#atprotocol — Public Fediverse posts

Bluesky日本カントリーマネージャーの高野直子さんが、3月に開かれたAT Protocolカンファレンスのレポートを書いてる。

「非公開データ：次の大きな課題」の項では、アクセス制御を備えた非公開データをAT Protocol内で扱えるようにする取り組みが紹介されてる。Blueskyのほか、Blacksky、Northsky、Habitatなど複数の独立チームが並行して設計を進めており、2026年夏にかけて実装と実験が進む見込みとのこと。

非公開データの"仕様が固まれば、DM、グループ、非公開コミュニティなどの機能がプロトコルレベルで実装可能になり、ATプロトコル上のアプリケーション開発の幅がより大きく広がることになるでしょう"とも。鍵垢(非公開アカウント)にも関わる話だと思うので、気になる人は読んでおくと良いかも。

ATmosphereConf 2026レポート: Blueskyの先にある、ATプロトコルエコシステムの現在地点 | gihyo.jp
https://gihyo.jp/article/2026/05/ATmosphereConf2026

#Bluesky #ATProtocol #SNS #Fedibird

#Decentralization #Decentralized #Web3 #Fediverse #Mastodon #Nostr #ATProtocol #Bluesky #ActivityPub #MeshNetworks #Yggdrasil #CJDNS #Hyperboria #DistributedSystems #OpenSource #SelfHosting #DigitalFreedom #Privacy #Cybersecurity #IPFS #Filecoin #Arweave #DistributedComputing #Bittensor #AkashNetwork #GolemNetwork #P2P #AlternativeInternet #FutureTech #FreeSoftware

#Decentralization #Decentralized #Web3 #Fediverse #Mastodon #Nostr #ATProtocol #Bluesky #ActivityPub #MeshNetworks #Yggdrasil #CJDNS #Hyperboria #DistributedSystems #OpenSource #SelfHosting #DigitalFreedom #Privacy #Cybersecurity #IPFS #Filecoin #Arweave #DistributedComputing #Bittensor #AkashNetwork #GolemNetwork #P2P #AlternativeInternet #FutureTech #FreeSoftware

Anyone interested in an #ATProto meetup in Kraków? https://atmo.rsvp/p/atproto.krakow.pl/e/3ml2dwyhj4cxk

#bluesky #atprotocol

Jetzt online: 🙌

Der #2MR-Plattform-Gipfel 🌄 mit @mellifluousbox von @Mastodon und @sebastian.eurosky.social von #Eurosky:

»Wie können #Fediverse und #Eurosky voneinander profitieren und offene Netze stärken?«

Jetzt anschauen, via #PeerTube:
👉 https://watch.2mr.social/w/p89keAMK5zcCTuTb9AvqUS

#SocialMedia #democracy #atproto #atprotocol #atmosphere #activitypub #mastodon #bluesky #blacksky #fedidev

The Open Social Web Needs Section 230 To Survive

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/04/the-open-social-web-needs-section-230-to-survive/

So #Vine is coming back, this time as #DiVine!
Does anyone know anyone who can get me an invite code? I want in!
The App is coming back with no #AI allowed, and will allow people to own their own content.

For the geeks: it's built on the #OpenSocial protocol #Nostr, and apparently they're experimenting with integrating the #ATProtocol, future integration with #ActivityPub, the protocol behind #Mastodon and #Flipboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUGnNIh60-0

So #Vine is coming back, this time as #DiVine!
Does anyone know anyone who can get me an invite code? I want in!
The App is coming back with no #AI allowed, and will allow people to own their own content.

For the geeks: it's built on the #OpenSocial protocol #Nostr, and apparently they're experimenting with integrating the #ATProtocol, future integration with #ActivityPub, the protocol behind #Mastodon and #Flipboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUGnNIh60-0

FediForum Number 7 Is Happening And It Makes Me Happy

The 7th FediForum is happening right now (yesterday, today, and tomorrow). There are two a year and I love going to them.

You can follow along using the hashtag #FediForum.

Most of the talks are a bit above my pay-grade, but I always learn something or get to try a new open source/open web technology.

I also get to see many of my buddies on the open social web (AT Proto/Bluesky and ActivityPub) over video from across the web and engage with them all in real time.

The discussions are top notch and there is even a sense of a hallway chat area in the online software Johannes and Anca (the organizers) use.

