Is Bluesky still invite only?
There's a dedicated waitlist for developers that will get you access quite quickly: https://atproto.com/blog/call-for-developers
As a comparison, Cohost limited account setup when it launched as a way to limit growth. But it didn't lock viewing the entire site behind an account requirement because... come on. What does that have to do with scaling, we all know why that restriction is there :)
To be fair, it seems to be working. Needing to seek out and find invite codes means that signups are more visible -- signup codes get shared over social media and that means mentioning Bluesky publicly and keeping it in people's minds. It also forces people to ask publicly about access, which makes the network feel more exclusive and turns every signup or expression of interest into an advertisement for the network. It's a good marketing strategy, and I suspect that a nontrivial portion of Bluesky's current buzz comes from that marketing strategy, so I can understand why it hasn't been abandoned yet. I mean, look at the current thread; if people didn't need to coordinate publicly on HN to get access then this subthread wouldn't exist and then there wouldn't be a public thread where a bunch of people express interest in trying out the network -- and that publicly expressed interest in this very subthread makes Bluesky feel more in-demand.
In fact, this is such an effective marketing strategy that I've seen Bluesky users complain that invite codes are too common now and that their invite codes aren't in as much demand as they used to be. That FOMO loop is so powerful that it's even affecting the people who already have access to the network who enjoyed the feeling of being in control of an artificially scarce resource.
But sure, all of this is definitely not a growth hack, I believe you ;)
Regardless of whether it's good marketing, the account requirements make the platform a lot less relevant in any serious discussions about the direction of social media, because despite its plans for the future for federation and access, what Bluesky is today is a platform that is in practice even more locked down than Twitter is.
Me: "if the network is intended to be public, why are user profiles and posts currently hidden behind a login wall?"
Paul Frazee: "it was a kind of bad artifact of how we set things up initially (just trying to ship). once we realized it communicated the wrong idea it was too late, and we now need to spend a heavy bit of effort communicating before we spring it on everybody."
> Once we realized it communicated the wrong idea it was too late
For what? Too late to change the technical side of things? Is there a major technical barrier to having a public interface that matches the public firehose APIs? Because I can't figure out what that barrier would be.
What magical deadline or restriction was in place that would have prevented fixing an obvious barrier to the network?
And "once we realized it communicated the wrong idea"? People aren't misinterpreting the message, they're accurately assessing that Bluesky is not an Open network even though it is marketed as one and pretends to be one. This isn't a communication problem, it's not that blocking public access communicates the wrong idea to the public, it communicates correctly that the network isn't Open. It's complete nonsense to try and phrase a failure to fulfill the basic promises of the network as if it's actually just a PR problem.
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> and we now need to spend a heavy bit of communicating before we spring it on everybody.
Communicating to whom? The users? Is this an admission that Bluesky users don't view the network as public or that they don't want the network to be public?
This is phrased like "we need to spend a bunch of time clarifying and explaining how this will all work before we pull the rug out from under people's feet" but who on earth would this be pulling the rug out from under? Who would be confused about this change? This isn't actually complicated; if a user without an account looks at a post it will either be visible or it won't be visible. That doesn't require a FAQ.
If the idea of that post being visible is contrary to community expectations and if the devs feel they literally can't make open decisions because the community would oppose those changes, then that's a pretty heckin big problem and it sounds like they should stop advertising that this is intended to be an open network or that federation is coming any day now, because it doesn't sound like the community is on board with that idea.
Or is it a communication problem for people outside the network? But how? What would that even mean?
Who outside of Bluesky would be confused if the devs took measures to fulfill the promises they've been publicly making since day 1 of the network? This isn't some complicated thing where people will be misinformed or they'll be confused by the idea that they can view without an account but can't post without one. That's how most networks work, locking viewing behind a login is the abnormal confusing decision to outsiders.
Ultimately, the network will be publicly viewable or it won't be. I do not understand what about that would require a PR campaign. Were people signing up for Bluesky thinking that the network was going to be permanently private? Because if so, that is something the owners should be horribly embarrassed about.
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It's just a fundamentally weird statement. The only thing that a closed-down network communicates is that it's closed down and exclusive. The only reason that fixing the network to reflect their own marketing would be a problem is if the network doesn't want to reflect the marketing. In which case, they should stop pretending that this is a temporary limit on growth to help prevent out-of-control scaling.
The most charitable take I can have about the response is that it's corporate bullcrap from people trying to take a simple decision that was made for marketing reasons (or has accidentally been found to be extremely valuable for marketing) and to after-the-fact justify it as something complicated and difficult so that they have an excuse to avoid actually making the change.
The less charitable take I could have is that they're being honest, and they're unable to make changes to make the network more open because their userbase would be hostile to those changes or without a PR campaign would view opening up the network as if it was an attack -- and if that's the case, that sure as heck is not making me feel confident that this network has any potential at all as an Open platform. If the users aren't on board with Bluesky as a federated and Open network for everyone, then y'all don't have an Open network and it doesn't matter what your plans are.
And in either case, it's clearly not a temporary technical restriction to help with scaling so I don't know why devs are jumping into threads pretending that it is. It's clearly a deeper problem or else the devs wouldn't be giving you this kind of a nonsense response as soon as you tried to dig into it more.
Edit: they're all gone!
Thanks.
EDIT: I'm fresh out for now, sorry!
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