FILE - The app for Bluesky is shown on a mobile phone, left, and on a laptop screen, Friday, June 2, 2023, in New York. Bluesky, a Twitter-like social network championed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has emerged from its cocoon and is now allowing anyone to create an account and join the service. Until Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024, users needed an invitation to join the network, which typically meant hunting down an existing member and begging for an invite. That gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features, it said. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
FILE - The app for Bluesky is shown on a mobile phone, left, and on a laptop screen, Friday, June 2, 2023, in New York. Bluesky, a Twitter-like social network championed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has emerged from its cocoon and is now allowing anyone to create an account and join the service. Until Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024, users needed an invitation to join the network, which typically meant hunting down an existing member and begging for an invite. That gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features, it said. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
REDBluesky, a Twitter-like social network championed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has emerged from its cocoon and is now allowing anyone to create an account and join the service.
Until Tuesday, anyone hoping to join Bluesky needed an invitation, which typically meant hunting down an existing member and begging for an invite. That invite-only period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features, Bluesky said.
Bluesky resembles Twitter — now known as X after Tesla billionaire Elon Musk — in many respects, although it doesn’t yet offer direct messaging between users. It does offer more customization options, though whether these will appeal to users isn't yet clear.
By default, Bluesky displays posts by accounts you follow in a linear timeline, although it’s also possible to switch to algorithm-driven timelines created by other users. The service does its own moderation but also plans to let its users stack together alternative moderation schemes. That feature hasn’t been enabled yet.
And once things really get going, Bluesky plans to by allowing them to move their collections of friends, followers and other data to competing social networks. As the company says in a whimsical cartoon page included in Tuesday's announcement, Bluesky aims to be “ .”
In practice, it probably won't be that easy. The technical term for making social networks interoperable this way is “federation," and it turns out there are multiple ways sites can federate. For instance, Mastodon and similar microblogging sites — including Meta's Threads service — use a federation algorithm called ActivityPub that should allow users to move between them.
In fact, Threads has already begun experimenting with sharing posts to Mastodon and other services using ActivityPub. “Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people,” Meta CEO in December. “I’m pretty optimistic about this.”
By contrast, Bluesky adopted a federation algorithm called the Authenticated Transfer Protocol and is so far the only such service using it. A for the protocol argues that ActivityPub makes it cumbersome to transfer accounts and that it lacks other important features.
The ɫtv Press. All rights reserved.
Get the latest from ɫtvNews in your inbox. Select the emails you're interested in below.
It’s a little-known fact that Canada’s credit unions are among the country’s stron…
Sorry, an error occurred.
Already Subscribed!
Cancel anytime
Thank you .
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
No promotional rates found.
Secure & Encrypted
Thank you.
Your gift purchase was successful! Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
| Rate: | |
| Begins: | |
| Transaction ID: |
A receipt was sent to your email.
