[dpatterbee]

My understanding is that Bluesky is a service built on top of a decentralized protocol, ATProto. This allows users to use alternative hosts for their data instead of the bluesky servers, but if you're using Bluesky then they still hold your data.

I also think the private DMs might be hosted externally to ATProto because that is all meant to be public information or something.

I would assume that the age verification is built at the app layer, so you could use an alternative app (I think they call them AppViews?) to get around the age verification thing. Don't know if alternatives really exist today though, there are probably some.

[extraduder_ire]

Age verification is done in the client (app/website) the appview (CTO calls it an appserver now) is the backend that services api requests from the default, and most other, clients. DMs themselves are not stored in ATproto, and are kind of a hack.

You can migrate your PDS (data server) away from bluesky's servers to another host, and as of a few days ago you can migrate back. (only if you initially signed up to bluesky, not if you started off self-hosting)

The following gist is good to glean how the age-verification system works: https://gist.github.com/mary-ext/6e27b24a83838202908808ad528...

[wkat4242]

Blue sky isn't really decentralised. They keep way too much power to themselves.

I don't use it for that reason. I do use nostr, Mastodon and Lemmy

[Spivak]

There's a few, I really like PinkSky which makes BlueSky into Instagram instead of Twitter.