Bluesky: Updated Terms and Policies
bsky.social
bsky.social
It’s all very nicely written but the risk of committing oneself (as a user, as a developer, as a social/marketing person, etc) only to get surprised by what/how they generate profit from is just unsettling.
Say I’m building a cool app around that, how do I plan how much is this going to cost me and can I stomach the risk of binding myself to this “supposedly open” platform without knowing how it will work in 6 months?
Don't let yourself get attached to any one place. That's the lesson. Staying ahead of monetization is the move. Nothing will stay good forever.
AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort.
I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.
VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to destroy the ideals of the web.
An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render the data.
Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the criticism about Bluesky's design.
But certain things like full-network relays/app views just have inherent bandwidth/storage/compute costs associated with them but it's definitely something a non-profit (like Internet Archive) could easily afford to do.
The PLC service could likely be hosted for ~$40/mo.
If you want a small scaled down setup for just a small community, which still interoperates with the full network but doesn't have a complete network, there are setups like AppViewLite, which can run on, eg, an old laptop at home: https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite
Personally, I don't think individualist self-hosting is a necessary or helpful goal for indexing the network. Most humans are not interested in spending the time or learning the skills to do this, even if it was as easy as setting up a self-hosted blog with RSS. I think small collectives (orgs, coops, communities, neighborhoods, companies, etc) exist and can fill this role.
Regardless, this is moving the discussion, which was about whether it was possible to decentralize each component the network, not whether it was pragmatic for individuals to self-host the whole thing.
That's crazy cheap! Everybody on HN should be able to run one of these, just cancel your Claude Code Max subscription
All kidding aside, that's incredibly cost effective and heartening to read. I expected the cost of running a relay to be much higher.
Well, this is exactly my point. ATProto's infrastructure is too hard for most humans, and that is the reason for the centralization complaint.
The team's goal should be to make it easier, so the complaint goes away.
I didn't know about these recent attempts, they're impressive for sure. However they write[1] about zeppelin:
"The cost to run this is about US $200/mo, primarily due to the 16 terabytes of storage it currrently uses"
So when you here give that $200/mo cost as a price point for "organized groups", you are forecasting that the cost of storage will go down as fast as the BlueSky data size grows? At what rate right now is the data size growing? Because the last numbers I saw were something like 2TB, so it being already 16TB sounds like $200/mo is not going to be enough very soon.
Bluesky Social still clearly dominates the ecosystem, but there is no single component of the system that does not have a open/alternative option for exit.
Do you disagree? Is there a specific centralized component you take issue with?
Users can move their follows, followers and posts to zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently?
Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means, but in a social network easy migration between servers is the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized network to emerge.
Edit. Does the network actually work over at zeppelin.social alone if Bluesky servers go down?
I totally agree. However, a lot of people in the fediverse/ActivityPub world apparently (?) disagree, seeing as your domain is tightly coupled to your server, i.e. no name portability. Seems like a wild oversight to me, and getting massive instances like matrix.org and mastadon.social seems like an inevitable consequence.
Lack of name portability implies greater risk when choosing a server. Greater risk when choosing a server means choosing comparatively less risky servers. Choosing comparatively less risky servers means choosing more well-known servers. Thus you have the GMail-ification of the fediverse.
Yes, even if Bluesky was down (as long as they have a backup) which is not the case for ActivityPub.
Migration between servers is so seamless that is causes confusion and doubt that the protocol even supports migration, because there is basically zero in-app visibility of which users are on which server.
Yes, the network continues to work on zeppelin.social if Bluesky servers are down.
Making it hard to setup or run, complex to understand or change are also forms of discouraging independent use.
For example, Wikipedia generates >$180M/yr just by running ads for itself requesting donations. Requesting donations is the least effective monetizing strategy and yet it still works because of scale.
Donations would probably work but Bluesky has additional options. They could create a premium app for power users that just adds nice-to-have features (which may cost real money to provide and maintain), they can resell domain names, they can sell merch, etc.
Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars to be highly sustainable and profitable. It was built and scaled with fewer than 20 full time employees.
The most important and most difficult part is getting to sufficient scale, and that's mostly a matter of just making the app even better than it is today.
I posted a bit about this here: https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t
Are you sure their investors share this vision?
2. I really don't care if the investors/shareholders are disappointed as long as the PBC's mission is fulfilled. Also their control is relatively limited.
Maybe I should have written added this:
Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in Bluesky Social, PBC (former employee)
And it's the only open network built on an open protocol to ever do so.
Will it? How much of that doesn't run on investor backed servers today? People often say stuff like this but I haven't seen that work in practice.
