🦋 Bluesky Social

With over 3 million users and plans to open up more broadly in the months ahead, Bluesky is still establishing itself as an alternative to Twitter/X. However, that hasn’t stopped the developer community from embracing the project and building tools to meet the needs of those fleeing the now Elon Musk–owned social network, formerly known as Twitter. One such project is deck.blue, a Bluesky-flavored version of Twitter’s beloved (though often ignored) TweetDeck — the latter of which became a paid service last year and has been rebranded as X Pro.

With deck.blue, Bluesky users can view posts on the social network in the column-based format popularized by TweetDeck, including things like their home timeline, notifications, likes, lists, or even custom feeds. They can also take advantage of features like support for multiple accounts and scheduling of posts.

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Since its launch, deck.blue has been quick to tack on new features as soon as (or even before) Bluesky makes them available to the wider community. That was the case with the launch of hashtags, support for lists, and the launch of the app’s scheduling feature, for example. Notably, deck.blue was among the first third-party apps to add support for hashtags, which led to a post about the feature going viral on Bluesky with 1,500 likes and hundreds of reposts. (Bluesky’s definition of viral is much smaller due to its limited audience, of course.)

While there are other apps that offer scheduling for Bluesky, Threads, X and other social networks, like fedica and Postpone, deck.blue is aiming more at a power user audience, not social media managers who need the analytics and reporting competitors offer. To date, that’s attracted the project 15,000 registered users, around 1,000 of which are active daily.

I believe this article does a great job outlining the challenges Bluesky must overcome before we can call it “decentralized.”

Phase one is to create a PDS that securely hosts data in Canada, away from political persecution of 2SLGBTQIA+.

Phase two and beyond will include our own AppView and improved moderation tools.

These networks will exist side by side with bluesky and allow interaction per usual. Source

I’ve been messing around with Bluesky for a while, and one thing I really missed was a proper way to browse discussions in a structured, Reddit-like way specially myself being daily reddit user. So, I ended up building a Reddit-like client for Bluesky that scratches that itch: Threadsky.app

It pulls in trending topics, lets you explore conversations with a threaded view (so no more getting lost in replies), and even allows users to create channels with customizations, basically, like subreddits but on Bluesky.

That said, this is still pretty barebones, and there’s a lot to improve. I really need feedback from actual users to shape where this goes next. Some planned features include markdown support, longer posts, and better mod tools for communities.

For privacy-conscious folks: Only details about channel customizations are stored on our servers. Everything else remains securely stored on your own PDS (Personal Data Server), just like the rest of Bluesky.

Also, I’m planning to open-source the project once I’ve polished things up a bit more.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26780656

This post takes a look at ATProto from a different angle, and explores the value of some possibly less-noticed pieces of it.

The "Login with Google" button has been so useful and yet so horrible for the freedom of the web. Why does google get to be the gatekeeper to all of our web logins?

We need an alternative, but it also needs to be easy, and by making handles domains, and making it so that normal people can use and understand it, they have made it possible for an actually decentralized social login button.

Linking Identity to your Personal Data Store and using Domains as Handles is a crucialcombination that is really starting to unlock web freedom.

A lot of what I'm trying to get at with this post is that there is more than one way to leverage ATProto, and that there are some pretty major things it has started to do right that we really need right now.

We're used to the idea that there's more than one way to make a web app, and the same is true even if you are building it on ATProto. It hasn't set a lot in stone, it's just given us some bricks that we can all share.

The "AppView" is a component of the ATProto architecture that you are given nearly free rein on. It can be any kind of thing you want, and I think there's all kinds of unexplored possibilities there.

You might even be able to make an AppView with a meaningful ActivityPub integration, or possibly borrow ideas about inboxes and outboxes as an alternative to relays.

After this article was published, Bluesky restored Kabas’ post and told 404 Media the following: “This was a case of our moderators applying the policy for non-consensual Al content strictly. After re-evaluating the newsworthy context, the moderation team is reinstating those posts.”

I couldn’t find one. It’s only decentralized if people use other servers!

Bluesky has joined the Internet Watch Foundation in an effort to tackle the rising amount of child sexual abuse material that has accompanied the platform's growth.

Bluesky’s user numbers have risen dramatically from 13 million in November 2024, to 30 million in January 2025, in the wake of which there has been a “predictable uptick in harmful content,” an Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) press release reads.

The platform is also growing its “content moderation team and safety tooling,” the release continues. Bluesky has an open vacancy for a senior trust and safety lead.

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Members from across big tech platforms pay a fee to rely on IWF’s list of websites known for disseminating CSAM, and a hash list, which identifies known illegal CSAM material. Illegal content found by members feeds back into the IWF’s lists.

Meta, X, TikTok, and Telegram are all already members of the IWF.

Now Bluesky that has joined, it will be able to make use of IWF’s lists, including for non-photographic CSAM content.

Bluesky joining IWF is a “significant step forward” and the platform hopes to “keep its users safe from harmful content and ensuring a safer online environment,” Bluesky's Head of Trust and Safety, Aaron Rodericks, said.

I have a personal and business Bluesky account and the official app sucks for swapping between accounts. So I found a 3rd party app and signed into it with my personal account, and signed out of the official app. But I still am getting notifications from that account. I ended up signing out of my business account too and I still get notifications.

Any idea how to fix it? I will likely end up uninstalling and reinstalling. But was hoping there is a simpler way.

I've previously used twittervideodownloader.com to get mp4 links which can then be embedded anywhere, such as here on Lemmy.

Example:

Tweet: https://x.com/MotoSygnaly/status/1892101672266027353

MP4 link: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1892089818550562816/pu/vid/avc1/320x568/PgMwfu7rYkWi85ss.mp4

Embedded video

Does an equivalent tool exist for Bluesky?