- Run the comments on an instance you moderate
- Even better, only show comments that your account has favourited.
More details on the last one here:
EDIT: Ask five people you know outside of tech if they have a Github account. Everyone I know outside of tech moved to Bluesky from Twitter. No one I know outside of tech has a Github account. If I encounter someone who has neither, I'm of course going to recommend a Bluesky account from a utility perspective, as they're likely never going to contribute code, issues, discussion on GH if not a tech person. (most of my network is non tech, non startup, non SV people, ymmv; HN is the closest I get to tech folks most of the time)
I built a web component for the same purpose, and you can see in there how I implemented threadgating: https://github.com/ascorbic/bluesky-comments-tag
(blog author works at bluesky, no affiliation personally)
Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how incorrect another comment is or you feel it is.
Doing this has the obvious downside of making the threads more toxic, plus the less obvious one of discrediting the truth (assuming your comment is indeed correct) by giving it toxic associations. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://cassidyjames.com/blog/fediverse-blog-comments-mastod...
And of course there are several implementations and hosts for relays (the gossip nodes), PDS implementations, clients, and appviews (the server backend for bluesky the web app).
So strictly speaking if bluesky imploded tomorrow you could just use a self hosted version of the same app or use someone else's (such as https://zeppelin.social).
The PLC directory is still technically in bluesky's hands but is being transferred an independent foundation atm and could be trivially forked if needed. And of course if you use did:web that doesn't apply to you and you just depend on DNS.
After spending too much time fiddling with third-party comment systems, I ended up building my own [1]. It's pretty barebones, just does what I need, and nothing more.
Each comment is written to a text file for manual review, so I don't have to worry about spam, cross-site scripting, or irrelevant comments. I usually check them on weekends and add them to my blog.
Comments are stored as plain HTML files, and my static site generator [2] builds the site along with the comment pages [3]. So in a way, it's also a static comment pages generator.
This setup doesn't meet the five attributes (no infra, rich content, real identity, etc.) in the second section of the article, so it wouldn't suit the author's needs, but it has worked quite well for me. I've been using it for at least four years (perhaps much longer, since my old PHP website did something similar), and I've been quite happy with it.
[1] https://github.com/susam/susam.net/blob/main/form.lisp
And PDS level/"account" bans are just at the PDS. If you've been "banned", that's just bluesky the PDS host telling you they don't want to host you and that you need to go host your data yourself or find someone else to host it for you. i.e. find another PDS.
Basically every form of ban or moderation in atproto/bluesky is "soft" moderation and you can fairly trivially bypass it and continue doing your own thing.
The overwhelming majority of right wing accounts that get banned do so soon after joining (and generally after going to pick fights). And they never even bother to try to keep their accounts, instead choosing to create new accounts to get banned again or abandon the platform. It's disingenuous behavior and for right wing personalities it feels almost more like a sticker of pride that they were "banned from bluesky".
Plenty of right leaning and libertarian accounts exist on bluesky. Project Liberal [1] and Liberal Party USA [2] (run by Josh Eakle[3] and Kevin Gaughen[4] respectively) exist just fine on bluesky and they are large splinter groups from the Libertarian Party following the whole Mises Caucus coup attempt thing. Likewise a number of libertarian groups such as the Libertarian Party of Lousiana [5] do just fine on bluesky. And of course AI and Cryptocurrency people also do just fine on bluesky as well despite the stereotypes against them and the common belief that "they aren't welcome on bluesky". The worst thing that happens is people block or mute you and you don't have to deal with them anymore rather than toxicly fighting each other each time you see each other.
TLDR: Everyone is welcome on bluesky but there's no requirement for people to tolerate you. Even if you violate every transgression, as long as you aren't posting literal child porn to the network you'll still be able to exist just fine however people might just ignore you.
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1. Project Liberal: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d5nigw7kzpsglf3gtl2dvbev
2. Liberal Party USA: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v3jmda7lwwdoofcvgmjwsbcg
3. Josh Eakle: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2adtngm3y6e6ol6jastnkxzm
4. Kevin Gaughen: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4oyecf2hz4ajhm4zqp52hxqo
5. LP of Lousiana: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mongiv55fh5l5e7vi7cbjajw
and would say the bright side of the "enshittification cycle" is that we get nice places for a while and then we can move on. It's not like people party at the Mudd Club or CBGB anymore and why should they? Theory at
I would be willing to guess that self hosting gitea as a backup mirror is less work than doing the same for Bluesky. But, just speculating
I'm currently building a review system for my open source Web map https://cartes.app, based on Bluesky. Not trivial though, you have to create a lexicon and maintain a DB based on the Bluesky stream.
And of course it's also opt in as well. Just the default bluesky client does that by default. Any third party client (ex: https://deer.social or https://zeppelin.social) can opt-out of "default moderation". And technically you could use a userscript or even potentially a ublock rule/filter to disable default moderation (just like you can to disable regional moderation or age verification).
As for frontends, there's a bunch of them and a lot of them focus on changing the UX. But for self hosted "bluesky", there is https://deer.social which is a forked client that still relies on the bluesky appview/backend and there is https://zeppelin.social which is downstream of deer social but also runs their own appview independent of "big bluesky".
Bill Corbett: https://bsky.app/profile/billcorbett.bsky.social
John Scalzi: https://bsky.app/profile/scalzi.com
Wil Wheaton: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mwpiq2rr6joccohcz2urkwvn
NY Times Pitchbot: https://bsky.app/profile/nytpitchbot.bsky.social
Electrek: https://bsky.app/profile/electrek.co
Stephen King: https://bsky.app/profile/stephenking.bsky.social
2 - https://docs.bsky.app/docs/api/com-atproto-repo-get-record
it has guest support (so people does not need a matrix account to comment), but if you use your own matrix account, you are essentially joining a matrix room per post.
https://github.com/AndreasThinks/quarto-open-social-comments
One example of a profile that lives on a different PDS ("AT Protocol Personal Data Server") than the default one: https://bsky.app/profile/mackuba.eu
If you look in the bottom left of https://clearsky.app/mackuba.eu/history, it shows:
> User changed [...] 1/2/2025 to external server PDS: https://lab.martianbase.net
If you go to that URL, you'll see the landing page for the atproto PDS software.
Edit: Ah, and seems Kuba is hosting a directory of profiles using their own PDS as well, lots of examples over there: https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdses
Biggest one right now (excluding the default one) seems to be atproto.brid.gy, which has 40393 accounts.