How Bluesky Works

Bluesky is a decentralized social network initiative developed to address the challenges faced by centralized platforms like Twitter, particularly in content moderation and scalability. It employs a federated architecture, allowing different servers to communicate while distributing control among various operators. The core of Bluesky's functionality is built on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATProto), which enables seamless data sharing across applications without losing user connections. Each user has a repository that stores their posts, while a data server manages user interactions and authentication. The system uses a crawler to collect updates and generate a stream of user activities, which is then processed by an index server for efficient data retrieval. Bluesky also incorporates a moderation service to label content and allows users to customize their feeds. The platform supports social proof features, enabling users to see mutual connections, and utilizes advanced data structures like Roaring Bitmaps for efficient querying. Overall, Bluesky aims to create a more user-controlled and scalable social networking experience.

- Bluesky utilizes a federated architecture for decentralized control and scalability.

- The platform is built on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATProto) for seamless data sharing.

- A crawler and index server work together to manage user interactions and content retrieval.

- Content moderation is integrated into the system, allowing users to customize their experience.

- Advanced data structures like Roaring Bitmaps enhance performance in querying social connections.