Social network Bluesky, competitor to X, Threads, Mastodon and others, is opening its doors with today’s news that the network is now opening up federation, following its public launch earlier this month. The move will allow anyone to run their own server connected to Bluesky’s network, so they can host their own data, account and create their own rules. This decentralized social networking model is similar to what Mastodon already uses, but is supported on Bluesky by a different protocol, keeping the two networks separate for now.
The growing interest in federation stems from consumers’ demand for more control over their personal data — something that gained more attention after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X and shifted its focus to become an “app for everything’ with a focus on payments, creators, video streaming, artificial intelligence…and looser moderation. This prompted some former Twitter users to look for alternatives that were more viable, such as Mastodon and Bluesky.
Bluesky, in particular, gained interest as it began life as a Twitter-funded project under Jack Dorsey. It has since grown into its own company, raising funding like a typical startup.
After a somewhat long time in private beta, the company went public earlier this month and now has over 5 million registered users, according to an official tracker. With federation, the network could continue to grow as those interested in self-hosting could create their own server or instance to meet their own needs or those of a particular community. An instance can send and receive posts from other instances, such as the one Bluesky itself operates, but it can also block others if it wishes and set its own moderation guidelines.
This could be useful for those who hoped to make Bluesky a safer place to interact, unlike Twitter/X, but found themselves disappointed with Bluesky’s moderation decisions, which were at times controversial.
While this model is similar to Mastodon, Bluesky uses a newer social networking protocol, the AT Protocol, while Mastodon and many other networks currently use ActivityPub. Because the latter is a W3C– approved template, it is the one adopted by Instagram for X rival Threads.
There are some differences between Bluesky and Mastodon, as the company points out today in a announcement.
He notes that Bluesky users will be able to participate in the global conversation, rather than one dictated by the community they join, as aspects of how your experience differs from others are in your control thanks to other features, such as custom streams and synthetic moderation. The latter means that moderation is not connected to your server. While server operators can set rules about the content they host, communities can use blocklists and soon, independent moderation services, to introduce additional layers of moderation. This means that there is not as much pressure on server operators to block other servers (defederate) because of the content they host, as users will have their own tools to manage their moderation preferences.
Additionally, Bluesky aims to make account portability easier than on Mastodon, allowing users to switch servers without changing their username or losing followers or posts.
People interested in hosting their own service will need some technical know-how. To get started, you can view resources across all of Bluesky’s developer blogof PDS repository on his GitHub and at PDS administrators dispute. Initially, the federation will be open to those interested in running smaller servers.
“There are some guardrails in place to make sure we can keep the network running smoothly for everyone in the ecosystem,” Bluesky’s blog post notes. “After this initial phase, we’ll open up the federation to people who want to run larger servers with lots of users,” he says.
Once alternatives are determined, Bluesky will recommend its service as the default to new users, but they will be able to switch to another at any time without losing their data.
