'I'm a Bluesky employee, do you have any questions?' will be held and plans for implementing 'locked accounts' and 'trends' will be discussed.

On the online message board Reddit, r/BlueskySocial , a Bluesky developer held an Ask Me Anything (AMA: Do you have any questions about ____?) session. For about 45 minutes, the developer answered questions from the general public.

The questions were answered by Bluesky developers Paul Frazee and Emily Liu . Before the start, the two said, 'We're very excited to welcome so many new people to Bluesky. Thank you to everyone who is already part of the community. We know that there are many questions about the new app, such as how to get started, its unique features, and more, so let's chat about them,' and called for questions from users. The questions they responded to during the AMA and their answers are as follows.

◆ Q :
Please let us know if you have any challenges with the following common feature requests:
- Function to notify when a post has been made
・Private account
・Trends page

◆ A :
Post notifications and trending pages are two of the more straightforward things to do, but private accounts pose a slightly unique challenge.

To briefly explain, Bluesky is not just an app, it is also a new internet technology. The internet technology was created to fight internet monopolies and give users more choices. We are using the first version of the new technology, but we need to upgrade the technology to support private accounts. It will require more work, but it is an important goal in the long term.

For a more nerdy explanation, the new technology is the ' AT Protocol '. It is designed to distribute signed data publicly, and many parts of the system work in a similar way to the web and search: your data is hosted on your or our servers, and aggregated in our indexes like Google crawls the web. The system does not yet have any facilities for publishing information privately.

(Editor's note) The following interview article also delves deeper into Bluesky's plans and mechanisms for private accounts.

I went to the event 'Bluesky mini meetup in Kyoto 2024' where I could ask the Bluesky development team, 'Can the server withstand the sudden increase in users?' and 'Are there plans to add a trend display function?' - GIGAZINE

◆ Q :
When can I bookmark it?

◆ A :
Bookmarks are a common request! Luckily, it's not 'hard' due to the protocol, we just need to find the time. A feature like bookmarks is a pretty high priority.

A few people have already mentioned pinning in your feed, which is cool. When you reply to a post using pinning, you'll see the reply in your custom feed. Of course, having pinned replies has its downsides, but we recently made a change to move these replies to the bottom so they don't interfere with the discussion. If you find it annoying, you can use the mute feature to hide the post entirely.

◆ Q :
One of the things I miss most about pre-Elon Musk Twitter is being able to quickly search for information about events. Does Bluesky provide a way to search the entire app by hashtag, live trending topics, or similar features? This was crucial for real-time information gathering and emergencies.

◆ A :
The short answer is yes. We already have hashtag search in the app, and we are also planning to implement trending topics. We want Bluesky to be the best place to discuss breaking news and get real-time information, and we completely agree that such features are especially important during disasters and crisis situations. Previously, when Hurricane Milton made landfall in the US, some Bluesky users created special custom feeds to track conversations about natural disasters. I want to continue building tools for our users that allow them to get accurate information quickly and easily.

◆ Q :
I believe bots are what ruined Twitter. As Bluesky grows, do you think bots will be inevitable, or do you think Bluesky's decentralized model and approach to moderation will be effective in preventing them?

◆ A :
We believe that bad actors are infinitely creative. This means that if someone wants to flood our service with bots, they will find a way to do it, and we will find a way to work around it, and it will be a constant game of cat and mouse. That said, we don't think it's inevitable that we will have bots. One great thing about the open architecture that Bluesky has is that developers and researchers can inspect the internal data. For example, we have a user called Conspirador Norteno who actively finds spam and bot networks, and we benefit from his reports. Fighting bots feels like a collaborative effort.

Another thing to keep in mind is the Bluesky approach to moderation, where users can subscribe to moderation services provided by others, which can spot bots before we do, etc.

It's worth noting that not all bots are bad: Bluesky's developer tools make it easy to build useful bots, like earthquake alerts or public transport alerts.

◆ Q :
I wish there was a community note to prevent misinformation.

◆ A :
Me too! We considered integrating community notes a while back, but felt we needed more people on Bluesky to be truly effective (X's algorithm uses logic that 'different raters need to agree' for a community note to appear), but with 9 million people joining the network in the past 2 weeks, it's time to reconsider.

◆ Q :
When will the Draft Post feature be introduced?

◆ A :
Nothing to share yet, but we have plans! In the meantime, use third-party apps that allow you to create drafts. Indie developers often release features faster than we do. That's the joy of open APIs. The most notable are TOKIMEKI and Skeets , but there are many others.

(Editor's note) TOKIMEKI is a Bluesky client developed by Horibear . You can learn how to use TOKIMEKI in the following review article.

I tried using the web application 'TOKIMEKI' that allows you to display Bluesky posts in columns like TweetDeck and check updates. Review - GIGAZINE

◆ Q :
Are you planning on verifying important people? It would be great to know that accounts claiming to be celebrities or news organizations are genuine, so we can trust them.

