You might have heard of Bluesky. Started as an alternative to Twitter, it exploded in popularity after the whole “Elon Musk turns Twitter into X The Everything App” thing.
Bluesky isn’t just a social network though, it’s built on a new technology called the “Authenticated Transfer Protocol” – or AT for short – that does a lot more than just replace Twitter.
AT gives you control over your data. Instead of your posts, followers, and profile being stuck inside the Bluesky app, all your data lives in your personal data store which you can take with you. The “Authenticated Transfer” bit is about how everyone can be sure that your post is from you once it goes out into the web.
Right now, most of the internet works like this: you sign up for an app, you create stuff inside it. Your photos are in Instagram. Your posts are in X. Your messages are in WhatsApp. The platforms have captured your data.
AT flips that around. Your data lives in your own space called a personal data store and apps just connect to it. If you don’t like an app anymore, you switch to another one. Your content stays yours.
Picture a library card. With you library card, you can check out books. But you can also steam movies with Kanopy, read Ebooks with Libby, and win prizes for a Summer Reading Challenge.
AT works like that. You have one login (like yourname.brolly.id) and one place where your data is stored. Apps ask your permission to read or write to your data. You can grant it, and you can take it away.
Bluesky is the first big app built on AT. It happens to be a social network, but AT isn’t limited to social media. It’s good for lots of different kinds of applications; a blog platform, a photo sharing service, a to-do list. Anything where you want to publish content out to the entire web.
It is! When you join Bluesky, you get an identity and data store on their server. Right now, if you want to use AT and actually own your data, you need to run your own server.
The AT team makes this pretty easy, but running a server isn’t for everyone. Is there a middle road with more agency than joining a server with 25 million people, but less complexity than running everything by oneself?
That’s what we’re building with Brolly.id. Instead of running your own server, your community runs one together — like a neighborhood co-op for your digital life. One login, your data stays with your people, and only the one person who wants to has to become a server admin.
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