Stephen Downes

W Social is a new Europe-based social network service build on the Bluesky network. As Elena Rosssini reports, "it has been experiencing major technical problems for over a week: it is effectively a ghost town, filled with thousands of new accounts that cannot use the platform." What has been happening is that the new accounts have been throttled by Bluesky's home servers, rendering them useless to their new owners (by 'throttled' we should be clear that what is meant here is "rate-limited to zero"). The problem is resolved, but questions remain. As Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko comments, "'Bluesky PBC is rate limiting this server so you can't post or like anything' is definitely one of the decentralized social networking protocols of all time."