Bluesky and Decentralized Social Media Explained

Bluesky is a social app that looks and feels a lot like the old Twitter, built on top of an open system called the AT Protocol. The app is run by Bluesky Social, a public benefit corporation, but the protocol is designed so that your account, the feeds you read and the moderation you rely on don't all have to come from that one company.

If that sounds abstract, the practical upshot is simpler: you can take your account and followers to another host, you can choose your own algorithm, and you can add moderation services on top of Bluesky's own.

Where Bluesky came from

Bluesky began in December 2019 as a research project funded by Twitter and announced by Jack Dorsey, then Twitter's CEO, to design an open standard for social media. It became an independent company in 2021, launched its app as an invite-only beta in February 2023 and opened to everyone in February 2024. Signups jumped in waves, mostly when people left X.

Bluesky has not shown ads. Its leadership has said it doesn't plan to build the business on them, and it makes money in other ways, such as custom domain handles, with subscriptions discussed as a future option.

The moving parts

You don't need to know any of this to use Bluesky, but it explains what's different.

Your posts, likes and follows live in a personal data server, or PDS. Most people use one run by Bluesky, but anyone can run their own, and some other companies host them too.

A relay collects updates from all those servers into one stream. An app view turns that stream into the timelines, threads and profiles you see in the app.

Your identity is a permanent ID that isn't tied to any server, plus a readable handle. A handle can be a Bluesky subdomain (name.bsky.social) or a domain you own (name.com). Since the ID doesn't change, you can move your account to another PDS and your followers come with you.

Custom feeds

On X or Instagram, one company's algorithm decides your main timeline. On Bluesky, you get a chronological Following feed and a default Discover feed, and you can add feeds built by anyone. There are feeds for science, for a single city, for posts from people you follow who rarely post, for art without reposts, and thousands more.

Feeds are pinned like tabs. If one shows you too much of something, unpin it. This is the single biggest day-to-day difference, and it gives you some control over what keeps you scrolling.

Moderation you can stack

Bluesky runs its own moderation, which removes illegal content and enforces its community guidelines. On top of that, anyone can run a labeler, a service that tags posts or accounts (for example, flagging spoilers, AI-generated images or known harassment accounts). You subscribe to labelers and decide, per label, whether to hide, warn or ignore.

You can also subscribe to shared block lists and mute lists made by other users. Be careful with those: if a list is badly maintained, you may block people who did nothing wrong.

What is public on Bluesky

This is where Bluesky differs most from people's expectations, and where privacy-minded users should pay attention.

On Bluesky, nearly everything is public, by design. Your posts, replies, likes, reposts, follows and blocks are records in your data repository, and anyone can read the public stream. That includes researchers, search engines, archive services and companies collecting data for AI training. Bluesky has proposed ways for users to signal whether they consent to things like AI training, but those signals rely on the people collecting data choosing to respect them.

There are no private accounts. A setting asks apps not to show your profile to logged-out visitors, but it's a request, and other apps aren't forced to honor it.

Deleting a post removes it from your repository and from Bluesky's services, but copies made by others before you deleted it may survive.

Direct messages, called chats, aren't part of the public stream. They are stored on Bluesky's servers and aren't end-to-end encrypted, and Bluesky has said its moderation team can access them in limited cases, such as investigating abuse. You can choose whether anyone, only people you follow, or no one can start a chat with you. A third-party app called Germ offers end-to-end encrypted messaging between AT Protocol accounts. For anything sensitive, use an encrypted messenger; see safer DMs and group chats.

Bluesky compared with Mastodon

Both are better than the big platforms on advertising and algorithmic control. Mastodon spreads power across many operators, which means your server admin matters a lot. Bluesky keeps a smoother single-app experience and pushes the decentralization into the protocol, which today still leans heavily on one company. Our fediverse explainer covers Mastodon in more depth.

Settings worth changing on day one

Turn on two-factor authentication under privacy and security settings. Bluesky sends codes by email, so make sure that email account is well protected. Decide who can message you. Review the logged-out visibility switch. Delete any app passwords you no longer use. And think about whether you want to like posts publicly, since every like is visible.

The privacy settings checker has a Bluesky checklist you can tick through.

FAQ