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 of this conversation:

04:31 Mutual aid and community building 11:21 Explaining AT Protocol and Blacksky’s infrastructure 14:30 It’s not about the killer app anymore — it’s about the community 15:54 Blacksky’s sub communities 17:55 Dotted line communities and dark social 18:45 Project Cypher and the value of portable identity 21:01 Participating in multiple communities; Northsky 21:36 Joining Blacksky 23:34 Lessons from running Blacksky 25:29 SafeSkies, auto-reporter and other tools 26:37 Blacksky’s business model and licensable tools 29:22 DIDs and applying first principles to communities 33:12 Building for longevity 37:04 Challenges 38:50 Block lists as harassment vectors 39:32 Designing systems around trust; “lazy trust” 44:25 Feature ideas, like delegated moderation 48:32 Better sensible, practical defaults 49:53 Fundraising models 51:31 Monetization scenarios in the future 53:35 Size of and gratitude for Blacksky team 56:18 Check it out, see how you can contribute, do weird stuff

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/