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Time of India
25-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Bluesky outage raises questions over decentralisation promise
Bluesky , the decentralised social network that promised a break from traditional centralised platforms, faced a significant outage on Thursday evening, briefly halting access for users on both web and mobile platforms, TechCrunch reported. #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack India pulled the plug on IWT when Pakistanis are fighting over water Pakistan alleges terror charge on India in its statement What makes this India-Pakistan standoff more dangerous than past ones The platform remained inaccessible for nearly an hour. A message on Bluesky's status page acknowledged the disruption, attributing it to what the company described as "Major PDS Networking Problems". PDS stands for personal data servers, which form a core part of Bluesky's infrastructure. The report added that the first update about the issue was posted at 6:55 PM ET, followed by a second message at 7:38 PM ET, indicating that a fix was being implemented. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trade Bitcoin & Ethereum – No Wallet Needed! IC Markets Start Now Undo If decentralisation is meant to eliminate single points of failure, why did Bluesky go down? The answer lies in how the platform is currently structured and used. Even though Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol , which allows anyone to run parts of the network such as personal data servers, relays and client apps, most people still depend on Bluesky's official servers and app. So, even though the system is decentralised in theory, most of the activity still runs through infrastructure controlled by Bluesky itself. Live Events Users operating independent infrastructure were unaffected by the outage, reinforcing the potential of the model. Bluesky has said its long-term goal is to encourage the growth of multiple communities, each potentially running their own servers, moderation systems, and apps. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories One example is Blacksky, an initiative building safer and more inclusive online spaces using the AT Protocol. The incident also reignited a familiar rivalry between Bluesky and Mastodon, another decentralised network that operates using the ActivityPub protocol. Also Read: X-rival Bluesky rolls out official verification system
Express Tribune
25-04-2025
- Express Tribune
Bluesky suffers hour-long outage despite decentralised design
Listen to article Decentralised social network Bluesky experienced a significant outage, leaving users unable to access the service via web or mobile for nearly an hour. The platform attributed the disruption to 'major PDS networking problems', referencing its personal data server infrastructure. According to updates posted on Bluesky's status page, the outage began at 6:55 p.m. ET. A fix was in progress by 7:38 p.m. ET, and service was soon restored. The incident sparked questions about how a decentralised platform could suffer such a disruption. Although Bluesky operates on the AT Protocol—a decentralised networking framework—the bulk of its user base still relies on infrastructure maintained by Bluesky itself, including its core PDS components. Users who independently run components of the AT Protocol were reportedly unaffected, highlighting that the platform's decentralisation is still in early implementation stages. In the long term, Bluesky envisions a diverse ecosystem of communities with their own infrastructure, moderation systems, and client applications. However, the current centralisation of services means outages impacting Bluesky's servers can still disrupt large swathes of users. The outage reignited rivalry with Mastodon, another decentralised platform operating on the ActivityPub protocol. Mastodon users mocked Bluesky's temporary failure, with one remarking that their home-run server 'just keeps chugging along'. Despite the incident, Bluesky resumed full functionality shortly after the issue was addressed. The platform has reiterated its commitment to decentralisation and building a resilient, distributed infrastructure in future iterations.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wait, how did a decentralized service like Bluesky go down?
Apparently, decentralized social networks can go down, too. On Thursday evening, the decentralized social network Bluesky experienced a significant outage, leaving users unable to load the app on both the web and mobile devices for roughly an hour. According to a message on Bluesky's status page, the company was aware of the outage, which it attributed to "Major PDS Networking Problems." (PDS means personal data servers.) The first status message was posted at 6:55 PM ET, and a second one indicating that a fix was being applied was shared soon after at 7:38 PM ET. The question many may be asking now is, how did this decentralized social network go down? Isn't Isn't one of the perks of decentralization that there's not a single point of failure? As it turns out, despite the platform's decentralized nature, the majority of Bluesky users today interact with the service via Bluesky's official app, powered by the AT Protocol. While in theory, anyone can run the various parts of the infrastructure that make up the protocol, including PDS, relays, and other components, it's still early days for the social network, so few have done so. Those that did, however, were not impacted by the outage. In time, the idea is that many communities will be built on Bluesky, some with their own infrastructure, moderation services, and even client applications. (One example of this to date is the work that the Blacksky team is doing to create safer, more welcoming online spaces that take advantage of these decentralized tools.) Eventually, the hope is that Bluesky will be one of many entities that run the infrastructure needed to support the growing number of applications built on the AT Protocol. In the near term, however, an outage impacting Bluesky's infrastructure will be felt more broadly. The outage, of course, stirred up some of the rivalry between Bluesky and another decentralized social network, Mastodon, which runs on a different social networking protocol called ActivityPub. Mastodon users were quick to point to Bluesky's outage in order to make jokes or jabs that focused on Bluesky's approach to decentralization. One Mastodon user, Luke Johnson, wrote, "see how the mighty Bluesky crumbles while the Raspberry Pi running Mastodon under my bed just keeps chugging along" -- a reference to how Mastodon can run off even tiny machines users themselves configure. Or, as another Mastodon user joked, "nice decentralization ya got there." In any event, Bluesky's outage was resolved shortly after it began and the service is back up and running. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wait, how did a decentralized service like Bluesky go down?
