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Architecting a New Era of Community, with Blacksky’s Rudy Fraser


What if your social media experience weren’t controlled by an algorithm or a corporation, but by your community? That’s the idea behind Blacksky, a decentralized project built on the AT Protocol — the same infrastructure powering Bluesky.

Though their names contain the same suffix, it’s important to know that Blacksky is not hitching its wagon to the Bluesky app, team or platform. The community, helmed by founder and CEO Rudy Fraser, is charting an independent and ideally replicable path, the kind that’s only possible in an open-source ecosystem.

In this episode of Dot Social, Fraser takes host Mike McCue under the hood of Blacksky’s infrastructure, philosophy, and future plans.

Highlights of this conversation:

04:31 Mutual aid and community building
11:21 Explaining AT Protocol and Blacksky’s infrastructure
14:30 It’s not about the killer app anymore — it’s about the community
15:54 Blacksky’s sub communities
17:55 Dotted line communities and dark social
18:45 Project Cypher and the value of portable identity
21:01 Participating in multiple communities; Northsky
21:36 Joining Blacksky
23:34 Lessons from running Blacksky
25:29 SafeSkies, auto-reporter and other tools
26:37 Blacksky’s business model and licensable tools
29:22 DIDs and applying first principles to communities
33:12 Building for longevity
37:04 Challenges
38:50 Block lists as harassment vectors
39:32 Designing systems around trust; “lazy trust”
44:25 Feature ideas, like delegated moderation
48:32 Better sensible, practical defaults
49:53 Fundraising models
51:31 Monetization scenarios in the future
53:35 Size of and gratitude for Blacksky team
56:18 Check it out, see how you can contribute, do weird stuff

Mentioned in this episode:
Rudy’s ATmosphere conference talk, “Beyond Horseless Carriages”:
Rudy’s blog post, “An internet of many autonomous communities”: blog.rudyfraser.com/an-interne…
Blacksky Labeler: bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d2mkd…
Cypher: github.com/blacksky-algorithms…
Rsky-Relay: github.com/blacksky-algorithms…
SAFEskies: github.com/blacksky-algorithms…
New Yorker article mentioning Rudy: newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04…

🔎 You can find Rudy at @rudyfraser.com.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. about.surf.social/

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