Apparently, decentralized social networks can also fall. On Thursday night, the decentralized social network BlueSky experienced a significant interruption, which users could not load onto the web and mobile devices for about an hour. According to a message on the status page of Bluesky, the company was aware of the interruption attributed to “important PDS network problems.” (PDS means personal data services.)

The first status message was posted at 18:55 hours, and a second one indicating that a solution was applied was shared shortly thereafter at 19:38 ET.

The question that many people now ask is: How has this decentralized social network decreased? Isn’t it … decentralized? Is not one of the benefits of decentralization that there is not a single point of failure?

This appears to be, despite the decentralized nature of the platform, the majority of Bluesky users today interacted with the service via Bluesy’s official app, powered by the AT protocol. While in theory, someone can Infrastructure that constitutes the protocol, Including PDs, Relais and other components, it is still early days for the social network, so few have done it.

Those who did not have been influenced by the interruption.

In time, the idea that many communities will be built on blues, some with their own infrastructure, moderation services and even customer applications. (One example of this is the work that the work Blackerky The team does to create safer, more welcoming online spaces that benefit from these decentralized tools.)

Ultimately, the hope that Bluesy will be one of the many entities that run the infrastructure needed to support the growing number of applications built on the AT protocol.

Within the near term, however, a break -up that affects Bluesky’s infrastructure will be felt wider.

The interruption, of course, raised part of the rivalry between Bluesky and another decentralized social network, Mastodon, which works on another social network protocol called ActivityPub. Mastodon users were rapidly pointing to Bluesy’s interruption to make jokes or jabs focusing on Bluesy’s approach to decentralization.

One mastodon user, Luke Johnson, have“See how the mighty bluesy crumbles while the Raspberry Pi Mastodon under my bed just keeps going to socialize” – a reference to how Mastodon can use even small machines, which use themselves.

Or as another mastodon user jokes“Nice decentralization came there.”

In any case, Bluesy’s break was resolved shortly after it started and the service is back on.