Open Source Rival to Twitter, Bluesky, is Open for All Now

Over the last few years, we have seen an increase in people switching to decentralized alternatives to mainstream social media, with Twitter (now known as X) being the most affected thanks to the uncertainty factor plaguing the platform.

As a result, we saw the launch of a decentralized alternative to Twitter called Bluesky. But, when it launched, it was an invite-only affair, which still managed to pull in about 3 million users.

With a recent announcement that has since changed, Bluesky has been made available to everyone without the need for an invitation.

Bluesky: What to Expect?

For those unfamiliar, Bluesky is a social network backed by the former CEO of Twitter (now known as X), Jack Dorsey.

At a glance, it gives a familiar experience to Twitter.

If you did not know, Bluesky's objective is to provide you with access to an open network, where you have the freedom, and control at the same time.

The team behind it is led by Jay Graber with the main goal of providing a social media app not governed by a single entity, but built by many on an open-source base called The AT Protocol.

Within just a day of opening access to everyone, Bluesky reported welcoming over 1 million new users:

Taking their total user count to over 4 million users with an average of 8.5 new accounts per second, as per the official stats shared; there were over 2 million new posts too 😲

The Bluesky team is not sitting idle, they intend to introduce what they call as stackable moderation services to let moderators couple together multiple moderation services for better control over their communities.

They also plan to roll out “federation” in an experimental fashion to gauge any issues, with the developers already testing it out on their servers internally. Of course, you can set up your servers as well. However, the instructions to join the production network with your server should be available soon.

I suggest you to explore the platform to see if it fits your requirements. Even though it is now open for the public, it may not offer all kinds of features just yet.

You can also check out the official announcement blog for more details regarding Bluesky.

Seeing as we are on the topic, why not give our official handle on Bluesky a follow when you sign up? 😉

We know it doesn't have any content right now, but stay tuned to it, we shall deliver some Open Source and Linux goodness through it soon, just like our other social media accounts! 😄

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It's FOSSAbhishek Prakash

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