The Network of Alternative Social Media Researchers

Blacksky: Exemplary Alternative Social Media

RWG, 08 Mar 2026

Blacksky is exemplary alternative social media. Blacksky is a community-run, independent implementation of ATProto technologies that not only is dedicated to Black social media but also runs infrastructure that is open to folks who want to join (so long as they abide by the community guidelines).

In a recent article, Roel Roscam Abbing and I argue that alternative social media are

social media developed in complex relation to mainstream social media. ASM are marked by high interpretive flexibility as they emerge. As dynamic systems, they never totally stabilize. The best approach to their study is for the scholar to be situated.

Here, I want to briefly consider Blacksky along these lines, and I’ll conclude with a note about future research on Blacksky.

Blacksky’s Complex Relation to Corporate Social Media

Blacksky is in a complex relation to the mainstream Bluesky – as well as corporate social media in general. Fundamentally, Blacksky is an alternative: another way of doing social media. As their main website describes,

Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities create safe spaces on their terms, pool resources democratically, and govern collectively—without needing technical expertise to deploy algorithms, moderation tools, or data servers.

Blacksky’s ability to mitigate Bluesky’s banning of accounts is one major indicator of its status as an alternative. Building out alternative infrastructure is a good thing in an environment where people like Trump increasingly interfere with social media corporations. Bluesky PBC is a venture capital-funded corporation. Blacksky is funded through donations on OpenCollective.

To suggest Blacksky is completely oppositional is not quite correct, though. Blacksky’s development feeds into the ATProto development, which can benefit Bluesky PBC. The project is offering a fellowship to support Blackskyers attending the ATPRoto conference in Vancouver later this month. This is not about opposition.

That said, Blacksky is a fulfillment of the idea of “credible exit.” I myself migrated off Bluesky’s infrastructure to Blacksky’s system using PDSMoover. While the ability to leave Bluesky has always been touted as a goal of that company, it has taken community-run projects like Blacksky to make such a possibility real.

Flexibility

Blacksky initially was a moderation algorithm – the Blacksky algorithm surfaced Black folks on Bluesky. It was an early success story for Bluesky’s “algorithmic market” approach.

That alone would have been a very important achievement, particularly as Bluesky has seen racism and whiteness privileged. (The fediverse has not done better, to be clear.)

But Blacksky has done much more than make an algorithm for Bluesky. The project runs Personal Data Servers, a Relay, governance services, and migration services. What’s particularly impressive is how much work Blacksky’s developers have done to reimplement ATProto. Rsky is a reimplementation of ATProto in Rust – an ambitious and exciting project.

These developments are further evidence of the flexibility found in alternative social media – particularly at the early stages of development.

Dynamism

This is not to suggest that contemporary Blacksky is now “complete” or “stabilized.” Like all alternative social media, it will continue to evolve. Indeed, the Blacksky project’s documentation lists several in-progress projects, including hosting of PDS’s for “non-technical” folks, private posting, and mutual aid/donation tools.

Situated Study

I suspect we will see exciting research by alternative social media scholars focusing on Blacksky. If I may, I would suggest that academics studying Blacksky do so in a highly situated fashion – participant observation, interviewing, detailed analysis of underlying code can be key approaches. This of course requires ethical engagement with the Blacksky community, highly attuned to informed consent and participatory research design. On the ASM blog, we recently had a forum on this very topic.