I'm generally positive about BlueSky and pleased for their current successes.
But I fell like the really hard part is yet to come, and being open might make that part harder.
All online communities go through the same phases (or die along the way).
In the beginning it's populated by enthusiasts, tech adopters, people with good intentions. The problems are mostly technical and infrastructure.
Then it grows rapidly with mostly the same parameters.
Then it gets big enough so the trolls, spammers, bots, misogynist, racists, marketers, advertisers et al arrive. At this point the problems become social - moderation etc.
Failure to manage this stage well leads to, well, Twitter.
And it's by far the hardest part of the whole process. I hope BlueSky get this part right.
Bluesky is growing at around 10 accounts/second as of an hour ago.
This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source.
Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media)
The license isn't relevant. It's not really "an open source app", it's just an app that happens to be open source. Put it this way: if, say, Godot became the #1 most popular game engine, that would be something for the open source community at large to celebrate. With Bluesky, we have absolutely nothing to celebrate. If anything, this is terrible news; instead of Twitter losing users to a genuinely open platform, they're just going to yet another VC-funded functionally proprietary service.
My point here is not to get all into the fedi/bsky/twitter/threads drama. I am not even talking about social media of any kind.
My question is simple and has an objective yes/no answer. Prior to this, has any open source app [0] ever been the #1 app in the US App Store "Top Free Apps" category?
[0] For the sake of this post, let's pretend that an open source app is one where the code is freely available, forkable, and under MIT license.
The Bluesky app and the protocol it is built on are open source, MIT licensed.
The app is built using React/React Native as well as a variety of other open source tools. We maintain multiple React Native libraries as well that are open source.
The network is open, and anyone has access to the firehose. Third parties are free to run labelers that integrate with the application as well as build feeds which can be used by yourself or others inside the app. Anyone is free to use the open source SDKs to build their own third-party Bluesky apps or entirely unique applications using atprotocol.
To be frank, "it's just an app that happens to be open source" seems to be a pretty bad faith take on what Bluesky is.
So ... can I run my own infrastructure that’s part of the Bluesky network? What rules does it have to play by? That’s what really matters.
The apps being open source is great of course, but the standards for openness are very high for (something aiming to be) internet-level infrastructure.
A single company having a lot of control would be a bit of a red flag in this context. The rug pull incentives are huge (that said I am a proponent of commercial interests in open ecosystems, provided they don’t get too much control).
Yes, it is absolutely possible to build on atprotocol and be a part of the network. We have written a good bit about this already here: https://atproto.com/articles/atproto-for-distsys-engineers (in addition to the recently updated documentation in general)
I think its absolutely good for open source. At the very least it is something that future people can point to and show that an open source app doesn't block success.
Sure, it would be better if it was an open source app for an open source protocol, but it is still something.
I disagree with your definition of "open source app," but I do understand the desire to have a non-VC, non-single point of enshitifcation, social network. To quote Bsky dev Paul from 2hrs ago:
> Bluesky is building infrastructure you can fully self-host or mirror. Alice did a great job in this blogpost capturing what is doable now, and how to do it.
> This network should live long past Bluesky PBC. Let's work together to make this network more resilient!
Is that a consistent metric of 10 accounts/second? If that's so it's a decent number. Is this a sudden influx of users? Are people fleeing away from Mr. Musk?
I just did rough math by looking at this counter [0] over the course of 10 minutes. ~10 per second was about 2 hours ago, it was around 4 per second around 10AM Eastern time, yesterday.
Yes on the Musk factor, it would appear. There have been a bunch Bsky mentions in multiple news sources in the US and UK in the last couple days. That appears to driving account creation.
Bluesky’s app and services is open source. With plenty of people crossing over to it, reason being because it resembles Twitter pre-Musk.
Mastodon is also open source but never held or got even near the #1 top spot ever, and I don’t think it ever will due to the friction of choosing a server.
People nowadays expect familiarity. ‘Don’t make me think’ that is why people aren’t going to Mastodon.
As for Threads, it isn’t open source and are now introducing platform decaying features like ads which will make the platform worse.
So I can say (at least for now) Bluesky is currently the platform of choice right now.
For anyone curious about the new growth of Bluesky and the decline of Twitter (x), the youtuber D'Angelo Wallace did a video exploring what the new user experience on Twitter (x) is like as of a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwVqKtLBGc
Watched Theo research and talk about Bluesky yesterday while he prepped for a video. Was pretty cool to learn the history and the mission of the company.
