FSF is Now on Bluesky - But Won't Advocate Signing Up Due to Nonfree JavaScript

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has joined the social media platform Bluesky, according to a recent announcement. However, the FSF does not recommend signing up for a Bluesky account due to the presence of nonfree JavaScript on the site. While Bluesky is part of the federated network known as the fediverse, it uses its own communication protocol, AT, instead of the commonly used ActivityPub.

Hosting an individual Bluesky Personal Data Server (PDS) and relay is indeed possible, but it is considerably more challenging and requires more resources than setting up an instance of Mastodon or other similar ActivityPub servers like Akkoma or Starling. A significant portion of the Bluesky codebase is freely licensed, which permits users to run, modify, and share most of its components. Nonetheless, the web client of Bluesky still loads nonfree JavaScript, similar to what happens on its registration page.

The decision to join Bluesky was made to continue reaching out to people where they spend their time. The FSF believes that Bluesky is a reasonable option that avoids many of the problems associated with other, less favorable networks. Despite the nonfree JavaScript issue, the FSF chose to accept running it only once, in order to be able to communicate with those who are unfamiliar with software freedom.

The FSF's blog post advises its supporters to follow the FSF on both Bluesky and Mastodon. Additionally, Slashdot has also established an account on Bluesky.