I’ve seen posts about some poorly-publicized, proof-of-concept alternative implementations that would probably fall over if they got real attention, but I think that shows that it’s not a problem with the protocol itself.
Good enough, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just about posting comments on the Internet, not bank accounts. If something went fatally wrong, we would move again, just like we moved off previous social networks.
Everyone says that right up until they read the news where the US Government bails those investors out.
The first club I belonged to as a teenager worked this way. In lieu of high membership dues there was volunteer time spent helping out at or before the event. I was surprised as an adult to learn that some events lose money or only break even.
Plus most of that goes towards other wikimedia projects, wikipedia itself despite being huge and used by most of the internet costs a fraction of that to run yearly.
Enshittification can't consume low barriers-to-entry markets.
I think the reality is that most social media platforms will inevitability create hyper-polarized audiences that do little more than generate content.
In theory this would naturally elevate posts that are more measured and mundane while sinking posts with big emotional lizard brain appeal (by design or otherwise). With time this would establish a self-reinforcing norm that makes polarized and inflammatory posts look as clownish as they actually are.
This prevents certain communities from forming and certain topics from being discussed. For example, you can't discuss LGBTQ issues with troll armies constantly swarming and spamming. If such communities are not given tools to exclude malignant disruptors by setting norms and "dominating" a given channel, they will have to go elsewhere (such as leaving X for BlueSky).
- Reach limits greatly limit troll effectiveness, since they can’t find each other as easily
- Posts that exceed the threshold naturally vs. being trolled past would have different “fingerprints” that could be used like a blacklight for troll detection for both assisting moderators and for model training for automatic suspected troll flagging
The threshold should probably be dynamic and set at the point at which posts “breach containment” (escape from their intended audience), which is where problems tend to occur.
Bluesky-like self-moderation controls would also help.
Mods should be in-house, on payroll, and strictly bound to the network’s standards.
This should generally be less of an issue anyway in a system that actively penalizes the sorts of crudely expressed, un-nuanced posts that are typically social media’s bread and butter. Not being able to appeal to basal emotions (“it feels right” is a poor metric) and being required to substantiate views more intelligently takes the air out of a lot of fringe sails.
Yes, it has to, because trolls and haters are relentless. The choice of whether or not marginalized communities are allowed to ban abusive posters is fundamental because moderation resources are finite.
Of course, there are many who believe that marginalized communities should not be allowed to moderate posts and should be willing to absorb a constant onslaught of abuse as the price of existing.
One also needs to keep in mind for spaces for marginalized in particular are more sensitive than typical because they have to keep their shields up at all times because of how much more likely attacks are. If making them feel like they can safely drop their shields is a goal, then incidents like people posting in an antagonistic and/or harassing manner needs to drop to background radiation levels.
But even after they flee, it won't be enough — the new platform where they took refuge, having become popular, must be stormed. Any room where the marginalized congregate must be filled with the din of hatred. In short, it is not enough for Musk-era Twitter to be Twitter — BlueSky must also become Twitter.
BlueSky is already quite bad like old Twitter, though not like X. It's not filled with Nazis, but it is very bland and corporate with no substance.
But I agree with your larger point and I think it is a valid point.
The problem with folks like this on Bluesky and X is that they want to both have a closed community but also benefit from the easy comings and goings that a more open forum offers. IMO it's a fools errand. There's a reason why the humble group chat has won as the social media of choice for, well, everyone.
Being able to temporarily filter out profiles that post too many times (a setting you could change) would also be nice, but it shouldn't be automatic.
For Bluesky, the problem is that the replies to someone you follow can be pretty bad. (Official Bluesky posts are an example of this.) People can filter them individually, but it’s not the same as a blog with good moderation.
I don’t think I could do a whole lot if the replies to one of my Bluesky posts were bad?
This post by a user who discovered that he instantly got 30000 blockers simply by joining and following some starter packs of journalists IS HILARIOUS: https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueskySocial/comments/1mgz19y/why_...
The blocklists, as an experiment, are too easily gamed or abused. (I never use them.) List maintainers have added people they have personal beef with, and bad actors have started deceptive lists that change after enough people follow.
But the general block/mute functionality on Bsky is way better than most social media, and goes a long way to avoiding abusive or unpleasant people.
The best part of BlueSky in my opinion is that it's really easy to control what you want to see, without the site-owner's algorithm choosing for you. No matter who else is at the hot tub party, I don't have to worry much about them peeing in my particular hot tub. I hear Mastodon is somewhat similar, but it's been a while.
