City Research Online

Abstract

The pitfalls of centralized social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter/X, have led to concerns about control, transparency, and accountability. Decentralized social networks have emerged as a result with the goal of empowering users. These decentralized approaches come with their own trade-offs, and therefore multiple architectures exist. In this paper, we conduct the first large-scale analysis of Bluesky, a prominent decentralized microblogging platform. In contrast to alternative approaches (e.g. Mastodon), Bluesky decomposes and opens the key functions of the platform into subcomponents that can be provided by third party stakeholders. We collect a comprehensive dataset covering all the key elements of Bluesky, study user activity and assess the diversity of providers for each sub-components.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	This work is licensed under a Creative Common Attribution International 4.0 License
Publisher Keywords:	Bluesky, Decentralized Social Networks, Social Network Analysis
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Computer Science School of Science & Technology > Computer Science > Software Reliability
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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