The recent discussion about self-hosting Bluesky components has sparked significant debate within the technical community, highlighting both opportunities and challenges in decentralizing social media infrastructure.
Storage Requirements Raise Scalability Concerns
A major point of discussion centers around the substantial storage requirements for running a complete Bluesky relay, which currently needs approximately 4.5TB of disk space. While some developers note that storage costs have become relatively affordable, with 8TB drives available for around $99, others express concerns about long-term scalability:
For sure. If you just want to host your own data, you can do that. A PDS for you and maybe some friends is very small and cheap to host. comment_source
Installation and Security Considerations
The self-hosting community has raised important concerns about the current installation process. Many experienced system administrators and SREs are hesitant about the simplified installer approach, citing the need for:
- Proper security documentation
- Clear backup and restore procedures
- High availability guidelines
- Detailed data management documentation
Modular Implementation Options
The community discussion reveals that Bluesky's architecture allows for different levels of self-hosting:
- Personal Data Server (PDS) - Minimal setup for hosting personal data
- Relay - Full network data mirroring (4.5TB+)
- Jetstream - Lightweight alternative to full relay
- plc.directory mirror - User directory system
- Web/mobile app deployment
Security and Migration Concerns
A significant concern emerged regarding account migration and disaster recovery. Currently, there's no straightforward way to move an account back to the main network after self-hosting, which has made some users hesitant to experiment with self-hosting options.
Future Considerations
The discussions also touched on enterprise use cases, with some users exploring the possibility of running Bluesky instances in airgapped corporate environments. This highlights the potential for broader adoption beyond individual users, though questions remain about authentication integration and corporate single sign-on systems.
Source: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)