Three Bluesky API toys

This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.

When I’m not on Mastodon I spend some time posting bad jokes and dodgy takes on Bluesky, which slipped out of being exclusively in a “staging” environment at some point. Both have been landing pads for people fleeing Elon’s x.com (once Twitter).

There’s a kind of ‘Coke vs. Pepsi’ war going on between Bluesky and Mastodon users, though I find I can find a lot of the same mutuals on both. I’ll buck the trend and admit I kind of like both and also see some downsides to both. Bluesky has brought with is some of the similar level of discourse that Twitter once had, for better or worse. Mastodon, and the fediverse itself, has been around for a while, since nearly 2016, and is a far more diverse and vibrant place and I daresay more of a movement (for more on that catch “Mastodon is Bigger Than a Twitter Replacement“) Both are open protocol led, though, and I think it’s just better to have a web with lots of competing platforms complete with their odd quirks.

Today I thought I’d share a trio of API toys that can make Bluesky more interesting to doink around with.

1. First up is Profile Cleaner. I like to keep a minimal social presense. A bit ephemeral or volatile. On Mastodon my posts have a 7-day exiration count-down. I’m not terribly bothered with people finding what I said, but it’s about the time span I’m prepared to stand by anything. Social sites should let the past fade away and let you be who you are now. Bluesky doesn’t have this built in function, but one of its own developers has made this tool. It can’t be automated, but when I remember to use it I pop in to maintain my Bluesky skeets sell-by date.
2. At present I don’t block anyone on Bluesky. I don’t even mute anybody. But that isn’t always the case. My bloking is about as volatile as my posting. I create some huge lists and then in a few hours wipe them out. Mostly this is to just play with the site experience and see what it does to different feeds I look at. But for all of that Blockenheimer is the thing to use. And if you’re seriously being piled on, it can shut that down pretty quick. It also has a pretty minimal unblocker for when you don’t mind opening up the floodgates.
3. While BlueSky doesn’t *hide* who is blocking whom, or other things like the history of their username, who they’re blocking, muting etc. it doesn’t have pages for that on the platform. But ClearSky Search Tool does. This one borders on a light OSINT tool for Bluesky. You can not just see who someone is blocking, but whether it’s mutual and what was the timestamp for the blocking. You can track a user account’s name change history, and their “Decentralized Identifier” (DID) which may be useful to track an account if the platform is ever actually more than just technically decentralised. You can also just see blocking trends: who’s getting the most blocking or who’s being blocked in the last 24 hours the most. It also gives some updated Bluesky stats.

One of the things that killed Twitter was Elon closing off the API, or trying to heavily monetise it. There were some great tools that made it interesting. Bluesky’s open model is bringing some of that back.