Why any of this was necessary instead of using the built-in Feeds and moderation capabilities on Bluesky is unclear. Seems like a ton of work to manage the separate server. (a similar refrain from fediverse/mastodon things) But if they're happy sure.

A rare example of another AT protocol PDS running, since most have just stuck with the Bluesky operated central one.

The whole impetus for the original project inside Twitter was the recognition that centralized moderation at scale is impossible without ignoring what makes different communities unique. Context collapses fast and well-intentioned moderation decisions spark huge, unending imbroglios.

It's worth noting that they are using bluesky feeds and moderation services/labellers. They just have written their own rust implementations for the tools/services and their frontend (which is largely a fork of bluesky-social upstream) changes the default experience/settings.

So there's still full interop. You can use the blacksky feed and labeller from other bluesky apps and likewise for the reverse.

TLDR: They wrote their own implementation of the tooling in their language of choice (Rust instead of Go) and their version of the "app"/frontend sets the defaults for their community.

Unstated, but: they don't fully trust the Bluesky admins and especially their moderators. While not wanting to, er, segregate themselves from the wider "Bluesky" community.

> Why any of this was necessary instead of using the built-in Feeds and moderation capabilities on Bluesky is unclear.

Assuming you absolutely trust Bluesky-the-company to behave itself now and in the future, it probably isn't necessary. If you don't, then this sort of step towards real decentralisation is important.

This largely makes Bluesky-the-broader-network immune to the Elon Musk factor, tho; even if some idiot buys and breaks Bluesky-the-company, you'd expect more Blacksky-like thing to bud off.