Jay 🦋
@jay.bsky.team
CEO of Bluesky, steward of AT Protocol. Let’s build a federated republic, starting with this server.
I like to think of a cybernetic forest. 🌱 🪴 🌳
We are big fans of bridgyfed, and the self-hosting you’re asking for on atproto already exists. You can easily run your own PDS, host your own data and identity, and it’s possible to run your own appview and relay too, though we know the docs could use some work. We plan to improve the DX.
We are big fans of bridgyfed, and are working towards increasing openness — but the self-hosting you’re asking for already exists. You can easily run your own PDS, host your own data and identity, and it’s possible to run your own appview and relay too, though we know the docs could use some work.
It’s been a constant juggling act to balance the challenges of building a usable app with building an open protocol, and our choices aren’t going to make everyone happy. But we’ve come a long way to get to where we are today, where I can chat with you on AP. I’m excited to see social media evolve.
We’ve been decentralizing our architecture step by step from the start, making hard tradeoffs and resisting pressure to do so.
bsky.app/profile/dhol...
feeling nostalgic after all the recent launches and wanted to share a quick visual history of the maturation of the atproto network
just a year ago, this entire network was contained on one server - the primordial PDS
(also plz excuse my horrible artistic skills 💅)
We built a protocol that addressed the concerns we had with ActivityPub, and now both ecosystems are free to converge and learn from each other. The fact that 3P devs are able to bridge them is great. Different protocols are not the adversaries here — the closed platform model is.
Aren’t you on ActivityPub right now? Your handle indicates you’re bridged through @ap.brid.gy. The fact that this is possible shows how protocols can converge.
The AP ecosystem was opposed to much of what we wanted to do, like global discovery and algorithmic feeds, esp back in 2020.
- Developing the code open source
- Working on making it not just possible, but easy and worthwhile for others to run parts of the network
- Being a PBC that has a mission as well as a profit-motive, and making sure whoever is on the board supports that mission
- Pursuing protocol standardization
The power to control what millions can see and say is a Ring of Power that everyone will fight for control over until that power is either finally dispersed, or consolidated beyond any hope of dispersal.
Yes. The goal is to give users the right to leave, so social media can evolve on governance. If Elon's purchase had happened after Twitter were fully on the AT Protocol, users could have migrated services with minimal disruption. But in that world, the purchase also probably wouldn't have happened.
I titled this slide in my presentation to Twitter "Self-disruptive Innovation" because yes, it was going to be challenging to convince a major social company to pursue a self-disruptive strategy. But with the right leadership, there was a chance it could have happened.
Bluesky has been independent from the start, but it took six months of negotiation in 2021 to set it up that way, and from the outside during that period it looked like the project was going to remain vaporware forever. Very glad we are alive today — it very easily could have turned out otherwise.
From today's Pragmatic Engineer, one bit of Bluesky history that I love and wish more people knew --
@jay.bsky.team pushed hard to make us an independent company and was incredibly prescient in doing so
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/bluesky-en...
If all went well, and we had been able to work our way through Twitter's bureaucracy, Twitter was going to transition to the AT Protocol. That's why we made sure to build something that didn't require understanding decentralization to use and could scale quickly. The pitch looked like this:
I can be very stubborn when I have high conviction about something, and I was fairly sure that: 1. Bluesky as a project had the potential to bring decentralized social mainstream, 2. It was going to die if it stayed within Twitter
Yeah, at that point most people had given up on Twitter ever doing anything and weren't excited about spending their time writing proposals, so I helped Matthew from Matrix and Christine write Matrix & ActivityPub proposals so we could lay all the options out on the table.
Yeah, at that point most people had given up on Twitter ever doing anything and weren't excited about spending their time writing proposals, so I helped Matthew from Matrix and Christine write Matrix & ActivityPub proposals so we could lay all the options out on the table.
Reply controls used to be up by the post button, but it wasn’t clear to people what it was, so we’ve made it more obvious now 👇
We also squeezed in some other features and fixes in this release:
Now you can set who can reply to your posts more easily!
Let’s goooo
By default, only people you follow can message you. You can change this setting to everyone or no one, or keep it to people you follow.
Read more about how to use DMs and our planned feature updates in this blog post!
Just shipped: Bluesky Direct Messages! - Bluesky
You can now send direct messages (DMs) to people on Bluesky! Say hi to a friend, colleague, or a crush.
bsky.socialThere is a bluesky book club which I don’t have time to participate in, but they’re voting on a mystery to read this month if you want to join the #bskybc
Alright #bskybc we are sneaking in a May Mystery, meet your brackets! Its a little on the rushed side and again outside my element so please let's do a better job at voting :)
Everyone who has gotten into features before they were officially released: congrats, welcome to the bluesky alpha testers program!
Paid a visit to the arboretum today. Saw some good moss, a lovely golden oak, and a squirrel contemplating eating a patch of mushrooms.
if posts were objects in your cloak, you’d also play the role of itinerant forager who returns with a new collection of strange specimens every day
Some cars had pulled over on the side of the highway to watch, so yeah probably.
Have discussed variations of this idea for a long time, but it breaks down around privacy implications. The preferences on what you like to see that you don’t make public can be sensitive info, and you need to consent to which 3p service you’re sharing it with.
Incredible. Left Seattle and drove up into the mountains. First picture was taken out of the moon roof of our Subaru while stuck in traffic on the highway.
Sure. The API will be available to other feeds. Personalized feeds may improve more relative to others after you give them feedback, but also unpersonalized non-topical feeds are really hard to make interesting.
It’s new, we’re just starting to try it out. But yes other Discover improvements also shipped yesterday, glad you’re noticing a difference!
Noticed any improvements to Discover? Try using “Show more” and “Show less” to give feedback on what you like.
📢 App Version 1.81 is rolling out now (1/3)
• Major performance improvements
• GIFs now support alt-text!
• The Discover feed is piloting a "Show more like this" and "Show less like this" tool in post menus
Putting on this song called The Fire (Tulen Synty) by a Finnish folk group if I see the northern lights tonight
youtu.be/Lm7oapcZh88?...
Tulen Synty
Provided to YouTube by Nordic NotesTulen Synty · Okra PlaygroundTurmio℗ Nordic NotesReleased on: 2016-07-29Composer: Essi MuikkuLyricist: TraditionalAuto-gen...
youtu.beThe Finnish word for the northern lights is “revontulet”, meaning “fire fox.” The legend is the arctic fox runs so fast across the mountaintops that its tail sweeps sparks and snowflakes up into the sky.
Mad jealous of all the folks with the northern lights above them tonight
No. We built an open system
bsky.app/profile/jay....
There’s a marketplace of algorithms. It’s open source — every line of code we write is public. Moderation is composable. Anyone can run any part of the system. And yet it looks and feels like it could be Twitter because we built a protocol Twitter could run on without drastic changes.