Bluesky, Jack Dorsey’s alternative to Twitter, is now available by invite-only on Android devices after hitting the App Store in February. the edge informed. The app has a number of Twitter-like features, allowing you to search and follow other users, create posts (with photos), and more. However, it is currently in beta, so it has a limited number of users (reportedly around 25,000) and is missing features like direct messages.
Bluesky first emerged in 2019 as a Twitter-backed side as a new kind of decentralized standard for social media platforms. It officially parted ways with Twitter in 2021 and has since joined the ranks of new Twitter clones like Mastodon that emerged after the Elon Musk takeover.
The application is designed so that users decide how they want to see and consume social networks. “For developers, an open algorithm marketplace will provide the freedom to experiment and publish algorithms that anyone can use,” CEO Jay Graber wrote last month. “For users, the ability to customize their feed will put them back in control of their most valuable resource: their attention.”
Graber has said that moderation is one of the last pieces of the puzzle to solve before the app opens to the public “because we wanted to prioritize user safety from the start,” he wrote in a recent blog post. It will apparently use a combination of automated filtering and server-level moderation controlled by administrators. Then, “we will allow users to subscribe to additional sets of moderation tags that can filter more content or accounts.”
