Hello folks,
I would like to share my disappointment and concerns about Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and hear your thoughts on this. I welcome your thoughtful and insightful input.
I have been an early Bluesky user since around 2023. Like everyone else, I felt a small sense of "hope" in the idea of an open social network and an open protocol after more than a decade of decline in social media, as we all tried to run away from algorithms, advertising, misinformation, and all the other forms of digital waste created by fascist big tech companies.
That was "the ideal", at least.
Open social networks and open protocols gave us a sense of "hope" for greater freedom, decentralization, and regaining control, at least to some extent.
However, after spending time across the AT Protocol network and Bluesky, and using several platforms built on it, I realized an ironic reality.
This openness is not truly freer or more controllable. In the end, it only seems to be a different form of control.
I do not deny that the AT Protocol communities are still growing strongly, are vibrant, and have great potential. Things seem "promising".
But personally, as an ordinary user rather than a technology expert or programmer. I have too many concerns about safety, privacy, and control. To me, it does not feel much different from being trapped inside the ecosystems of big tech social networks.
1. Regarding openness
A PDS identity, cool, can be easily used across many platforms.
But everything is open, and everything is indexed.
Even who you block, who blocks you, when you usually use an app, your daily time, what your previous usernames were, etc... and more are all recorded.
This is genuinely dangerous and concerning for users. Malicious people can stalk and harm others. Conflicts in work and daily life can arise across networks of colleagues and friends because everyone can know who blocked whom. Or, it could increase hostility in many different ways between communities, institutions, and countries. Or, simply out of curiosity, anyone can check open information about your account and your activities through third-party indexing tools and apps created to index data on the AT Protocol.
2. Regarding PDS management
Having a single PDS shared across the entire ecosystem sounds quite simple and easy to understand.
However, actually understanding it and managing it is far from easy for most ordinary users who know little or nothing about programming or technical systems.
Does this mean that Bluesky and the entire AT Protocol community are ultimately designed only for programmers, developers, engineers, digital experts, and people with technical expertise?
Even knowledgeable users such as artists, teachers, scholars, etc., may not fully understand the technical aspects of using platforms within this protocol.
When we first started using it, we had no idea that ALL of our data was public. Or perhaps we only knew that followers, following, likes, and posts were public.
Then we realized that numerous third-party indexing tools record our behavior and activities — making nearly all of our data publicly accessible.
You could say that as long as we are present on social media or simply on the internet, everything is public.
True.
But at least I know in advance what I choose to make public and what I still have some control over. Here, when joining the AT Protocol, we are completely passive in understanding what is happening to our accounts and data.
We are not programmers, developers, engineers, digital experts, or people with technical expertise who can closely follow the development of the AT Protocol or research it every day.
Clearly, from the beginning, Bluesky and the entire AT Protocol ecosystem have consistently presented themselves as a protocol and a set of communities built for everyone. Yet in the end, both on the surface and beneath the surface, they seem to have been built only for programmers, developers, engineers, digital experts, or technology investors. Even politicians, social media personalities, KOLs, and influencers are migrating from old platforms to spread the same toxic behaviors once again.
If that is the case, then ordinary users once again become the product, the content, and the experiment for an entire community and protocol made up of many different companies, over and over again.
That is truly ironic: a digital spectacle society trapped in an endless loop.