On: A Look at Bluesky

[sneak]

Right now everyone on Bluesky is on centralized instances run by the devs, and are subject to widespread censorship by same.

I know of no way at this time to run one's own instance or federate.

[redsolver → sneak]

You can run your own instance in the official sandbox network today: https://atproto.com/blog/federation-developer-sandbox

There are of course significantly less users compared to the main instance, but it should give you some confidence that federation dev work is on the right track.

[Zetice → sneak]

Why does this constantly come up as some kind of gotcha? The protocol is under active development, and Bluesky serves as a reference implementation.

[sneak → Zetice]

It comes up because right now Bluesky functions exactly like a worse Twitter (also centralized).

It has to be better somehow, and the whole selling point is decentralization to sidestep the possibility of recreating the current Twitter fiasco.

That goal is not yet achieved, which means it's below parity.

[Zetice → sneak]

Bluesky doesn't function at all, it's not public yet, over and over again the people working on it repeat this fact.

[sneak → Zetice]

Bluesky is absolutely public, I and thousands of others have accounts and are using it presently.

[Zetice → sneak]

I've had an account for months. It is not "public", it's in private beta.

[sneak → Zetice]

Here is bluesky staff saying it is public:

https://bsky.app/profile/emily.bsky.team/post/3jziqq7fgjm2p