They also use collaborative note taking, so even though the video/recordings are non-existent, there are great notes collaboratively made and later posted on the FediForum.org site after the event.

If you get a chance to make a FediForum, you really should attend. The tickets are affordable and the community is so nice!

For the 2nd session time, I decided to stick with the presentation by @[email protected] of @[email protected] on #ATProtocol Within just 45 minutes, I had opportunity to have a technical overview of AT Protocol and opportunity to ask about the huge privacy issue (they're working on it!)

Daniel Holmgren, head of protocol at Bluesky, will give a talk at FediForum on Tuesday, April 28, titled:

"Atproto: A Technical Introduction"

Have you ever wondered how #ATProtocol actually works? Come join us to find out, online! https://fediforum.org

/cc @[email protected]

Daniel Holmgren, head of protocol at Bluesky, will give a talk at FediForum on Tuesday, April 28, titled: "Atproto: A Technical Introduction" Have you ever wondered how #ATProtocol actually works? Come join us to find out, online! https://fediforum.org /cc @[email protected]

FediForum

I want to applaud @[email protected] and @[email protected] for appearing on stage together and expressing a desire to cooperate. As I've said for a long time, #Bluesky and #Mastodon, #ActivityPub and #ATProtocol should not be fighting each other...

I want to applaud @rose.bsky.team and @mellifluousbox for appearing on stage together and expressing a desire to cooperate. As I've said for a long time, #Bluesky and #Mastodon, #ActivityPub and #ATProtocol should not be fighting each other. The real opposition are the oligarch-controlled, enshittified, manipulating major commercial platforms. We have no chance of making a dent into their dominance if the revolution fights itself instead.

In my view, this demonstrates the real advantage of a #federated network. #Bluesky may be described as "decentralized" at the protocol level through the #ATProtocol, but in practice the service still relies heavily on the centralized infrastructure of a single company. A federated architecture such as @Mastodon’s is clearly the more resilient model when failures like this occur.

#Mastodon

"A self-hosted push notification gateway for AT Protocol apps. Receives registerPush calls from any PDS and delivers native push notifications (FCM/APNs/Expo) when social events occur."

https://github.com/DracoBlue/atproto-push-gateway

#Golang #ATProtocol

Creating login fields for photosky.at. I really want to use this logo in the field. But then, everyone will start using their own version of the #ATProtocol / #Atmosphere logos if there are no branding guidelines. 👀

ATmosphereConf 2026: Great Energy, But We Need to See the Money

https://limeleaf.coop/blog/atmosphere-2026-great-energy-but-we-need-to-see-the-money/

#ATmosphereConf #ATmosphere #ATProtocol

Blueskyで読書ログを管理できる「Library Sky」を作りました！ 📚 Blueskyアカウントでログインして、本の感想を簡単に投稿・管理できます。 ✅ 読んだ本を自分のマイページで可視化 ✅ 専用フィードで他の人の感想もチェック ✅ 投稿はBlueskyのタイムラインにもシェア ぜひ触ってみてください！ 🔗 library-sky.com 専用フィードはこちら： bsky.app/profile/did:... 💻 GitHub: github.com/nove-b/libra... #Bluesky #読書 #ATProtocol #OSS

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2atly2y5kfyjcj5zap6pv4wd/feed/LibrarySkyFeed

I'm super skeptical about the #atprotocol for a few reasons. The biggest is the network architecture putting giant "relay" servers in the center. The sell is that servers can be super light and just have to talk to a relay server. But this effectively centralizes everything onto the relays. There is only one so far, BlueSky, and the infrastructure need is massive. I don't see anyone else making one any time soon so BlueSky still has defacto control over the entire network.

Kewl app or confusing bag of stuff?

Bluesky announced "Attie" - an AI assistant that enables users to create custom feeds, design custom algorithms, and at some future point vibe-code apps. Currently a private Beta, no indication about monetization yet.

Attie leverages Anthropic’s Claude under the hood to create an agentic social app built on Bluesky’s underlying AT protocol. “It’s a new product — it’s not a part of the Bluesky app,” https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/bluesky-leans-into-ai-with-attie-an-app-for-building-custom-feeds/ #BlueSky #Attie #BetaCode #SocialMedia #AI #Claude #Anthropic #ATProtocol #AIAssistant #CustomFeeds #VibeCode

Actually, here, let's f-----g go! — github.com/bluesky-soci... We can just build things. #atmosphereconf #atprotocol #atproto #customfeeds

Implement generic feeds lexico...

