The Free Software Foundation has joined Bluesky without recommending it. Here’s why the organization made this rare exception—and why Mastodon still comes closer to passing the free software test.
Wowie zowie! The FSF has a Bluesky presence.
Almost everybody who knows anything about the Free Software Foundation and its founder Richard Stallman knows that pretty much all social networking platforms fit the free software definition about as well as a square peg fits a round hole — for a variety of reasons.
For starters — social sites monetizing themselves through advertising are exploiting their users. As Stallman used to point out twenty years ago when Facebook and Twitter were getting started, users are a social platform’s product. Advertisers aren’t laying good money on the table because they think Facebook is cool. They’re spending bucks to buy eyeballs… and a kind of engagement that doesn’t exist on garden-variety news sites.
This is one reason why Stallman has for decades called social platforms “antisocial.” There are other reasons as well. Like the fact that most social platforms require you to use software that’s not free, as well as applications that track you and otherwise compromise your privacy and personal security.
But I’m starting to go down a rabbit hole that I don’t need to go down for an article about the FSF’s new Bluesky account.
On Monday, FSF announced that it now has a presence on Bluesky, a social network that first cranked-up a little over two years ago after spending a year as a beta in “invitation only” mode. I’ve been on board since those early beta days, and it has become one of my two favorite social sites, behind Mastodon. I like it because so far it remains ad free (that’s liable to change), and because I see a lot of intelligent engagement on it, as I do on Mastodon.
FSF — Picking Its Platforms Carefully
I was surprised to see that FSF has opted to create a Bluesky presence, even though it’s had a popular account on Mastodon for a while, which I’ve been following. It turns out that the folks at FSF are expecting our surprise, and prepared for some of us to at least raise an eyebrow.
“We can’t advocate that you sign up for a Bluesky account like we do with Mastodon or PeerTube, since signing up for Bluesky means loading the registration page’s nonfree JavaScript,” the organization’s outreach and communications coordinator, Eko K. A. Owen, wrote in a blog on FSF’s website. “But, we have done this ourselves to make an effort to reach people where they are, letting them know about software freedom, including establishing understanding of the issues of this service itself.”
What’s refreshing about this, at least to me (although maybe not to Stallman — I’ve reached out to him, but haven’t received an answer at publication time), is that FSF is giving Bluesky credit for some of the moves it’s made to not be Facebook or X. At the same time, it’s also clear that Bluesky isn’t getting any sort of free software seal of approval.
Even so, FSF’s use of the platform gives something of a silent nod and a wink that might be interpreted as a hint of permission to not always follow free software guidelines. It offers users the freedom to make their own choices.
A Free Software View of Bluesky
A wink and a nod with a caveat full of typical free software “buts,” however:
The Bluesky developers have taken steps to improve upon microblogging services like X (Twitter), but there continue to be some issues with its clients and governance structure. If you’re considering joining, we recommend keeping these points in mind:
- JavaScript: When signing up for Bluesky, like with many other websites or services, you must use nonfree JavaScript, which violates your user rights. No matter what operating system you run, even a free one like GNU/Linux, the vast majority of sites online will serve up and download proprietary programs without asking or telling you — all in the form of nonfree JavaScript.
- Federated, but: While federated, Bluesky is generally not considered part of the “fediverse” network of social media services like Mastodon and PeerTube, as it uses its own AT protocol rather than ActivityPub. Bluesky itself is the chief arbiter of how AT Protocol is defined, something which we’ve seen used against free communities of users time and time again. Hosting your own Bluesky “Personal Data Server (PDS)” and relay is technically possible, but generally far more difficult and resource-intensive than spinning up an instance of Mastodon, let alone any of the lighter-weight ActivityPub servers like Akkoma or Starling.
- Free software codebase, but: Much of the Bluesky codebase is freely licensed. This allows users to run, copy, modify, and share large parts of the codebase. However, Bluesky’s web client still serves nonfree JavaScript to users, just like its registration page. (Since our script was written for us specifically, we have not extensively vetted all available clients.)
So, given FSF’s historical strong line in the sand, why is the organization making an exception?
“Simply put, we have to continue to reach people where they are. Bluesky is a decent choice for us that evades many of the issues of other, more problematic networks. Without reaching people who don’t already know about us, we unfortunately have very little chance of achieving our mission and educating new people about the free software philosophy. We accepted running Bluesky’s nonfree JavaScript a single time if it meant being able to reach people who have never heard of software freedom.”
Why Mastodon Remains the Better Free Software Choice
Mastodon’s software (as plenty of Mastodon users take glee in pointing out) pretty much passes the sniff test for free software, except for one possible small consideration…
By definition, a social network is SaaS, which Stallman often calls SaaSS for “service as a software substitute,” which according to Stallman, can expose users to “various sorts of exploitation, manipulation, and possibly even persecution.” In other words, SaaS often, if not always, falls on the “naughty” and not the “nice” side of the list.
If I were a judge here, I would probably go out on a limb and rule that the SaaSS caution doesn’t apply to Mastodon, fully knowing the ruling could be overturned by a higher court.
My ruling would partly be based on mitigating circumstances.
From a free software perspective, Mastodon has a lot in its favor, starting with its “federated” nature. Put simply, federated means that instead of being a single gigantic entity, it’s a collection of smaller social sites — called servers, or instances — all using a shared software-base, and all tied together to make a single whole called Mastodon.
This means that instead of one big monolith like Facebook or X, there are something like 7,600 different instances (effectively, each a separate social platform) that together create a single platform called Mastodon. There’s more to it than that, of course. Because of freedom of association, not every server is connected to every other server. One advantage of this is that each instance can establish its own moderation rules — and when bullies try to band together in a single server, they’re easily blocked.
Bluesky is also federated, but to a much lesser degree, partly because new users default to the Bluesky server — bsky.social. New user to Mastodon must choose a server when setting up their account.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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