A Decentralised Web Forecast: Cloudy but with a Chance of Bluesky

Abstract
The pitfalls of centralized social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter/X, have led to concerns about control, transparency, and accountability. As a result, novel decentralized social networks have emerged with the goal of empowering users. One recent addition to the landscape is Bluesky, a hybrid decentralised architecture that offers Twitter-like functionality. This presentation will discuss this new platform, explaining its operation, and discussing the key design trade-offs that Bluesky made to hit its design goals.

Speaker
Gareth Tyson is a Professor at Queen Mary University of London and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research is primarily in the field of Internet measurements, with a focus on Web and Social Computing. He uses empirical methods to evaluate the properties of such systems, and then builds on this to propose design innovations. He regularly publishes in venues such as SIGCOMM, SIGMETRICS, WWW, INFOCOM and IMC. He has been awarded the IRTF Applied Networking Research Award 2023; Distinguished TPC Member at CoNEXT 2022; WOAH Shared Task on Hateful Memes Prize 2021; the Best Student Paper Award at the Web Conference 2020; the Best Paper Award at eCrime'19; the Honourable Mention Award at the Web Conference 2018 (best paper in track); and the Best Presentation Award at INFOCOM'18. He received QMUL's Faculty Research Excellence Award in 2021 and the Brendan Murphy Memorial Young Researcher Prize in 2013.