The balance between discovery and curation and control is nigh-on perfect for me in BlueSky. If I want to focus just on my corner of the science world, it's super easy for me to build a network of people just in that corner and not get spammed with, say, racially-tinged fight videos that are meant for engagement bait, as has happened on other social networks.
If you want hyper-polarized communities, some of those can be found on BlueSky too! But at least on BlueSky I'm able to choose what I want rather than having the preferences of the site owner control my information environment.
I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend everything is just peachy (it’s not) but the doomerism is so strong and pervasive that I think it breeds complacency that when met with the sugar high of social media engagement reacts to form armchair activism (which breeds yet more complacency). All that time and energy may be better spent building each other up and encouraging action through an optimistic outlook.
I know it can produce some posts of less value, but it also pulls the blogger back in and allows professionals in certain areas to not feel they give put high quality out there for absolutely nothing.
I just mean, I can see the pros, but not really serious cons, so I'm wondering what your take is?
To me, this is the crux of your problem. Social media is like a, well, social space like a bar. Not everyone shares the same opinions, but most of the patrons can at least agree enough to not fight each other, which is sort of an echo chamber since yelling something against the grain would get your ask kicked in a bar.
Forums are the place to have a discussion about subject X, since everyone is there to have that discussion. Of course, if you get off topic or snippy the conversation may devolve, but if you stay on topic you can have a nice conversation about subject X.
I'd actually argue against this. although I'd probably blame Reddit more.
It is now normal for social media to be composed of echo chambers and that's because administrations and users enable and seek that. If someone's to blame more than Twitter/Reddit and their respective users I'm missing it, and on that note, blocklists as a functionality in BlueSky are there precisely to protect echo chambers.
Outside of bullying, which I do think is a real risk for kids, I don't feel like the time I spend on social media is unhealthy at all. Granted I'm mostly YouTube, zero percent IG or Facebook. I'm really grateful for what Google bought/built.
Excuse me now as I need to go watch a short that explains the difference between Australian and British accents. Very important, goodbye!
This is a good point. Social media isn’t unhealthy if you don’t use it
I also am a big fan of YouTube for exactly this reason, but you need to be careful.
There's all kinds of great educational content on there.
But, for anything "political" or controversial, YouTube can get toxic very quickly. I believe this is going to be true for most social media as long as engagement is the KPI. It directly incentivizes echo chambers, ragebait, and all kinds of terrible discourse.
Well, it turns out that some people are actually outraged by a jeans ads... the problem is that these social networks tend to amplify these sort of divise issues for engagement purposes.
My problem with Twitter/X was that, for instance I was following somebody in 2010's who talked about Javascript and Node, only to end up with that person constantly ranting about partisan issues that had nothing to do with it (especially after Trump election), but at the time, Twitter provided no way to limit feeds to center of interests. That made me quit the platform and I imagine it's getting way wore now...
Of course, if you see everyone following you for topic X but that nobody wants to hear your opinion about anything else, I can imagine that making it feel like people are just using you as a tool, and that decreasing incentive to participate in the whole thing. But it'd be interesting to try at scale.
How could that design choice go past basic UI/UX checks is still beyond me after all these years, it made that website horrible to browse.
It is a common tactic to create a new controversy to take attention away from a much more important topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
The whole Sydney Sweeney Jeans Advert "controversy" felt like it was AstroTurf-ed.
Less than a few weeks ago. Trump was getting a huge amount of pressure about the lack of transparency with the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. All of that seems to have been forgotten now (or that is at least is my impression).
It's generally a positive experience for me. It's not the network but what people follow there.
The media activist classes were absolutely genuinely offended by it; here are two mainstream pieces from July 28th, five days after the ad campaign launched:
The Washington Post discussing how the ad's tagline reminded them of "the DHS Instagram account, which posted a subtly racist painting a few weeks ago and an explicitly racist painting last week":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/07/28/sydney-sween...
An MSNBC opinion piece, by an MSNBC producer: "Sydney Sweeney's ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness":
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/sydney-sweeney-a...
"The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant."
I find it so odd when billion dollar corporations publish pieces like that... like, can't you first look in the mirror? this weird alliance between economic liberalism and that neo marxist intersectionality is so... hypocritical...
Most of the interesting people in my circles have left and the ones that stayed are so disconnected that there is no real community any more.
The end this on a higher note. Would you be willing to share some people to follow that make being on X worthwhile for you.
I finally see on my timeline art and music I like. Not to mention the interesting technology-related discussions.