Bluesky says AI should serve people but right-leaning users are not welcome

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://nerds.xyz/2026/03/bluesky-ai-people-not-platforms-opinion/

Ah yes, because what the world desperately needed was yet another chat app, but this time sprinkled with ✨ownership✨ and a hint of #open-source sanctimony. 🤦‍♂️ Meanwhile, AT Protocol is just waiting for its invitation to the party that never started. 🥳🔧
https://colibri.social/ #chatapp #ownership #ATProtocol #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated

🦫 alert!

We published the second episode of "Teach the Web new Tricks", featuring
native support for ATProto ! Learn more how we improve user agency and privacy at https://webbeef.org/atproto.html :

- Native at:// protocol support.
- Log in your PDS and forget OAuth !
- Authorize 3rd parties

Since we're on Mastodon, please help us figure out what we can do to add native ActivityPub support!

#atproto #ATProtocol #useragent #activitypub

Getting excited for #ATmosphere2026 this week and wanted to try building a working app on #atprotocol. It's a simple Markdown editor that stores data in PDS records (more at diffdown.com). IANASWE, so I used LLMs to make it.

A Markdown Editor on AT Protoc...

Haven’t even started testing the WordPress ActivityPub plugin yet… and an AT Protocol one (Bluesky + standard site) is already popping up. We’re living in an interesting moment! 😯

Curious if both can coexist on the same WordPress site 👀 https://github.com/Automattic/wordpress-atmosphere

#activitypub #fediverse #openweb #atprotocol #wordpress

As a media sponsor, we’ve got a limited-run discount: use our link for $50 off a standard ticket! ti.to/atmosphereco... Building a safer open social web is exactly why we’re here. @[email protected] #ATProtocol #ATmosphereConf #OpenSocialWeb

ATmosphereConf 2026

🎩 The glamorous world of Perl 5, now with added AT Protocol magic! 🌟 Because who doesn’t want to experience the thrill of outdated tech wrapped in buzzwords? 🙄 Enjoy your “cutting-edge” adventure in obscurity, where Perl enthusiasts can congregate in their very own echo chamber of irrelevance. 🚀
https://tangled.org/alice.mosphere.at/perlsky #Perl5 #ATProtocol #techbuzz #nostalgia #echochamber #outdatedtech #HackerNews #ngated

Perlsky Is a Perl 5 Implementation of an at Protocol Personal Data Server

https://tangled.org/alice.mosphere.at/perlsky

#HackerNews #Perlsky #Perl5 #PersonalDataServer #atProtocol #HackerNews

> #Eurosky and @igalia announce partnership to develop key infrastructure for the open social web, based on the #ATProtocol.

16 March 2026: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/686bbabd538e1b573f7d8738/t/69b83f95e0708805025f91ba/1773682582169/Eurosky+%2B+Igalia+partnership+announcement.pdf

#SocialMedia #ATmosphere #OpenSource #DiDay #OpenWeb #DigitalSovereignty #DigitaleSouveranitat

TechCrunch covered our launch today. Really grateful for the visibility. techcrunch.com/2026/03/09/p... If you're curious about what we're building or want to try it out: periwinkle.social #ATProtocol #PDS

Periwinkle is making self-host...

🚀 Excited to officially launch periwinkle.social to help folks truly own your social identity on @[email protected] and the growing universe of @[email protected] applications. We manage your Personal Data Server and and handle the hard parts so you don't have to. #ATProtocol #PDS

Periwinkle - Get Started

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thisismissem/116087571530458888

This is such an interesting thread as it exposes the friction between ATProtocol/ActivityPub. Clearly, there are some cultural issues.

It's important to understand and I say this often to our own desktop projects - we are always stronger together than apart.

We are not competitors. We are allies.

Understandably we might compete on investment and volunteers but those sort themselves.

#gnome #kde #linuxapps #activitypub #atprotocol

@cloudskater wrote:

Some instances are run by bad people. Hell, a few projects like Lemmy and Matrix are DEVELOPED by assholes, but the FLOSS and federated nature of these platforms allows us to bypass/fork them and create healthy spaces outside their reach.

Nope, that is actually what is killing the fediverse. I just explained here:

The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.

Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.

