Bluesky has launched RSS feeds

RSS implementation and limitations

• Users welcome Bluesky’s RSS feeds and compare them to Mastodon’s built‑in feeds and Substack’s paid feeds.
• Several complain that login‑required posts don’t appear, unlike paywalled RSS where a logged‑in reader can fetch full content.
• Missing links and embedded media in the RSS output are seen as major flaws; some use third‑party generators (e.g., Bluestream) that include media and will switch once official feeds reach parity.
• Some speculate links may be omitted to force clicks on Bluesky’s site and note RSS makes impression/engagement tracking and ad injection harder; others predict RSS could later be removed for monetization reasons.

Private feeds and monetization

• People discuss whether Bluesky could support paid/private feeds, potentially competing with Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans.
• Existing models cited: Twitter’s paid posts, Substack’s partial/locked RSS, and Telegram bots that gate private channels.
• A technical comment notes Bluesky’s protocol currently doesn’t support truly non‑public posts, limiting features like circles or robust blocking.

Adoption, invites, and community

• Some argue Bluesky is feature‑light, invite‑gated, and on a path to irrelevance, having squandered an early “Twitter replacement” opportunity.
• Others say invites now are plentiful and helped seed a relatively “cleaner” culture by filtering early adopters and reducing moderation complexity.
• There’s disagreement whether social networks need explosive growth or can succeed with steady, linear adoption.
• Users report very different experiences: some find the network barren with no interesting accounts; others see high engagement in specific niches (e.g., scientists).

Culture, politics, and user experience

• Multiple users report that default/recommended feeds are dominated by US culture‑war topics and drama, which many find exhausting.
• Some see Bluesky as largely populated by ex‑Twitter users angry about Twitter’s changes, shaping its political tone.
• Others say their curated timelines (tech, science, EU politics, etc.) are fine, but acknowledge that building such a feed requires active effort and that default experiences can feel hostile.

Protocol, federation, and governance

• Discussion contrasts Bluesky’s AT protocol with ActivityPub and traditional RSS.
• ActivityPub is praised as more efficient than RSS polling, while Bluesky is criticized by some for not having fully distributed, self‑authenticating posts.
• Others respond that Bluesky uses Merkle trees rather than per‑post signatures to prioritize deletion semantics, and emphasize easy account migration between personal data servers.
• Skeptics argue that, in practice, federated systems tend to consolidate around a few large servers, which can still act as gatekeepers, though Bluesky proponents claim its design mitigates this somewhat.

Business model and incentives

• Users question Bluesky’s revenue model; “figure it out later” and eventual ads or paid services are considered likely.
• A published business‑plan post is debated: some argue that running the main servers and client remains a significant “moat” despite open source; Bluesky participants say they try to avoid creating strong data lock‑in and expect competition among moderation/hosting providers.

RSS beyond Bluesky

• Side discussion covers how to discover RSS/Atom feeds on the wider web (URL guessing vs. HTML <link> discovery) and the decline of native browser RSS support.
• Some point to tools and readers that auto‑discover feeds and advocate better public education around RSS.

Broader social media sentiment

• Several commenters describe quitting Twitter/Reddit or avoiding Threads/Bluesky entirely due to addiction, doomscrolling, and mental health impacts.
• Others still find Twitter or RSS‑based consumption useful when ruthlessly curated, but acknowledge that default algorithmic feeds tend to promote rage‑bait and culture‑war content.