What is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a decentralized social network similar to Mastodon but using their own AT Protocol.
Bluesky
Social media as it should be. Find your community among millions of users, unleash your creativity, and have some fun again.
bsky.social
What makes Bluesky different?
Welcome to Bluesky — Comic by Davis Bickford
bsky.social
A summary of some ways Bluesky differs from Mastodon:
A focus on the global conversation: On Mastodon, your “instance”, or server, determines your community, so your experience depends on which server you join. An instance can send and receive posts from other instances, but it doesn’t try to offer a global view of the network. Your Mastodon server is part of your username, and becomes part of your identity. On Bluesky, your experience is based on what feeds and accounts you follow, and you can always participate in the global conversation (e.g. breaking news, viral posts, and algorithmic feeds). You can use your own domain name as your username, and continue participating from anywhere your account is hosted.
Composable moderation: Moderation on Bluesky is not tied to your server, like it is on Mastodon. Defederation, a way of addressing moderation issues in Mastodon by disconnecting servers, is not as relevant on Bluesky because there are other layers to the system. Server operators can set rules for what content they will host, but tools like blocklists and moderation services are what help communities self-organize around moderation preferences. We’ve already integrated block and mute lists, and the tooling for independent moderation services is coming soon.
Composable feeds: We designed your timeline on Bluesky so that it’s not tied to your server. Anyone can build a feed, and there are currently over 40,000 algorithmic feeds to choose from. Your Mastodon timeline is only made up of posts from accounts you follow, and does not pull together posts from the whole network like Bluesky’s custom feeds.
Account portability: We designed federated hosting on Bluesky so that you can move servers easily. Moving hosting services should be like changing your cell phone provider — you should be able to keep your identity and data. Changing servers on Bluesky doesn’t disrupt your username, friends, or posts.
Can you self host?
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.
bsky.social
Early Access Federation for Self-Hosters | Bluesky
For a high-level introduction to data federation, as well as a comparison to other federated social protocols, check out the Bluesky blog.
docs.bsky.app
Other stuff
Ai Art and Art Theft labeler service
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