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Blue Skies or Gray? A Case Study in Privacy by Design
An imminent change to a growing social media platform offers an opportunity to advocate for privacy by default in our user experiences
If you’re not familiar with Bluesky, it’s one of the few microblogging platforms jockeying for supremacy, since Twitter began its long slow slide into ignominy. The front runners now seem to be Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. Bluesky slowly but steadily built its way up to two million users recently, despite being an invite-only app. I’ve enjoyed using it as a Twitter replacement. Users often comment that it’s much more conflict and troll-free than Twitter (OK, X) given the current hurdles involved in accessing the platform.
That may be about to change, however.
This past Thursday, the official Bluesky account posted an update, which reads as follows:
Exciting news: We’re taking another step to making Bluesky an open network for public conversations. Around the end of this month, we’ll release a public web interface. With this, you’ll be able to view posts on Bluesky without being logged in on an account.
This announcement, no doubt, appealed to many users, who would like the content they’re posting to be seen by as many people as…
