# Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239.pdf
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Bluesky-and-the-AT-Protocol-Usable-Decentralized-Social-Media?index=0x65c3e2c67e48b34412a9a338e397061b78ba4f4673d47c81d556ce21157b1c4d75adf350
Submitted by misha on 2024-02-07 UTC, 2 upvotes, 1 comment

## Summary

Bluesky is a social network built on the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media, and the paper by Martin Kleppmann, Paul Frazee, Jake Gold, Jay Graber, Daniel Holmgren, Devin Ivy, Jeromy Johnson, Bryan Newbold and Jaz Volpert describes its architecture. The network launched in private beta in February 2023 and had grown to over 10 million registered users by October 2024. The authors state that its design aims to enable decentralization through multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system, make it easy for users to switch providers, give users agency over the content they see, and keep the user experience simple. They also invite the research community to use Bluesky as a dataset and testing ground for social media moderation approaches.

## Article

Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media

Authors: Martin Kleppmann, Paul Frazee, Jake Gold, Jay Graber, Daniel Holmgren, Devin Ivy, Jeromy Johnson, Bryan Newbold, Jaz Volpert

Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 10 million registered users by October 2024. In this paper we introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: to enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; to make it easy for users to switch providers; to give users agency over the content they see; and to provide a simple user experience that does not burden users with complexity arising from the system's decentralized nature. The system's openness allows anybody to contribute to content moderation and community management, and we invite the research community to use Bluesky as a dataset and testing ground for new approaches in social media moderation.

## Comments

**misha**: Also discussion here: https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/bluesky-and-the-at-protocol-usable-decentralized-social-media/107