(I don't know what's the status of the "10 users" limit, at least the Bridgy PDS got it lifted, but even if it's not announced yet I think it's also going away / or will be relaxed soon)
From The Verge: Jack Dorsey says he’s no longer on Bluesky’s board
> There’s seemingly no evidence that Dorsey is off the Bluesky board yet, apart from his post. The company still lists him as a board member, along with its CEO, Jay Graeber, and Jabber / XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller.
Jack Dorsey is crawling back to Twitter, licking Elon’s boots, calling the site “freedom technology”. In case anyone wondered about Jack’s political alignment: it’s far right, techno-fascist probably.
If you are a #Bluesky person but you miss your peeps on the #Fediverse / #Mastodon, bridge your account and follow them directly from Bluesky. Simple instructions here (detailed by me):
Using #Skybridge to see my Bluesky account in #Ivory to boost fed.bird.gy (#Bridgyfed) allowing me to see #Bluesky posts on #Mastodon, and vice versa. If I post something on Mastodon will it appear on Bluesky, and so appear on Mastodon, and so forth, in a mirror of infinite recursion?
Habe übrigens die wundervolle Nachricht erhalten, dass meine #Marx-kritischen Postings hier auf #Mastodon per Screenshot auf Konzernmedien wie X und #BlueSky geteilt würden. Von empörten Marxisten in den Medien vom Klassenfeind! 🤣🙏📚
The #BlueskyBridge by Snarfed was soft-launched this week - still very alpha and a lot of things don't work, but posts are starting to come through both ways 🙂
Right now you need to follow the bridge to get bridged (the DM-request mechanism isn't finished yet). I'm tracking the bridged accounts (M->B) here: https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/fedi
Idk why not at this point. The #BridgyFed critics got like everything they wanted. Everything is pretty much #optin. And because of that it's difficult to follow from here the artists I follow at #Bluesky. :satsuki_sadge:
You could say "just ask each one of them to follow you then", but that's easy for you to say. I don't like looking like an unsolicited jerk asking if they want to hear the words of Jesus Christ or something. Which is how I see some of you here on fedi btw. Damn evangelists. No different from techbros or FOSSbros
Now I do think the early stages should be opt-in like a beta as it is right now to iron out the bugs (and there are plenty) before being available fully to the public. But I have a feeling this is never gonna go #optout as it should've been because of the harshness of those ignorant IANALs who do not really understand the #GDPR and other #privacy laws... :reisensweat:
Slowly, but surely my Mastodon posts (this one included) are showing up on Bluesky. Bridgy.fed kicks in. Thanks to @snarfed.org@snarfed.org for all the hard work.
After the hectic months of February and March, things are more stable in Bluesky. The biggest development is the first president that has joined Bluesky, with Brazilian president Lula joining Bluesky as part of a larger conflict between the Brazilian government and X.
The News
Brazilian president Lula has opened an account on Bluesky, Brasil247.com reports. The news comes after an escalating conflict between X and the Brazilian Courts. Elon Musk publicly refused to follow orders by the Brazilian court to block certain accounts on X, and a Brazilian judge has ordered an investigation of Elon Musk for obstruction of justice. President Lula opening an account on Bluesky is a direct response to the ongoing conflict between the Brazilian government and X, and indicates how governments are starting to be fed up with the situation at X. President Lula used his first post on Bluesky to say that 38 slaughterhouses will be authorised to export meat to China. (?) Finally, Bluesky dropped their official policy against heads of states joining Bluesky.
Skygaze, the organisation behind the For You custom feed announced that they have quit the feed, and transferred ownership of the feed to the Bluesky organisation. The For You feed was by far the most popular custom feed that had a personalised algorithm. Skygaze said that they are moving on to other projects. Skygaze had been fairly involved in the Bluesky community, running a hackaton only 2 months ago. Recently, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber stated that one ways Bluesky plans to make money is to create a marketplace for custom feeds and third party moderation, where Bluesky will take a cut of the payments. Skygaze was one of the only creators of custom feeds that appeared to have a commercial side, as they seemed to have an affiliation with YCombinator. With them leaving the ATmosphere for other projects there are no other organisations that operate a third party service on the ATmosphere have expressed a clear interest in monetisation of their services yet.
Bluesky announced the second batch of ATProto grant recipients. The total grant was 4.8k USD, spend on various microgrants. SkyBridge is the grant project that got the most attention (TechCrunch, The Verge), which got a 800USD grant to rewrite the project in Rust. SkyBridge has been around for almost a year, although I personally never really got it to work properly. The grant should give the project a boost and renewed interest.
In February, Bluesky announced that they started federation, allowing people to run their own PDS, albeit under significant restrictions (apply for Relay access, limit the PDS to 10 accounts) while the process underwent testing. So far, these restrictions have not been lifted yet.
App updates
The official Bluesky apps have gotten some updates this month:
That’s all for this month, thanks for reading. You can follow me on Bluesky, or subscribe to my newsletter below. You’ll get a weekly update on the fediverse in your inbox, and a monthly update on Bluesky and the ATmosphere.
When he built a bridge to connect Bluesky to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms, @snarfed.org@snarfed.org started a new chapter for the fediverse. The software engineer opens up to @mike about his rollercoaster ride in the latest episode of Dot Social: