What if your social media experience weren’t controlled by an algorithm or a corporation, but by your community? That’s the idea behind Blacksky, a decentralized project built on the AT Protocol — the same infrastructure powering Bluesky.

Though their names contain the same suffix, it’s important to know that Blacksky is not hitching its wagon to the Bluesky app, team or platform. The community, helmed by founder and CEO Rudy Fraser, is charting an independent and ideally replicable path, the kind that’s only possible in an open-source ecosystem.

In this episode of Dot Social, Fraser takes host Mike McCue under the hood of Blacksky’s infrastructure, philosophy, and future plans.

Highlights include discussions of:

• Mutual aid and community building
• The value of portable identity
• Lessons from running Blacksky so far
• Moderation, tools and business models
• Building for longevity

Mentioned in this episode:

• Rudy’s ATmosphere conference talk, “Beyond Horseless Carriages”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZN8y8kVFFI
• Rudy’s blog post, “An internet of many autonomous communities”: https://blog.rudyfraser.com/an-internet-of-many-autonomous-communities/
• Blacksky Labeler: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d2mkddsbmnrgr3domzg5qexf
• Cypher: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/tree/main/cypher
• Rsky-Relay: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/pull/87
• SAFEskies: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/SAFEskies
• New Yorker article mentioning Rudy: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/blueskys-quest-to-build-nontoxic-social-media

🔎 You can find Rudy at @rudyfraser.com.

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/