It’s not all sunshine but things are clearly better with a wider range of opinions being present on my timeline and more variety in content. I just wish I could better filter foreign (esp. USA & UK) political content out of my feed.
Gives me some hope for Bluesky, etc. I don't think you need to be Twitter scale or have global network effects to work. Your community just has to choose a particular platform and show a preference for it. You get miniature network effects once your community adopts it.
So if your favorite community doesn't like a particular platform, I don't think they're stuck there, just because it's the one with global scale. They just have to organize an exit.
If there were a store that secretly sold Nazi propoganda out the back if you gave the owner a special handshake, you'd innocently have no way of knowing and you'd keep shopping at that store. I don't think anyone could hold it over your head that you were shopping at a Nazi store if it were being ran with such discretion.
But if there were a store where the owner occasionally made a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge whoopsy-doodly where he "accidentally" left such stuff out at the checkout counter, just to see if you'd be interested... I'm sorry, there's no way I'd ever go back to that store, no matter how great it's other stuff was. It could be the only place that sold my favorite beer or whatever and it wouldn't matter. Some things are inexcusable.
Just thousands of people posting whatever nonsense they can to get their $5 in adshare revenue.
The way they do this - topics, language - is less bothersome to me than the underlying economy of it.
Mastodon and Bluesky are intrinsically more valuable, not necessarily because of the quality of the content itself, but because it's actually possible for people to read and search said content.
If you follow tech people and engage with those, you get more of them.
I follow DHH, PG, etc and gaming stuff, I get great content.
I also pay premium to not get ads and get Grok for free which is a nice bonus.
But I'm sure there are still some bubbles of decent content. It was definitely no longer worth being on there for me though.
Similarly for Twitter. It was an independent company run by people who had, as far as I heard, fine intentions. Like making money and being a good platform can go together, though iirc they weren't great at the former. Then Elon came along and tore down the ethics standards. Idk, I just don't need to be part of that when people have been developing perfectly good alternatives in the meantime. It took a few years but by now I'm not actually sure who's still on Twitter but not (at least also) on Mastodon that I'd like to talk to, but I'm sure there'll be some people if I look for them. I just don't know that it's worth it
I also don't like that it's now a closed website; not really part of the web, idk why they bother having URLs still if you can't view them without signing up first. Not really a great medium for posting/announcing things anymore either
Of course, if you're happy to stay put with your friends, I'm sure you'll be just fine as well without needing to experience too much of what goes on outside of that community. You could use WeChat or anything else for that purpose as well
The only thing I keep recommending to people is to always have at least 2 options: WhatsApp and another messenger. GitHub and some git mirror. Twitter and another microblogger. Then people can choose, communities can move gradually without disruption, you're harder to deplatform, service disruptions aren't as big a deal, and the platforms have to actually compete to be one's choice of where you go first to post and read things
Not BlueSky specific, but I am getting ready to nuke my accounts on social media and other websites as soon as they start requiring said verifications.
I truly don't what to expect from this trend.
It's possible to do all of this without permission, it's just hard...
This is the way, folks.
maybe they mean a captcha like "do the taxes for this guy"
e.g. this December a ban for social media for anyone <16y takes effect in Australia. They also removed the power from parents to consent that younger children are allowed to use social media. They require "reasonable" steps to check the age, and nearly did require id checks. Even through they in the end didn't require it but a simple captcha or similar clearly won't be enough.
> If your account is more than ten years old, we will assume you are currently over 18.
Anecdotal but I lived in Krakow, Poland for some months years ago, back then, for some goddamned reason, the vast majority of the room rentals for foreigners were advertised and managed through Facebook. I didn't have a Facebook account and it was required to verify my ID to make one.
I spent more than a goddamned month living in hostels before biting the bullet and I still dislike that I ended up making one. The day any of these services require an ID is the day I drop it, I don't consider this a preference, I consider this ethics. It's not about me liking it or not, I honestly believe that anyone going through with that is making a worse world.
(there are several feeds named "For You"; IIUC this started a couple weeks ago and is based on "likes by people you follow"
The For You one uses only your likes: it finds people who liked the same posts as you, and shows you what else they've liked recently.
The show less button also mostly works now, which was an overnight change out of nowhere a few weeks back.
Instead the only process is to email an address that no one gets any response from for months on end. (or I guess consider taking bluesky to court, by what this seems to say. Kinda very unreasonable)
If yes, it is not obvious to me.
For instance, intentional misgendering lies within the intersection of right-wing behaviour and trolling. Banning it is often (intentionally) construed as banning right-wing behaviour, when it's actually banning trolling.