◆ A :
Actually, it's already implemented. Bluesky allows you to set your own domain as a username. Examples of users who have already authenticated include news organizations like NPR and the Washington Post , public officials like Senator Ron Wyden , and corporate accounts. If you have a personal website, you can also set the domain of your website as a username.

(Editor's note) GIGAZINE's official Bluesky account also uses the handle name ' @gigazine.net ' to prove its authenticity. The steps to use a custom domain as a handle name are explained in the following article.

How to authenticate yourself with 'Bluesky', unlike Twitter, it's free and you can do it all yourself - GIGAZINE

We've been working behind the scenes to help many organizations set up usernames, and while it may seem technical and complicated at first, we're finding ways to make the user experience even better.

We're also approaching the issue of impersonation and authentication from a moderation angle, where reports of impersonation accounts are reviewed 24/7 by our moderation team, and we've quadrupled the size of our moderation team in the last few weeks to review all reports more quickly and take action on impersonation accounts.

We're thinking about how to make the verification badge more visible within the app, but we haven't decided on anything concrete yet.

◆ Q :
When will there be an iPad-optimized client?

◆ A :
(Paul) This is my fault. When I first built the app, I assumed that the native build would not need to handle multiple screen types. I was only targeting phone screens. The web build would handle tablet screens, so it was an oversight on my part. It is doable, but it would take so much time that it would take time away from other priorities, so I haven't found a good time to prioritize it. Sorry about that.

◆ Q :
Bluesky is run as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), what does that mean? Is it like a non-profit organization?

◆ A :
This means that Bluesky can pursue its mission before profits. In this case, the mission is to develop technology for open, decentralized, public conversation and drive mass adoption. Check out the CEO's post explaining why Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, and also his post explaining Bluesky's mission.

(Editor's note) The following page provides a detailed summary of what kind of organization Bluesky is run by. Note that the company name in the article below is 'Bluesky PBLLC,' but in July 2023 it was changed to 'Bluesky Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).'

Who owns Bluesky, a potential Twitter relocation site? Is it okay for a billionaire to buy it like Twitter did? - GIGAZINE

◆ Q :
In terms of staying safe, are there any approaches beyond the moderation aspect? Twitter has been a site that, even in the best of times, often encouraged abusive or harmful behavior. Moderation can be helpful, but I think it's a tool that can only address what has already happened. Are there ways to mitigate or prevent those tendencies?

◆ A :
People describe Twitter as 'PVP' - it's combative by nature. We think that's a big part of why people get burned out by social media. It's no fun to be constantly fighting with other people. We've implemented a lot of tools to try to reduce negative interactions.

The 'block' feature, which exists as one of the defenses, is very aggressive. It hides all past interactions between the blocker and the blocked party. It also has a bulk mute list and block list (moderation list) built in, so the community can work together to protect themselves.

Additionally, you can also disconnect quote posts, which is your primary defense against the most common form of harassment: quote abuse.

The author of a post has a lot of control. Even after posting, they can decide who can reply. Setting who can reply to a post to 'do not reply' effectively locks the thread.

(Editor's note) The following article explains how to limit who can reply.

Bluesky will add features such as 'a function to collect recommended users and create new user invitation links' and 'a function to later restrict users who can reply' - GIGAZINE

Another big tool is labelers, which are moderations run by other users that you can subscribe to. Labelers have the ability to take reports and apply labels to users or individual posts. There's a lot of work to be done on this, but it's an area that we're taking very seriously.

◆ Q :
Were the presence of bluesky.app and bluesky.com (sites unrelated to Bluesky) annoying?

◆ A :
Not at all! I made a few typos, but after deleting them from my history, it stopped auto-filling. Some people confuse Bluesky Social with another public company with a similar name, so we recommend double-checking and using caution before investing or buying shares. Bluesky Social is not a publicly traded company.

◆ Q :
Why did you choose to run it on-premise instead of using a cloud provider like AWS?

◆ A :
Bandwidth costs! Cloud providers are great but they charge a very high margin on bandwidth. For many companies this isn't an issue, but Bluesky is a fast message network, so going on-premise has reduced our costs significantly.

(Editor's note) We hear more about Bluesky's server configuration in the interview below.

I asked the people at Bluesky everything I want to know right now, including 'Bluesky's ambitions,' 'Bluesky's monetization plan,' 'Bluesky's official server specifications,' 'Will the API ever become unusable?' and 'The relationship between Jack Dorsey and Bluesky' - GIGAZINE

◆ Q :
How can I suggest new features to Bluesky? I'd like the ability to sort all the accounts I follow alphabetically. Also, I'd like the moderation lists I follow to be organized so they are ordered from most to least number of users.

◆ A :
There is a feedback form in the left menu on mobile and on the right side on desktop where you can submit a feature request. Your request has been acknowledged!

◆ Q :
Since the election, the app has seen a huge number of new users. Have there been any changes in your daily life, such as more challenges or pressures?

◆ A :
Simply put, everyone has become busier...

We're always prepared for rapid growth because growth tends to be explosive, and I'd like to take this opportunity to give a huge shout-out to Bluesky's incredible backend and infrastructure team for keeping the service relatively stable while adding over 1 million new users a day.