It pulls in trending topics, lets you explore conversations with a threaded view (so no more getting lost in replies), and even allows users to create channels with customizations, basically, like subreddits but on Bluesky.
That said, this is still pretty barebones, and there’s a lot to improve. I really need feedback from actual users to shape where this goes next. Some planned features include markdown support, longer posts, and better mod tools for communities.
For privacy-conscious folks: Only details about channel customizations are stored on our servers. Everything else remains securely stored on your own PDS (Personal Data Server), just like the rest of Bluesky.
Also, I’m planning to open-source the project once I’ve polished things up a bit more.
Would love to hear your thoughts on what’s missing and what would make this actually useful?
It's a key difference IMO, and the main reason I like forums and heavily dislike the twitter-style apps. I want to read the voices of many, not the voices of few "influencers". You can make it look like a forum, but it's still gonna be focused on the voices of few.
That being said, with reddit going crazy over the last few years (and especially this last election cycle), I'm open to suggestions on new places to try that focus on forum-style discussions.
See e.g. https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/7021
> As it stands, if 20 people are involved in a discussion, and ONE single person decides to block someone, then all of a sudden, the 19 other people in the discussion (+ any other viewers) are now inconvenienced simply because one person had an issue with someone else.
> Bluesky does have a bit of a block culture, and as such, this issue is only going to get worse and worse, and threads are going to get harder and harder to read and follow as more and more people get blocked.
Trying to create a Reddit-like experience around this limitation would be very difficult, as the thread breakage is done server-side so the clients don't even get enough info to reconstruct the conversation.
But blocking in ATProto happens at the application (AppView) layer. A different application can absolutely make different choices from the Bluesky app about how blocking works and is displayed.
I don't block you because I had some kind of conflict, I blocked you because I don't like what you tweet and I don't want to see it and it's not clear what "not interested" actually does. Why this would impact anyone other than whom I'm blocking is perplexing. I certainly can't vouch for what they want to see and whom they want to interact with.
But I absolutely agree that the individual-centered social media is as toxic as it can be. Forum-style social media is just a bit less toxic but can be more constructive since it's centered about community and ideas rather than particular individuals/personas.
Decentralised Reddit already exists. It’s USENET.
I recently moved into a direction where the relevant streams of content (let's call them subreddits) get built in the background and persisted locally so when users interact with the website don't need to wait for the whole thing to be built synchronously.
1: https://threadsky.app/post?uri=at%3A%2F%2Fdid%3Aplc%3Ahu2obe...
2: https://bsky.app/profile/tmarsland.bsky.social/post/3kl47lio...