Key facts:
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On August 30, a Brazilian judge ordered X’s nationwide suspension.
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Bluesky is a proof of concept AT protocol funded by Jack Dorsey.
A judge has ordered the suspension of the social network X throughout the Brazilian national territory. The measure triggered a colossal migration to Bluesky, a social network born within Twitter and founded by Jack Dorsey, who financed it, although he has since withdrawn from the project. Bluesky is built with AT protocol, a decentralized network for social applications. It saw an influx of one million users in just three days after X was banned by Brazilian internet providers.
Mass migration was announced on Bluesky X’s account on August 31. The ban was allegedly imposed because Elon Musk, CEO of X, refused a request to censor seven accounts associated with supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The ban on X was issued by direct order of a judge to the country’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and any social network, including Bluesky, can be subject to ban. However, the AT protocol on which it is built is not as objectionable as X as it functions as a large-scale distributed system for social applications.
According to your docsAT protocol works as an independent layer to the servers of the applications built on it, although Bluesky is the first. This allows migration of profiles and data (account portability) such as posts, comments, likes or follows in case of censorship or failure of individual servers.
«We assume that a personal data server can fail at any time, either by going offline completely or by ceasing to serve specific users. The goal of the AT protocol is to ensure that a user can migrate their account to a new personal data server without server intervention.»
AT protocol, network for building decentralized social applications.
The X censorship in Brazil This did not stop some of the 40 million Brazilian users from seeking out an alternative social network similar to X, albeit more fundamentally decentralized, such as Bluesky. Acute pressure from governments through coercion and bans often motivates people to use decentralized software.
They can attack Bluesky, but they can’t take down AT protocol
Bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey, who funded the project and stepped down from the board of directors this year. It is a for-profit public benefit corporation easily identifiable by regulators and states. While it implements decentralized features, it operates its own network (Bluesky Social). While this social network service allows for potential interoperability with other AT protocol networks, It runs on proprietary software in a centralized manner.
Although Bluesky is a social network with certain characteristics decentralized, It remains as objectionable by governments (although not so much from within, by its developers) as X.
This is because the loss of access to Internet sites from national territories It is due to a explicit mandate from the judiciary to internet providersNo matter how decentralized a platform is in its philosophy and architecture, ISPs are subject to regulations in each country, and can block any platform for various reasons.
Bluesky is no exception: to be blocked by an ISP, they only need their own domain name server (DNS), agreement with Whois.com.
Bluesky’s feed is very similar to Twitter and X. Source: bsky.app
A system must be very distributed and embedded in many services, protocols and layers of the Internet so that it is not susceptible to veto by an ISP. AT protocol theoretically meets these characteristics. Let us imagine that the same judge issued a ban order against Bitcoin/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Bitcoin either Ethereum/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Ethereumfor example. What would happen?
The obvious answer is that it would not succeed. An ISP would have to ban thousands of bitcoin wallets, thousands of exchanges, and thousands of websites to do so, and the Bitcoin network would still function.
Well, AT Protocolthe networking protocol for decentralized applications, works similarly to the Bitcoin Blockchain in this sense: it is a distributed system, with a base layer that is difficult to censor through bans such as Brazil’s X.
Why is AT Protocol decentralized and difficult to censor?
AT Protocol is open source and moves towards unifying different social networks into a single “web.” It does so by organizing itself as a federated network, that is, as a grouping of more or less autonomous entities that govern themselves but are together; This network Synchronizes and standardizes data and the design between the servers of each social network built on AT protocol.
This synchronization uses the Lexicon Outline to unify server names and behaviors.
AT Protocol exchanges schematic and semantic information, allowing software from different organizations to understand each other’s data.
Bluesky, a social network with decentralized features.
AT Protocol’s decentralization efforts are aimed at interoperability and portability of data and profiles between different networks. This means making it possible for users to move their profiles, content, and data from one network to another with ease without losing everything when a particular server disappears.
This portability works by identifying users with domain names within the AT protocol. These domains “are mapped to cryptographic URLs that protect the user’s account and data.”
Bluesky is the proof of concept for AT Protocol. Source: Source: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/
This connectivity between networks on the same layer generally allows for an immediate contrast of the trends of each social network and more reliable access to truthful, global and voluntarily chosen information. less subject to ideological bias.
AT protocol creates a standard format for user identity, followers, and data in social applications, allowing applications to interoperate and users to move freely between them. It is a federated network with account portability.
Bluesky, a social network with decentralized features.
Algorithms, moderation and freedom of expression
According to Bluesky, users on AT protocol are free to customize its algorithm as they see fit, and search indexes are provided by “independent third parties”; requests are “routed through the partitioned data set (PDS) based on user settings.” In a nutshell, this means they can choose what to read and when to read it.
Permissiveness with open discourse in AT protocol is locked; then, moderation indexes and allows the reach of the content. Source: https://atproto.com
From a practical point of view, these measures are interesting because they make Bluesky a proof of concept of AT protocol that, hosting all kinds of content and information, selectively displays said content. and only to those who are looking for it and allow it to be viewed.
The atproto base layer (personal data repositories and federated networks) creates a common space for expression where everyone is free to participate, analogous to the Web where anyone can create a website. Indexing services then enable outreach by aggregating content from the network, analogous to a search engine.
Bluesky, a social network with decentralized features.
With this model of moderation and indexing of discourse, diverse opinions and different worldviews can coexist in the “same place.” Discourse is not vetoed or censored in and of itself, but rather is born in the context of a freedom of expression that is only moderated after it is expressed and used.
These advances in decentralized social applications are, to say the least, interesting. They are interesting both in the face of pressure from governments to apply direct censorship through DNS blocks, and in the face of censorship coming from centralized social platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram.
Typically, users of traditional social networks like those mentioned above must adapt to content moderation imposed by developers, and have no say in deciding the criteria that guide the information that is shown or hidden to them.
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