Tag: press
My guest post on RA For All: Training Library Workers To Help Leisure Readers
Thanks to Becky Spratford aka @raforall.bsky.social
Author Interview: THE KABUKI BOOK (Literary Titan)
In-depth conversation with Kohōpeh for Literary Titan on THE KABUKI BOOK.
Editorial Review: THE KABUKI BOOK (Literary Titan)
Editorial review coverage for THE KABUKI BOOK from Literary Titan.
Podcast: The Kabuki Book on Literary Titan
Listen to the Literary Titan podcast episode featuring The Kabuki Book: Entertainment for Commoners.
Editorial Review: THE KABUKI BOOK (Reader's Favorite)
Editorial review coverage and critical acclaim for THE KABUKI BOOK from Reader's Favorite.
(latina-press) São Paulo und Rio de Janeiro gehören zu den besten queeren Orten der Welt
15. July 2026 Time Out hat São Paulo und Rio de Janeiro in seine Auswahl der besten Queer-Locations weltweit aufgenommen, die anlässlich des Pride-Monats zusammengestellt wurde. Direktlink Hier den Artikel weiter lesen...
Author Interview: Lotus, Mud, Blade (New In Books)
Author interview with Kohōpeh for New In Books on Lotus,Mud, Blade.
Editorial Review: LOTUS, MUD, BLADE (Reader's Favorite)
Editorial review critique and coverage for LOTUS, MUD, BLADE from Reader's Favorite.
A startup called Germ becomes the first private messenger that launches directly from Bluesky’s app
Xue agreed, adding, “We align with the ATProto ethos that people should be able to communicate using the apps and tools they choose. We believe that by solving the hard problems for ATProto users in safe, transparent, and user-friendly ways, they’ll continue to choose us,” he said. Shortly after Bluesky added support for the Germ badge, another AT Protocol-based client, Blacksky, did as well.
Rethinking Digital Storage for Community-Based Archives
We are at a tipping point where “digital convenience” has become a trap for community memory. For archives and ongoing movements, the corporate cloud is no longer a neutral storage locker — it is a liability.
January 30th, 2026: New Frontiers
Blacksky Algorithms has announced an amazing new initiative to support mutual aid called BlackSky Cash. It's a thought-provoking effort with impressive goals, and it's exciting to see what's coming here.
Rudy Fraser x Blacksky Algorithms: The Architecture of Sovereign Communities | Episode 18
Sovereignty is not an aesthetic. It is infrastructure." In a digital landscape defined by extraction and surveillance, true autonomy requires owning the platform, not just the profile. In Episode 18, we sit down with Rudy Fraser, founder of Blacksky Algorithms, to dismantle the current state of the internet. We discuss the creation of sovereign internet communities and the unique challenges faced by Black leaders in tech. This is not just about coding; it is about the "praxis of autonomy"—building open-source, community-driven platforms that prioritize privacy over profit.
“No One’s Coming to Save Us. Why Communities Must Build Their Own Internet” -Rudy Fraser, Blacksky
Rudy Fraser, Founder & CEO of Blacksky Algorithms shares how Blacksky grew into the largest Black community on the decentralized web, with custom feeds used by over 2.5M people. He explains how their toolkit lets communities control algorithms, moderation, governance, and pooled funds while staying connected to a global social media ecosystem. Rudy talks about mutual aid roots, open-source development, community-written guidelines, the impact of US politics and free-speech crackdowns, and why privacy-preserving, community-run spaces are essential for Black autonomy and modern cypherpunk organizing.
Exit and Interoperability Exist Today, If You Know Where To Look
PDS MOOver is a portability suite (with a cute cow logo) that lets you move your PDS between any two providers, plus useful stuff like backup and restore. And Blacksky has added PDS hosting to their suite of alternate ATProtocol services, with a tool called Tektite for the migration process. This is all pretty nascent – one estimate from August was that only about 1% of PDS were outside Bluesky servers. That was before Blacksky ramped up, so the number is probably higher now. And the vision of portable, personal storage is clear. Someday, you may be able to move your PDS around at least as easily as moving your money to a new bank.
Trump Administration’s Arrival on Bluesky Highlights Growing Pains for Open Networks
It would have been better if the open networking sector had longer to build—just another year or two before Musk’s acquisition of Twitter or before the acceleration of the global authoritarian slide. But the ecosystems we have today offer plentiful ways for people who care about community self-governance to support the work of building out viable systems for high-context governance and connecting them together, by supporting efforts like Blacksky Algorithms and Northsky Social, which are building AT Protocol-based social networking stacks centering Black and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities
The Blurred Truths of Sora
That is a growing concern among developers who say there are now too many social networking apps that have a poor understanding of social dynamics. Like Sora, they are “inherently antisocial and nihilistic,” says Rudy Fraser, the creator of Blacksky, the custom feed and moderation service for Black users on Bluesky. “They’ve given up on fostering real human connection and are looking to profit on supplying people with artificial connection and manufactured dopamine.”
