Data Privacy

What is public and what is private on Bluesky?

Bluesky is a public social network. Think of your posts as blog posts – anyone on the web can see them, even those without an invite code. An invite code simply grants access to the service we’re running that lets you publish a post yourself. (Developers familiar with the API can view all posts regardless of whether they have an account themselves.)

Specifically:

• Posts and likes are public.
• Blocks are public.
• Mutes are private, but mutelists are public lists. Your mutelist subscriptions are private.
• Invites and invite trees are private.

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.

What happens when I delete a post?

After you delete a post, it will be immediately removed from the user-facing app. Any images attached to your post will be immediately deleted in our data storage too.

However, it takes a bit longer for the text content of a post to be fully deleted in storage. The text content is stored in a non-readable form, but it is possible to query the data via the API. We will periodically perform back-end deletes to entirely wipe this data.

Can I get a copy of all of my data?

Yes — the AT Protocol keeps user data in a content-addressed archive. This archive can be used to migrate account data across servers. For developers, you can use this method to export a copy of your repository. For non-devs, the tooling is still being built to make it easy.

You can read our privacy policy here.