Apparently, decentralized social networks can go down, too. On Thursday evening, the decentralized social network Bluesky experienced a significant outage, leaving users unable to load the app on both the web and mobile devices for roughly an hour. According to a message on Bluesky's status page, the company was aware of the outage, which it attributed to "Major PDS Networking Problems." (PDS means personal data servers.) The first status message was posted at 6:55 PM ET, and a second one indicating that a fix was being applied was shared soon after at 7:38 PM ET. The question many may be asking now is, how did this decentralized social network go down? Isn't Isn't one of the perks of decentralization that there's not a single point of failure? As it turns out, despite the platform's decentralized nature, the majority of Bluesky users today interact with the service via Bluesky's official app, powered by the AT Protocol. While in theory, anyone can run the various parts of the infrastructure that make up the protocol, including PDS, relays, and other components, it's still early days for the social network, so few have done so. Those that did, however, were not impacted by the outage. In time, the idea is that many communities will be built on Bluesky, some with their own infrastructure, moderation services, and even client applications. (One example of this to date is the work that the Blacksky team is doing to create safer, more welcoming online spaces that take advantage of these decentralized tools.) Eventually, the hope is that Bluesky will be one of many entities that run the infrastructure needed to support the growing number of applications built on the AT Protocol. In the near term, however, an outage impacting Bluesky's infrastructure will be felt more broadly. The outage, of course, stirred up some of the rivalry between Bluesky and another decentralized social network, Mastodon, which runs on a different social networking protocol called ActivityPub. Mastodon users were quick to point to Bluesky's outage in order to make jokes or jabs that focused on Bluesky's approach to decentralization. One Mastodon user, Luke Johnson, wrote, "see how the mighty Bluesky crumbles while the Raspberry Pi running Mastodon under my bed just keeps chugging along" -- a reference to how Mastodon can run off even tiny machines users themselves configure. Or, as another Mastodon user joked, "nice decentralization ya got there." In any event, Bluesky's outage was resolved shortly after it began and the service is back up and running. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Government censorship comes to Bluesky, but not its third-party apps ... yet
Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked on the grounds of protecting "national security and public order." Bluesky also made another 13 accounts and at least one post invisible from Turkey. Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hopes of fleeing government censorship, Bluesky's bowing to the Turkish government's demands has raised questions among the community as to whether or not the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or whether it's "just like Twitter" after all.) However, Bluesky's technical underpinnings currently make bypassing these blocks easier than it would be on a network like X -- even if it's not quite as open as the alternative social network Mastodon, another decentralized X rival. A Mastodon user could move their account around to different servers to avoid censorship targeted at the original Mastodon instance (server) where they first made posts that attracted the censors. Users on the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings, but have no way to opt out of the moderation service Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labelers, like the newly added Turkish moderation labeler that handles the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens Hof has a great breakdown of how this all works in more technical detail here on The Fediverse Report.) Simply put, if you're on the official Bluesky app and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something, there's no way to opt out of this to see the hidden posts or accounts. Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the ATmosphere, don't have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now. Because Bluesky is built on top of the AT Protocol, third-party clients can create their own interfaces and views into Bluesky's content without applying the same moderation choices. Meanwhile, the censored accounts in question aren't banned from Bluesky infrastructure, like relays and PDSs (which others outside the company can run, too). Instead, the accounts are moderated by the geographic labelers at the client level. Currently, Bluesky doesn't require any third-party apps to use its geographic moderation labelers, which would force the apps to geolocate their users and then apply the appropriate regional restrictions. That means any app that doesn't implement the existing geographic labelers isn't censoring these blocked Turkish accounts. In other words, apps like Skeets, Ouranos, Skywalker, and others can currently be used to bypass Turkish censors. This "solution" comes with several caveats, unfortunately. The app developers' choice not to use geographic labelers isn't necessarily intentional. Adding the geographic labelers would be extra work on their part, and most have simply not bothered to implement them yet. In addition, these third-party apps have much smaller user bases than the official Bluesky app, which allows them to fly under the radar of government censors. That also makes decisions like this less of a concern for the app developers — at least for the time being. If these third-party apps grew popular enough, a government like Turkey's could also approach them and demand action. And if they failed to comply, they could risk their app being blocked in the country. (Several Bluesky app developers told us they won't worry about adding geographic labelers until Apple approaches them about a potential removal from the App Store, for instance.) Because avoiding labelers is seemingly not a permanent solution, one developer, Aviva Ruben, is building an alternative Bluesky client called that works differently. Here, users can choose to entirely disable Bluesky's official moderation service and labelers in favor of using other third-party labelers instead. Plus, the app allows users to configure their location manually in its settings -- an option that would let users avoid geolocation-based blocks and censorship. "I like the current policy, but I do fear it will get more restrictive or change in the future--a great reason to continue pushing on alternative App Views," Ruben said, referencing the need for alternative ways to access and view Bluesky's data. Though today's government censorship concerns are focused on Turkey, Bluesky's community has to prep for a future where any government, including the U.S., could request that the company hide posts beyond only those that are blatantly illegal, like CSAM. Ruben says would add a "no location" option to the app at this point, so users could choose to avoid all geographic labelers. Despite these possible loopholes, censorship has arrived at Bluesky. And considering the official app reaches the largest number of people, this is a notable evolution. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
