Bluesky Opens Up

Bluesky opens to the public today. Gift link to Washington Post article.

I’ve been wondering why upgrades have been minimal for a while. This is what the team has been working toward.

Bluesky has some things Twitter doesn’t – mainly custom feeds – and doesn’t have some other things, like direct messages and native video.

The structure is different from Twitter, and the team puts a lot of faith in an open network.

Along with today’s public launch of Bluesky, the company said it will roll out in the coming weeks a step toward its broader vision, inviting some outside developers to host servers that plug in to the main Bluesky network. It also announced a new feature that will let users and organizations begin todevelop their own content moderation services, which other users can then subscribe to. For instance, a fact-checking organization could apply “false” or “misleading” labels to certain posts, which would then be seen by users who opt in to seeing them.

I have less faith in the goodness and generosity of folks making their own widgets to deal with Bluesky. Besides that, I have no interest in digging through the thousands of custom feeds already developed. I want to see what the people I follow post, as they post it. Keep it simple, as they say.

But others like algorithms in ways I never would have imagined. Some still can’t figure out why their feed on Twitter is full of Nazis. Whether they will be able to pick and choose among thousands of algorithms is an open question.

The conversation at Bluesky has been much better than Twitter, but the news is not as available, mainly owing to the lack of native video. My folks, once known as nuclear Twitter, have scattered to the four winds and aren’t anywhere in particular.

But if you haven’t scored an invite, you don’t need to any more. Go on over and sign up.