It's way more important than just a social app. Happy to join and support it.
How so? I believe every single line of everything is open source, aside from their server-side Discover feed algo. But in any case, the question is about the app, which is 100% MIT licensed open source code.
Real "open source" would for me even imply that all data is freely accessible but this stops way, way before and should not be called open in almost any sense.
Real open source is any software with a license that obey the four freedoms..
1 - freedom to view the source
2 - freedom to use
3 - freedom to modify
4 - freedom to distribute your modified version
Bluesky use the MIT license that does comply with the freedoms above, so it is real open source..
Also, it use a open protocol as well.. so nothing is stopping you from deploying your own instance [1] and use their app to connect to it.. then you will have all your data freely accessible as you want..
If you don't like the Discover feed, you are more then free to remove it from your account and add other feeds which are open source. Or don't add any feeds and just use the default "Following" feed which is just the posts of the folks who you follow and their re-posts, in flat reverse chronological order. That's it.
Respectfully, I think you don't understand what "open source" means in this context. It has a very specific meaning in software.
You may believe that it is not "open/publicly-available enough", and that is a totally fine opinion to have. But if you say "open source" on HN, people will understand something very different.
If the algorithms for sorting and filtering and discovering aren't open source, a social app is not open. It really is that simple. Some open source artifact on your device wrapping proprietary code on a server is not in the category of "open source products" because the only parts that matter are entirely closed. "My HTML front end is licensed MIT" does not make your product which is entirely dependent on secret sauce in your back end open source. Enough with the bullshit. Labels matter and if the current generation on this site doesn't understand something as fundamental as open vs proprietary, we're all screwed.
> is entirely dependent on secret sauce in your back end open source. Enough with the bullshit.
With all due respect, it sounds like you are not familiar with Bluesky.
As far as I know, the only proprietary code is the single Discover feed, which every user can un-pin from their feeds. My assumption for this being proprietary is so that it cannot be gamed. It could be for a darker reason, I suppose.
However, this is a feed that I use maybe 10% of the time. Aside from the Following feed, I have curated a bunch of my own user lists and 3rd party feeds. I am able to pin these to my feeds list. This is where I spend my time.
Aside from that one significant feed, yet small aspect, literally every other part of Bluesky is open source. This includes client, server, moderation system, and protocol.
> My assumption for this being proprietary is so that it cannot be gamed. It could be a darker reason, I suppose.
As the guy developing said feed, this is indeed the reason. I have a hard enough time as it is with people gaming the specific parameters of the feed, having it fully open would be a huge tax on my time.
You could take the code from there and get to a workable "Discover" feed relatively quickly if you wanted to. Also several of the feeds I have in that repo are among the most popular feeds in the network, especially Quiet Posters (infrequent.go).
Algorithmic curation is, I believe, a key to making (para-)social media enjoyable and Bluesky is the only (semi?) open project I’m aware of investing in this type of stuff. It not being open is a bummer. Is there any good reading material on this topic?
I believe in a world in which people can choose and tune their algorithms, a diversity here should make them harder to game, as well as a highly-weighted „not interested“ button.
It’s surely not the plan to keep this proprietary forever, right?
I was never a big user of Twitter, but I joined a Mastodon server around 2020. I am still using it regularly, but I honestly find it pretty hard to get useful content: it feels like either it's random stuff I don't care about, or always the same people I follow and don't bring me much.
At first I didn't want to try Bluesky (because of some of the founders, I suppose? I don't know, Mastodon seemed more organic), but I eventually did. And I actually like their system of "custom" algos. I have a few very interesting feeds now (international news, national news, ...).
But I fell like the really hard part is yet to come, and being open might make that part harder.
All online communities go through the same phases (or die along the way).
In the beginning it's populated by enthusiasts, tech adopters, people with good intentions. The problems are mostly technical and infrastructure.
Then it grows rapidly with mostly the same parameters.
Then it gets big enough so the trolls, spammers, bots, misogynist, racists, marketers, advertisers et al arrive. At this point the problems become social - moderation etc.
Failure to manage this stage well leads to, well, Twitter.
And it's by far the hardest part of the whole process. I hope BlueSky get this part right.
https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source.
Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media)
[0] https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app
[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/gHuwrrw
My question is simple and has an objective yes/no answer. Prior to this, has any open source app [0] ever been the #1 app in the US App Store "Top Free Apps" category?
