Private/Locked accounts

[muchmich]

The option to make your account "private" as in only your followers can see your posts.

[pfrazee]

This is on the roadmap but it won't be in the near future

[atomicthumbs]

It's kind of bizarre that the site shipped without a crucial safety feature like private accounts. I effectively can't use it as a social media platform without them.

As-is, if someone is stalking you on Bluesky, or sending harassment your way in some fashion, your only option is to permanently delete your account. Leaving users open to this kind of danger seems irresponsible.

[olucaslab]

Hello, it's been around 10 months since this, any update on this actual issue. Like @atomicthumbs said:

As-is, if someone is stalking you on Bluesky, or sending harassment your way in some fashion, your only option is to permanently delete your account. Leaving users open to this kind of danger seems irresponsible.

[qazmlp]

I think this is to a large extent inherent to the architecture. Please excuse the harsh wording, but ATProto is genuinely a "privacy-last" specification where the concept of follower-approval and post privacy aren't meaningful, aside from temporarily deactivating an account entirely.

(Adding a locked account feature to apps isn't entirely impossible of course, but doing so with privacy would require at the least a parallel network with distinct architecture and protocol.)

That's not to say there wouldn't be any value in an appview- and app-side mechanism to limit exposure though, as long as it's made clear that it's trivial to circumvent with an alternative client. That may at least turn away the brunt of the harassment in such situations.

[olucaslab]

Thanks a lot for the answer, I was thinking about it and that maybe at-proto would be the 'guilty' for not getting this feature. What you said gave a new perspective of the issue.