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Comment by browningstreet | Hacker News Reader

I lost interest in Bluesky when I got an “account required” blocker after I clicked on a Bluesky post link.

UPDATE: OK, didn't realize it was a configurable setting. I guess I ran into it a few times and assumed it was a default block. Thanks for the clarification.

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This is a per-account flag that's only honoured by the official web app and some third party ones

I don't know if "only" is the right adverb to use when it's how the first-party apps and website works. I don't know what usage looks like for third-party sites, but I would imagine it's incredibly small compared to bsky.app, and it's nearly everyone's first impression of Bluesky.

Interesting given I can access this[1] without an account.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lfdz...

What's wrong with requiring an account to view some content?

Does everything need to be 100% public?

What if I want to post somewhat private thoughts or images and restrict the content in some manner?

AT proto is a cleartext protocol, hiding content is a matter of clients respecting a flag, a false sense of privacy. If you want to restrict the audience of a post, you should post it encrypted and send keys to intended recipients

Is it cryptographically possible to give different keys to everyone so they can't be shared?

Or only if you re-encrypt the content for every key you hand out?

Publicly accessible content should be accessible without an account. The only reason they ask for an account is to push you to sign up, which is just annoying.

Imagine if Wikipedia asked you to log in before you could read anything.

It makes some sense for something like Facebook which is more or less private by default (you couldn't see much without an account anyway), but not for X or Bluesky where it's all public.

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