That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.

https://neon-blue-demon-wyrm.x10.network/archives/16932

FYI, I’m not doing culture wars or political debates. I’m just saying this idea of “forking away” from them is literally breaking the fediverse’s distributed network and creating all kinds of issues with semantic interoperability. Yes, federation is still happening at the delivery level, but the semantic issues are out of fucking control. You are a federation by the very sheer skin of your teeth.

The reason why developers are leaving the fediverse is because you folks don’t take criticism. You respond to criticism with — I’m being so serious right now — political manifestos and harassing developers. ActivityPub developers and authors oversold you folks on the capabilities of ActivityStreams. They flat-out lied to y’all.

↬bark.lgbt/@cloudskater/116080965694723006

ActivityPub Server’s Custom Reply‑Control Extensions Undermine Federation

It seems like Activitbypub developers are extending ActivityPub with optional metadata to fix a lot of its issues, but that is still problematic. Trying to add moderation tools and user control to threads seems to be the ongoing battle. I am fascinated by dumpster fires, so I’ve started looking at the ActivityPub protocol in detail. I tend to become fascinated with things that are going down in flames.

As a brief recap of the problem:

So, one of the very popular features on Bluesky—also popular on Twitter—is the ability to select who can reply to a post. A major issue in the Fediverse is the inability to decide who can reply, and once you block someone, their harassing reply is still there. I honestly thought it was simply a case of them choosing not to add or address it for cultural reasons. What is clear from that thread is that they were always aware that the ActivityPub protocol and most Fediverse implementations don’t provide a universal way to control reply visibility or enforce blocks across instances.

An ActivityPub server that has reply control is GoToSocial. ActivityPub, as defined by the W3C specification, standardizes how servers federate activities. It defines actors, inboxes, outboxes, and activity types (Create, Follow, Like, Announce, etc.) expressed using ActivityStreams 2.0. It also specifies delivery mechanics (including how a Create activity reaches another server’s inbox) and how collections behave.

The specification does not include interaction policy semantics such as “only followers may reply” or “replies require manual approval.” There is no field in the normative vocabulary requiring conforming servers to enforce reply permissions. That category of rule is outside the protocol’s defined contract.

GoToSocial implements reply controls through what it calls interaction policies. These appear as additional properties on ActivityStreams objects using a custom JSON-LD namespace controlled by the GoToSocial project.

JSON-LD permits additional namespaced terms. This means the document remains structurally valid ActivityStreams and federates normally. The meaning of those custom fields, however, comes from GoToSocial’s own documentation and implementation. Other servers can ignore them without violating ActivityPub because they are not part of the interoperable core vocabulary.

Enforcement occurs locally. When a remote server sends a reply—a Create activity whose object references another via inReplyTo—ActivityPub governs delivery, not acceptance criteria. Whether the receiving server checks a reply policy, rejects the activity, queues it, or displays it is determined in the server’s inbox-processing code. The decision to accept, display, or require approval happens after successful protocol-level delivery. This behavior belongs to the application layer.

These are server-side features layered on top of ActivityPub’s transport and data model that are not actually part of ActivityPub. The protocol ensures standardized delivery of activities; however, the server implementation defines additional constraints and user-facing behavior. Two GoToSocial instances may both recognize and act on the same extension fields. However, a different implementation, such as Mastodon, has no obligation under the specification to interpret or enforce GoToSocial’s interactionPolicy properties. These fields function as extension metadata rather than protocol requirements.

The semantics of GoToSocial are not part of the specification’s defined vocabulary and processing rules for ActivityPub. They no longer operate purely at the protocol layer; it has become an application-layer contract implemented by specific servers.

Let’s use the AT Protocol as an example. Bluesky’s direct messages (DMs) are not currently part of the AT Protocol (ATProto). The AT Protocol has nothing that specifies anything for DMs, so DMs are not part of the AT Protocol. The AT Protocol was designed to handle public social interactions, but it does not define private or encrypted messaging. Bluesky implemented DMs at the application level, outside of the core protocol. DMs are centralized and stored on Bluesky’s servers. What is happening with servers like GoToSocial is sort of like that. The difference is that the AT Protocol was designed for different app views; ActivityPub was not.

The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.

Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.

That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

I was just randomly reading the #BitChat whitepaper and I just realized it says BitchAT.. I assume that's intentional...