[0] For the sake of this post, let's pretend that an open source app is one where the code is freely available, forkable, and under MIT license.
The app is built using React/React Native as well as a variety of other open source tools. We maintain multiple React Native libraries as well that are open source.
The network is open, and anyone has access to the firehose. Third parties are free to run labelers that integrate with the application as well as build feeds which can be used by yourself or others inside the app. Anyone is free to use the open source SDKs to build their own third-party Bluesky apps or entirely unique applications using atprotocol.
To be frank, "it's just an app that happens to be open source" seems to be a pretty bad faith take on what Bluesky is.
The apps being open source is great of course, but the standards for openness are very high for (something aiming to be) internet-level infrastructure.
A single company having a lot of control would be a bit of a red flag in this context. The rug pull incentives are huge (that said I am a proponent of commercial interests in open ecosystems, provided they don’t get too much control).
You can run most of the Bluesky infrastructure and make it part of Bluesky network https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q
Sure, it would be better if it was an open source app for an open source protocol, but it is still something.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto
> Bluesky is building infrastructure you can fully self-host or mirror. Alice did a great job in this blogpost capturing what is doable now, and how to do it.
> This network should live long past Bluesky PBC. Let's work together to make this network more resilient!
https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3laujhn5lfs2p
https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q
if you're on bsky give her a follow!
Yes on the Musk factor, it would appear. There have been a bunch Bsky mentions in multiple news sources in the US and UK in the last couple days. That appears to driving account creation.
[0] https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
Bluesky’s app and services is open source. With plenty of people crossing over to it, reason being because it resembles Twitter pre-Musk.
Mastodon is also open source but never held or got even near the #1 top spot ever, and I don’t think it ever will due to the friction of choosing a server.
People nowadays expect familiarity. ‘Don’t make me think’ that is why people aren’t going to Mastodon.
As for Threads, it isn’t open source and are now introducing platform decaying features like ads which will make the platform worse.
So I can say (at least for now) Bluesky is currently the platform of choice right now.
It's way more important than just a social app. Happy to join and support it.
Love that its OSS and so easy to build locally.
Real "open source" would for me even imply that all data is freely accessible but this stops way, way before and should not be called open in almost any sense.
Just a VC PR play.
Real open source is any software with a license that obey the four freedoms..
1 - freedom to view the source 2 - freedom to use 3 - freedom to modify 4 - freedom to distribute your modified version
Bluesky use the MIT license that does comply with the freedoms above, so it is real open source..
Also, it use a open protocol as well.. so nothing is stopping you from deploying your own instance [1] and use their app to connect to it.. then you will have all your data freely accessible as you want..
[1] https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
You may believe that it is not "open/publicly-available enough", and that is a totally fine opinion to have. But if you say "open source" on HN, people will understand something very different.
With all due respect, it sounds like you are not familiar with Bluesky.
As far as I know, the only proprietary code is the single Discover feed, which every user can un-pin from their feeds. My assumption for this being proprietary is so that it cannot be gamed. It could be for a darker reason, I suppose.
However, this is a feed that I use maybe 10% of the time. Aside from the Following feed, I have curated a bunch of my own user lists and 3rd party feeds. I am able to pin these to my feeds list. This is where I spend my time.
Aside from that one significant feed, yet small aspect, literally every other part of Bluesky is open source. This includes client, server, moderation system, and protocol.
As the guy developing said feed, this is indeed the reason. I have a hard enough time as it is with people gaming the specific parameters of the feed, having it fully open would be a huge tax on my time.
Most of the components of the feed are trialed in my personal feeds repo here: https://github.com/whyrusleeping/algoz
You could take the code from there and get to a workable "Discover" feed relatively quickly if you wanted to. Also several of the feeds I have in that repo are among the most popular feeds in the network, especially Quiet Posters (infrequent.go).
I believe in a world in which people can choose and tune their algorithms, a diversity here should make them harder to game, as well as a highly-weighted „not interested“ button.
It’s surely not the plan to keep this proprietary forever, right?
At first I didn't want to try Bluesky (because of some of the founders, I suppose? I don't know, Mastodon seemed more organic), but I eventually did. And I actually like their system of "custom" algos. I have a few very interesting feeds now (international news, national news, ...).
So yeah, positively surprised by Bluesky.