A new wave of social media apps provide hope in a doomscrolling world
“We’re demonstrating with AT Protocol that you can have a great user experience, have a good time again on the internet, and have real autonomy the entire time,” Fraser said.
Open Social
There’s a new movement on the block. I like to call it “open social”. There are competing visions for what “open social” should be like. I think the AT Protocol created by Bluesky is the most convincing take on it so far. It’s not perfect, and it’s a work in progress, but there’s nothing I know quite like it.
Rudy Fraser on Blacksky, Mutual Aid & Reclaiming Social Media
Rudy Fraser is the founder of Blacksky, a community-driven project building on top of the AT Protocol while remaining independent of Bluesky, where that protocol originated. At Blacksky, he and his team are applying the principles of mutual aid and community ownership to algorithms, moderation teams, and governance tools for the Black community, giving users more control over their means of communication. “For me, community really means mutual accountability between the one and the many,” Rudy
Nodestar: Building Blacksky w/ Rudy Fraser
This is part two of Nodestar, our three-part series on decentralisation. Blacksky is a community built using the AT Protocol by Rudy Fraser. Rudy built this both out of a creative drive to make something new using protocol thinking, and out of frustration over a lack of safe community spaces for black folks where they could be themselves, and not have to experience anti-black racism or misogynoir as a price of entry. Rudy and Alix discuss curation as moderation, the future of community stewardship, freeing ourselves from centralised content decision-making, how technology might connect with mutual aid, and the beauty of what he refers to as ‘dotted-line communities’.
Mississippi’s age assurance law puts decentralized social networks to the test
An overly broad age assurance law in Mississippi is leading to arguments about which platforms — Bluesky, Mastodon, or others — offer the best solution for avoiding crackdowns on internet freedoms.
Techdirt Podcast Episode 428: Blacksky Demonstrates The Promise Of Open Social Media Protocols
The goal of Bluesky and the ATProtocol, and of the push for protocols over platforms in general, has always been to see more people building their own communities in a modular fashion. One of the most interesting projects demonstrating this potential is Blacksky, created by Rudy Fraser, which started as a custom feed within Bluesky but has grown into something much bigger. Today, Rudy joins the podcast for a conversation all about Blacksky and what it teaches us about open social media protocols.
Skylight’s TikTok alternative adds community curators to the mix
A startup called Skylight is taking a different approach to short-form video. Instead of restricting users to an algorithmic main feed, as is common on social apps, Skylight is building a community around human curators who post and repost videos to build out their own custom feeds others can subscribe to.
🔭🖤🚀 Social media’s next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable
How Blacksky grew to millions of users without spending a dollar
Blacksky Algorithms: Building Decentralized Social Media with Rudy Fraser
In this episode of Stats On Stats, we’re joined by Rudy Fraser, founder of Blacksky Algorithms and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center. Rudy unpacks his journey from growing up in Queens to leading one of the most innovative decentralized social projects online. He explains how Blacksky, a Black-led community built on the BlueSky protocol, is reimagining content moderation, data ownership, and online safety
Inside Navigate: The Retreat That’s Redefining Digital Leadership
in the geopolitics and tech sovereignty session, BKC’s Applied Social Media Lab Fellow Rudy Fraser remarked on how relevant the conversations were to his own work in the tech space. “It covered increasing US isolationism and the push for independent tech stacks… The global appetite for community sovereignty is real.”
Blacksky and the Future of Community with 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.
Trump Wants to Erase Black History. These Digital Archivists Are Racing to Save It
In 2023, Fraser launched Blacksky, the custom feed and moderation service that quickly turned into the central meeting ground for many Black users on Bluesky. He tells me he also views Blacksky as a living archive. Currently its database holds 17 million posts from Black users over the last two years (excluding deletions and moderation removals). “Because the AT Protocol is public and Blacksky’s implementation is open source, anyone with the technical chops could reconstruct the dataset—minus moderation actions—even if our primary databases disappeared,” he says. “Open source, decentralized tooling ensures that, if any single company becomes a nation-state target, the communities that rely on its infrastructure can keep operating.”
Building #Blacksky
Fraser is a young technologist and organizer whose ambitious side project has become building Blacksky into something much more ambitious than an ephemeral hashtag. He wants to create a thriving, safe Black online community.
Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter—and It Doesn’t Need to Be
The curated feed, now run by a team of six moderators, is the meeting ground for hundreds of thousands of Black users on Bluesky. Is it ready to meet the moment?
Could Blacksky emerge as Black Twitter’s spiritual successor on Bluesky?
What sets Blacksky apart technically is its innovative use of the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol), Bluesky’s decentralized social networking standard. Unlike traditional social networks, where a single company controls all user data and interactions, the AT Protocol allows users to own their identity and move their data between apps and services – similar to how email works across different providers.