#ATprotocol #Chat #Messaging

Hmm, tap dramatically slowed down discovering new repositories once it hit about 14.7m. Anyone have tuning tips? #ATProtocol #TAP

The Limeleaf Podcast Episode 8: 2025 in Review, and Our Plans for 2026

https://limeleaf.coop/podcast/episode-08/

#applycoop #BlueskyDirectory #ATProtocol #CoopHosting #TechUnion

https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ now measures several more ways that our online lives are (or aren't) decentralized!

In addition to decentralized social networks (the #fediverse and #atprotocol / #bluesky ) it now has data on #web serving, #git forges, #dns servers, and #CAs . The new datasets come from a peer-reviewed scientific study[*] and its measurement methodology, which validates HHI as a useful way to measure centralization of services online.

One of the interesting findings is that the level of decentralization of the Fediverse is pretty close to the level of decentralization of the Web itself - both have some pretty large players, but there is a long tail of smaller instances and web hosts that keep the ecosystems similarly competitive. Of course, this also means that both still have quite a bit of room to decentralize more.

Similarly, the level of centralization of the git forge ecosystem and the Atmosphere (atproto) are comparable, with both heavily dominated by their largest players (github and Bluesky). The Atmosphere is moving towards greater decentralization, a trend that's been picking up steam in the last few months.

I have leads on a few more datasets, so stay tuned!

[*] "Formalizing Dependence of Web Infrastructure," Habib et al., SIGCOMM '25, https://cs.stanford.edu/~gakiwate/papers/sigcomm25-centralization.pdf

E já somos 38 milhões por aqui no @bsky.app! #BlueSky #RipTwitter #ATProtocol

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:o47m2tapdigvkrb6cc46awi6/post/3lvomuoyb622a

Come alcuni sapranno, non me n’è mai fregato granché di #Bluesky, o del suo #ATProtocol… fino a prima di oggi. Perché si, con anche tutta la tecnologia open-source alla base osservabile e utilizzabile da chiunque, sarebbe stato l’ennesimo esercizio di costruzione di una rete centralizzata, che nell’anno del signore 2024 proprio no, se anche non esistesse ActivityPub, preferirei comunque i blog #selfhosted. 🗾️

Tuttavia, #notizia di ieri, è partito un #esperimento di federazione per chiunque voglia provare a self-hostare il #software necessario. Tutto un po’ strano, è una #federazione in qualche modo condizionata, che dipende dal #server centrale e ha dei limiti artificiali, ma è un inizio verso qualcosa di #interessante. Almeno, avendo letto anche l’articolo di blog non-tecnico, questa è la mia impressione, e per la potenzialità di espandere il mio regno del terrore su nuove sponde quasi quasi ci provo. 😈️

Perché — premettendo il fatto che non ho dati oggettivi per dire questa cosa (dovrei raccoglierne e analizzarli, ma questo non è un campo dove sono esperta, quindi mi trovo in difficoltà) — la mia esperienza sul #Fediverso mi suggerisce che aprire la propria #istanza personale (come questo stesso sito, ma penso anche a quando avevo il mio Misskey) significa cadere nella totale irrilevanza, in confronto allo stabilirsi in quelle bene o male grosse. Con #ATProto il focus vuole essere sempre e comunque la connessione ad una sola #comunità globale, quindi la #decentralizzazione per singole persone può non costituire alcun aspetto negativo per la propria discoverability, le proprie note dovrebbero poter essere cagate da qualcuno e non perse nel fiume di #Internet… 😇️

https://octospacc.altervista.org/2024/02/23/cieloblu-decentralizzato/

#ATProto #ATProtocol #Bluesky #decentralizzazione #esperimento #federazione #Fediverso #interessante #Internet #istanza #notizia #selfhosted #server #software

So, this is what's happening to me: #AutisticBurnout

It describes it as:
“Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized by pervasive, long-term (typically 3+ months) exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus.” ~Raymaker et al, 2020

Typically the Autistic person in question will still have multiple demands in their life that require cognitive resources, despite having little to no resources left to give. Life goes on, as they say.

Read the rest here: https://emergentdivergence.com/2023/05/12/creating-autistic-suffering-what-is-atypical-burnout/

---

Hat tip to: @emergentdivergence.bsky.social from the #ATprotocol network.

What do you think? Anyone else?

@[email protected]

#ActuallyAutistic #ActuallyAutistics #Autistic #Autistics #OpenlyAutistic #Autism #AutismSpectrum

@actuallyautistic @actuallyautistics @autistics