We moved our Bluesky data to Eurosky
Waag, a Dutch research institute, moved its Bluesky data to Eurosky, a European-hosted alternative, citing concerns over data sovereignty and the desire to keep data under European jurisdiction rather than U.S. corporate control. Eurosky runs on the same AT Protocol as Bluesky but is hosted in Europe.
Background
- **Waag Futurelab** is an Amsterdam-based research institute focused on technology and society, with a strong emphasis on digital sovereignty, open source, and the public interest.
- **Bluesky** is a decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol, originally incubated by Twitter, now an independent public-benefit company. It rose to prominence as a post-Twitter alternative and currently stores most user data on servers in the US.
- **EuroSky** is not a separate service but a self-hosted "Personal Data Server" (PDS) — the underlying AT Protocol component that stores a user's account data, posts, and follows. Waag moved their data to a European-hosted PDS (likely on a server in the Netherlands) to assert control over their data's jurisdiction and compliance with GDPR.
- **Why it matters**: This move highlights the tension between Bluesky's decentralized architecture (which technically allows data portability) and its current default reliance on US-based infrastructure. Waag's action is a political and technical statement about European digital sovereignty, privacy law, and the desire to keep social media data outside the reach of US surveillance or corporate control.