Citations for the above: https://snarfed.org/bluesky-corporate-ownership-and-structure
Announcement
2019:
- tweet thread announcing the project https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106
- "Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵" @jack December 11, 2019
Report
2021:
- announcement of their report into “relevant work” https://twitter.com/bluesky/status/1352302818418446337
- "One of the goals when we announced bluesky was to develop a grounded understanding of relevant work that many talented people in the decentralization community have been doing. Today, we want to share an update on this." @bluesky January 21, 2021
- the report itself https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/r0/download/twitter.modular.im/981b258141aa0b197804127cd2f7d298757bad20
Organization
2021:
- https://twitter.com/jack/status/1427315839666118662
- "Jay will be leading @bluesky!
Another step towards decentralizing Twitter and social media.
Now we can move much faster, and through code." @jack August 16, 2021
- "Jay will be leading @bluesky!
Code
2022:
New Organization
Formed Bluesky PBLLC, a Public Benefit LLC as an independent organization.
- 2022-02-07 : Announcing Bluesky PBLLC (archived)
Also see this post by Ryan Barrett for details on corporate structure, ownership, governance, and history, along with a few technical design decisions:
- 2023-04-24 : Bluesky corporate ownership and structure
See Also
- https://blueskyweb.org/
- https://bluesky-community.net/
- https://matrix.to/#/#bluesky-dev:matrix.org
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/twitter-and-interoperability-some-thoughts-peanut-gallery
- Kevin Marks was talking indieweb standards at the bluesky roundtable on interoperable formats https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRkVrMPzKl
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_Social
- Issue: moderating usernames: 2023-07-17 TechCrunch: Bluesky is under fire for allowing usernames with racial slurs
Bluesky’s moderation woes continue as users threaten to leave the site in protest of its failure to flag slurs in account usernames.
- 2024-01-24 TechCrunch: Bluesky CEO confronts content moderation in the fediverse
“It’s a pluralist ecosystem. There’s lots of parties out there, and when they unanimously decide that something is outside the Overton window of the norms of communication, then that becomes sort of the social consensus,” Graber said.
- 2024-05-09 The End of Social Media: An Interview With Jack Dorsey / jack dorsey on his exit from bluesky, how twitter lost its way, jack’s strategy for ending censorship forever, new background on the elon saga, and the death of social media as we know it
- 2024-01-15 Why RichText facets in Bluesky
Why not Markdown
How should this be encoded? The obvious answer is Markdown. You could do mentions as a kind of special-case link for instance.
…
There's three problems.