Bluesky is taking significant steps to enhance user privacy, recently releasing a proposal detailing how users could gain more control over their public content. This initiative aims to address user concerns about data usage and privacy in an era of increasing online scrutiny.
“This draft describes how atproto accounts (e.g., Bluesky users) could declare ‘intents’ (aka, preferences) regarding specific categories of reuse of their public content. The mechanism is similar to robots.txt files on the web: a machine-readable format that good actors are expected to follow, carrying ethical weight, but not legally enforceable.”
While the terminology may seem technical, the concept is straightforward. Much like robots.txt files inform web scrapers about data usage permissions, Bluesky plans to establish settings enabling users to dictate how bots and AI programs can interact with their Bluesky data.
This proposed feature could significantly shape how public data is misused by generative AI platforms and automated scraping services, as currently, data on Bluesky is entirely accessible for such purposes.
Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber, briefly addressed this topic at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference but garnered more attention after further clarifying his ideas in a recent update. Some users expressed initial concerns until Graber provided a clearer explanation.
“Gen AI companies are already scraping public data from across the web, and everything on Bluesky is public like a website is public,” Graber said. “However, similar to previous web standards like robots.txt that most search engines came to respect, this proposal seeks to establish a new, comparable standard.”
The debate around the use of public data for training generative AI is an ongoing controversy. Many digital users have been exploring measures to prevent AI from utilizing their content, particularly in light of recent allegations against companies, including accusations of unethical methods for AI model training.
Graber is a vocal opponent of such practices. At SXSW, he wore a T-shirt inscribed with the phrase Mundus sine Caesaribus (“A world without Caesars”), referencing another prominent figure in tech culture. Bluesky even offered this T-shirt for sale on its website, which quickly sold out, reflecting the community’s resonance with Graber’s stance.
