If you thought decentralised social networks couldn’t go down, Bluesky has proved otherwise. On the evening of June 6, Bluesky, a rising social media platform that promotes decentralisation, went offline for nearly an hour. Whether using the app on your phone or trying to access the website, you probably saw error messages or couldn’t connect at all.
At 6:55 PM ET, Bluesky posted a message acknowledging the issue on its official status page. The team blamed the downtime on “Major PDS Networking Problems.” PDS stands for personal data servers — the core part of the infrastructure that supports the Bluesky experience. A follow-up update came at 7:38 PM ET, letting users know a fix was being applied.
The platform was back to normal not long after. However, the situation has sparked a bigger conversation about whether decentralised services are immune to outages.
What decentralisation means (and why Bluesky still went down)
You might wonder—isn’t the point of decentralisation to avoid problems like this? Shouldn’t there be no single point of failure?
While Bluesky does aim to be decentralised through its AT Protocol, most users rely on its official infrastructure, especially its main app and core servers. That includes the PDS, relays, and other parts that power what you see and do on the platform.
Anyone can set up and run these parts independently. That’s part of what decentralisation offers—the freedom to build your own experience or even run your version of the network. However, because the platform is still relatively new, most people haven’t yet set up their infrastructure. That means nearly everyone feels it when Bluesky’s systems run into problems.
Interestingly, a few users who had taken the time to create their servers were unaffected by the outage. Their experiences continued smoothly, showing that the decentralised vision can work—but only if more people take part in running the system.
Rival networks use the moment to poke fun
As soon as Bluesky went down, users of Mastodon — another decentralised network that runs on a different protocol called ActivityPub — began making light of the situation. Many Mastodon fans see their platform as more true to the decentralised model and were quick to point out Bluesky’s reliance on central servers.
One Mastodon user, Luke Johnson, joked, “See how the mighty Bluesky crumbles while the Raspberry Pi running Mastodon under my bed just keeps chugging along.” His post highlights how Mastodon can operate on simple hardware that users set up without central servers.
Another user took a jab with the line, “Nice decentralisation ya got there,” clearly enjoying the moment.
What happens next?
The Bluesky team was quick to address the issue and restore service. However, this incident highlights how decentralised platforms can still face challenges in their early stages. Until more users set up their parts of the network, problems with Bluesky’s main servers will affect most of the community.
Looking ahead, the goal is for many independent groups to build on the AT Protocol — with their moderation systems, apps, and data servers. An example of this already in progress is the work of Blacksky, a team developing safer and more inclusive online spaces using these tools.
In time, Bluesky hopes to become one of many entities supporting the broader ecosystem. But for now, the service remains heavily dependent on its central infrastructure — and as this outage showed, even decentralised networks aren’t immune to going offline.
