# Bluesky’s Brief Outage: A Reality Check for Decentralized Social Networks

## Bluesky’s Brief Outage: A Reality Check for Decentralized Social Networks

Decentralized social networks are often touted for their resilience and lack of single points of failure. However, on Thursday evening, Bluesky, a prominent player in the decentralized social media space, experienced an outage that left users unable to access the app for about an hour. The issue, as reported on Bluesky’s status page, was attributed to “Major PDS Networking Problems,” referring to personal data servers.

The outage, which began around 6:55 PM ET, sparked a flurry of questions. How could a decentralized platform, designed to avoid centralized vulnerabilities, experience such a disruption? The answer lies in Bluesky’s current implementation of the AT Protocol.

While the AT Protocol theoretically allows anyone to run various components of the infrastructure, including PDS, relays, and other essential elements, the reality is that Bluesky’s official app, which most users interact with, relies heavily on Bluesky’s own infrastructure. In these early stages, few users or communities are running their own independent servers, meaning the platform still possesses a degree of centralization. This concentration of infrastructure meant that when Bluesky’s servers faltered, a significant portion of the user base was affected.

Of course, those who were already running their own PDS instances remained unaffected by the outage, showcasing the potential benefits of a fully decentralized ecosystem.

The vision for Bluesky and the AT Protocol involves a future where numerous communities operate their own infrastructure, moderation services, and even client applications. Projects like Blacksky are already working towards creating safer and more welcoming online spaces using these decentralized tools. The long-term goal is for Bluesky to become just one of many entities supporting the growing number of applications built on the AT Protocol.

This recent outage served as a reminder that the promise of decentralization is a journey, not an instant solution. It also reignited the rivalry between Bluesky and Mastodon, another decentralized social network using the ActivityPub protocol. Mastodon users were quick to point out the irony of a “decentralized” service experiencing downtime, with some joking about the reliability of self-hosted Mastodon instances.

Despite the ribbing, Bluesky’s outage was relatively short-lived, and the service is now back online. The incident, however, underscores the importance of further developing and diversifying the infrastructure of decentralized social networks to truly realize their potential for resilience and user autonomy. It’s a crucial step toward ensuring that the future of social media is not only decentralized in principle, but also in practice.