Bluesky is an open-source initiative by Twitter aimed at creating a decentralized social media protocol. Its purpose is to address some of the perceived issues with centralized social media platforms.

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵

— jack (@jack) December 11, 2019

Here are some potential pros and cons:

Pros

• Decentralization: Bluesky aims to decentralize social media, reducing the control of large corporations over user data and content moderation. This can lead to increased user autonomy and a reduced risk of censorship.

• Interoperability: The protocol aims to allow different social media networks to interoperate with each other. This could make it easier for users to switch between platforms without losing their connections and content.

• Innovation: Open-source initiatives often foster innovation. Bluesky’s open nature could encourage developers to create new features and applications that could benefit users.

• Data Ownership: Bluesky may empower users to have more control over their data and who accesses it, potentially leading to better privacy and data ownership.

• Reduced Monopoly Power: By decentralizing social media, Bluesky could reduce the monopoly power of a few large companies, potentially promoting competition and diversity in the industry.

Cons

• Complexity: Decentralization can be complex, both in terms of implementation and user experience. It might be challenging for average users to understand and use decentralized social media effectively.

• Security and Moderation: Decentralization can make it difficult to enforce content moderation policies and address issues like hate speech, harassment, or misinformation. Achieving a balance between decentralization and moderation is a significant challenge.

• Network Effects: Existing social media giants have strong network effects, making it difficult for new platforms to compete. Achieving critical mass on a decentralized protocol like Bluesky may be challenging.

• Technical Challenges: Developing a scalable and secure decentralized protocol is technically challenging and may require substantial resources and expertise.

• Monetization: It’s unclear how platforms built on Bluesky would monetize their services, as advertising and data-driven revenue models, which are common on centralized platforms, may not work in the same way in a decentralized environment.

• Identity and Verification: Decentralization might make it more challenging to verify the identity of users, which can be important for issues like trust and safety.

• Legal and Regulatory Challenges: Decentralization can raise legal and regulatory concerns, as it may be challenging to hold individuals or entities accountable for illegal activities on the network.

It’s important to note that the success of Bluesky, or any decentralized social media protocol, depends on various factors, including adoption, technical implementation, regulatory landscape, and user acceptance. The pros and cons listed here are based on the potential benefits and challenges associated with decentralization in social media, but the actual outcomes may differ based on how the initiative evolves and is implemented.

---

Bluesky remains invite-only in its beta. In case you wanted to try it - please use following invite codes:

• bsky-social-sr3fc-*****
• bsky-social-*****-kcmn3

It will be some kind of experiment of how quick they will gone. I’ll not share this post on any social networks and will rely on only to the google crawlers 🤓

Update (Nov 3): invite codes has been taken.