Hello, traveler! You’ve just joined Blue Sky and have no idea what the hell you’re doing, right? It’s okay, none of us did either when we first got on this weird little site. Here’s a rundown of what to expect, where to find things, and how everything works.

BASIC STUFF!

The most important thing to know: there is an algorithm here, but it functions on engagement. If you don’t interact with posts, Bluesky will be a very boring place for you. Have you been a lurker all your life? Welcome to your obnoxious posting era, whether you like it or not. Except we call posts skeets. And reskeets. (Yeah, we know what skeet means, that’s kinda the point.) Go say hi to people! Join feeds for things you like (I’ll get to feeds in a minute). Make friends. Be earnest and swell and nifty, and people will notice. More stuff to note about the algorithm: unlike TikTok, it doesn’t throttle you for stepping outside your niche. Be your weirdest and most complex self. Skeet pet pics, feet pics, and food pics all in the same hour! Confuse and delight your followers! Also unlike TikTok, you can swear and talk frankly about sex and adult activities on the skyline (read: timeline).

The SECOND most important thing to know: all posts are public. This means EVERYTHING. Tread carefully and make sure you only post what you don’t mind being out there for the entire internet to see.

As per the current Bluesky FAQ:

Specifically:

Why are my posts, likes, and blocks public?

The AT Protocol, which Bluesky is built on, is designed to support public conversations. To make public conversations portable across all sorts of platforms, your data is stored in data repositories that anyone can view. This means that regardless of which server you choose to join, you’ll still be able to see posts across the whole network, and if you choose to change servers, you can easily take all of your data with you. This is what causes the user experience of Bluesky, a federated protocol, to be similar to all the other social media apps you have used before.

Can I set my profile to be private?

Currently, there are no private profiles on Bluesky.

Moderation and Content Filtering

“But Plums! I don’t wanna see sex and adult activities without a warning!” Well, you’re in luck. Over on the sidebar, you’ve got a nifty little menu called “Moderation” that you can go into and set up what adult stuff you want to see and what adult stuff you don’t. Are you cool with seeing lewd photos when you’re at home but you don’t want tits showing up on your phone while you’re waiting in the doctor’s office? Just tab on over and click “Hide” on the content type you want to hide. It works instantly. And then when you get back home, you can turn it right back on by hitting “Show”. Easy peasy!

While we’re over on that sidebar, let’s check out a few more things. If you open up your Settings, you’ll see a toggle switch that might be unfamiliar to you, but trust me, it’s very cool. It’s labeled “Require alt text on images.” What’s alt text? It’s an accessibility feature for blind, low-vision, or neurodivergent users where you add image descriptions to your images. If you’ve never done this before, or haven’t done it consistently, turning this switch on will place a gate between you and sending a skeet with an image in it. The gate will be removed once you add alt text. Here’s a how-to guide on best practices for writing alt text - it isn’t scary or terribly hard, I promise! And it ensures that everyone can enjoy your skeets to the fullest extent. If you don’t have time to add alt text to a skeet containing an image, adding the phrase “#alttext4me” will add your skeet to a feed where volunteer users on Bluesky add alt text to images. You can also tag the alt text bot @alt-text.bsky.social for the same action. As of July 21st, 2023, a whopping 30% of image-containing skeets on Bluesky feature alt text! Let’s keep that number trending upward. It’d be really great if you helped!

“Plums, how do I find my people? Are hashtags a thing here?” Short answer: eeehhh, sorta, not really? Some feeds (which, yes, we’ll get to, hold your horses) pick up skeets by using certain hashtags or emoji. The gardening feed aggregates skeets by looking for the little green sprout emoji on a given post. The author feed aggregates skeets by looking for “#author” on a given post. Individual skeets aren’t aggregated by the hashtags they use, so it’s not really useful to include hashtag identifiers on yours. A lot of us assume that including, say, #gamer on our skeet will hyperlink that phrase and allow us to find all the other folks who use that same hashtag on their skeets. Bluesky doesn’t have this function yet. Your hashtags won’t hyperlink anywhere. Which brings us to… drumroll please…

FEEDS!

Feeds are the heart and soul of Blue Sky. Feeds are how you find your people, or make a place for your people to find you. They’re individual collections of skeets based around a topic or hobby. Some of the most popular ones are BlackSky (populated by Black users), Newskies (where all first skeets go), What’s Hot Classic (for popular site-wide skeets), and Suggestive (for lewds, nudes, and sexy pics of all kinds). As I mentioned above, feeds are the only consistent place on Bluesky where hashtags are routinely used, and that’s just to allow a feed to pick up a given skeet. You can find them by going into the wifi boob on the sidebar. Some are listed on the app itself under the “Discover New Feeds” list, but a more complete list lives on GoodFeeds (although the true number of feeds is, oddly, a bit unknown, given that a feed only shows up on GoodFeeds after it hits 50 likes). Adding a feed is relatively simple; this is one of the only times where you really should click ALL the buttons. When you view a feed, you’ll see a thumbs-up to like to feed, a plus to add it to Your Feeds, and a thumbtack to pin it to the top of your skyline. The thumbs up counts toward a feed’s visibility, both in the app and on GoodFeeds, and the plus sign adds a feed to your list. The thumbtack will pin your feeds to the top of your Bluesky home page, and you can scroll horizontally through them. it’s a good idea to consider cycling through different feeds on your pinned list, otherwise it can result in a cluttered top bar appearance (and you’ll probably forget the ones at the end of the scroll bar exist, let’s be honest).

If you know the creator of a given feed, you can find the link to their feed in their profile under the “Feeds” tab. If you follow someone new, it’s a good idea to check if they have a feed tab, just to see what they’re up to and possibly join in if you want.

OTHER STUFF!

When making a skeet with a link to another site, you can click “Add Link Card” in the bottom of your draft, which will let you erase the original link to save your characters for another use.

If you’re seeing too many replies to conversation you don’t care about in your Following feed, the OnlyPosts feed is a good alternative. This feed stocks only posts (as the name suggests) from folks you follow, making your skyline less cluttered. Conversely, if you’re like “gimme ALL the content!”, firesky.tv has a real time crawl of every single skeet punted into existence on Bluesky.

Oh, and there are no DMs. Yep, that means that if you want somebody to know that you think they’re cute, hot, attractive, neat, or interesting, you gotta tell ‘em in front of everyone. Have fun!