# “AI Is Eating the Internet. Can Protocols Save What’s Left?”,-  Sebastian Vogelsang, Eurosky Social

- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2026-01-09
- Duration: 23:46
- Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-5jWSQl35iUw
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jWSQl35iUw

## Description

Sebastian Vogelsang is a Berlin-based developer and consultant, founder of Flashes.blu and co-creator of Eurosky Social, an initiative to provide European ATProto infrastructure that complies with DSA/GDPR and offers shared moderation and hosting for new apps. 

He explains how Eurosky was born from the need for affordable, commons-style moderation and safe hosting, especially as political pressure and jurisdiction risks increase. Sebastian talks about why protocol-based social like Bluesky/ATProto matters for Europe’s “digital sovereignty,” how authentic, organic communities on Bluesky differ from X/Twitter, and why he believes privacy should stay with dedicated tools like Signal rather than “do-everything” platforms. 



Timecodes  
00:00 – Intro & Background: Who Sebastian is, 20 years in IT, building ATProto clients, creating Flashes.blu.
01:20 – Eurosky Social Origin: Why he created European ATProto infrastructure, moderation limits, lexicon problems, ephemerality, and the need for a commons-based moderation/hosting solution compliant with GDPR/DSA.
03:45 – Moderation & Jurisdictions: How Bluesky handles country-specific content restrictions, alternative clients, and why shared moderation teams are essential for EU-aligned apps.
05:20 – Adoption & Digital Sovereignty: Why people leave Big Tech platforms, the appeal of protocols, Europe’s “digital sovereignty” movement, and how ATProto solves cold-start problems by sharing its entire user base.
07:30 – Advice for Builders: Join the dev community, build small utilities, collaborative culture, and how newcomers get uplifted by Bluesky’s ecosystem.
08:45 – User Growth & Authenticity: How to gain followers on Bluesky, genuine engagement, scientists moving from X, and early-Twitter vibes returning.
10:30 – What Makes Bluesky Different: More organic discussions, customizable feeds and why it provides a safer, more diverse social environment than X/Twitter.
12:00 – Privacy Perspective: Bluesky as a public network, why private data belongs on Signal, the problem of platforms trying to “do everything,” and the value of separation between social and encrypted communication.
13:45 – The Future of the Internet: His fear of AI killing the open web, disappearing links, LLMs replacing search with unverifiable output, biases in training data, and the AI-wrapper bubble.
16:40 – Cypherpunk & Digital Rights: First impressions of the movement, democratic access to data, broader human-rights framing, and building Eurosky as rights-oriented infrastructure.
18:00 – Nonprofit Challenges: Funding difficulties, AI sucking up resources, hope in European digital sovereignty for future support.
19:30 – Final Moments: What Bluesky would be as an animal (blue butterfly), closing thoughts & outro.


...

This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews – a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom.
Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info/p/interviews

A W3PN Media House production.
Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd
Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey

Let privacy be with you!

## Transcript

So, hi, my name is Sebastian Foglezang. I'm a uh developer and consultant from Berlin. I'm also the founder of Flashes Blue and I uh as a second hat that I wear am also working on Euro Sky Social. [Music] >> So, hi Sebastian. Hi, >> thanks for joining us. Hi. So, um, for those who don't know you, can you say a few words about like yourself and what you do? >> Sure. >> Um, my name is Sebastian Bogan. I'm from Berlin. Uh, I've been doing IT consulting and, um, development for the last almost 20 years now. And at the beginning of the year, I founded um Flashes Blue, which is sort of a photo viewing app for 80 Proto. And uh yeah, I've been doing this since yeah, since the beginning of the year last year, I also built this uh 80 Proto client for Blue Sky, which is more of a closer to what Blue Sky is doing with their app. Uh that was in 2023 and 24. So I've been around AD Poto now for almost like over two years now. So yeah. And uh the second hat that I'm wearing is with uh Euros Sky Social where we're uh trying now to uh build up um at Proto infrastructure in Europe >> to um open this market for people that want to try out AD Proto apps. but uh don't want their stuff hosted in the US. Oh, okay. So, can you explain more on this like second row on later? >> So, Euro Sky Social was uh the idea came when I wanted to create um content for flashes that wouldn't be moderated by Blue Sky because right now with flashes I use the Blue Sky Lexicon. That's why I get the moderation for free from Blue Sky. Um, but this only works as as long as you stick to like a post type that can only be shown also be shown on blue sky. So as long as those kind of align like a post on blue sky shows up as a picture on on flashes. But if I wanted to introduce features like um like um ephemereral content like Instagram would have these stories, right? So if I wanted to do that, I would have to go off lexicon. I would have to create my own lexicon which also means I would have to moderate that this and this is where I hit a wall because I don't have funding yet. So and moderation is expensive. So um I got together with two people with uh Shahif and Robin and we kind of brainstormed in it and thought okay so I could now buy moderation or we could try to build something that would then tackle moderation for multiple parties sort of like a commons infrastructure and this is where uh Euros Sky started to build so we thought okay so Let's try to give developers like myself um infrastructure in Europe that is uh in line with the DSA with GDPR with all EU uh legis uh legislator um uh laws I mean sorry and um let's try to build something that works as an incubator for developers that say hey I want to build something like a YouTube client or something but I don't have the money to do moderation. I maybe don't even have the money to do hosting for my users. So, Euros Sky would offer that. And uh so that is the goal. And right now we see with the um with the way the political climate changes, it gets even more urgent to give people a place to go to if they don't feel safe in certain jurisdictions any longer. So yeah, this is right now it's it's like we're still have this moderation thing and the and the incubator that is all part of it but like providing at PDS's and relays has become uh even the importance has been rising. Yeah, this is pure sky social in five sentences. >> Okay. Uh so uh moderation question actually how does Muskai balances freedom of speech versus moderation especially considering that there are so many countries in >> you would have to ask Bruce I know but what they as far as I understand like I don't work for so >> I can only observe this from the outside but the way they tackle it right now is as far as I know in the in the client like let's say there's some content that is sensitive in Turkey for example because of local laws. They will um their their client will um not let users see certain content that they were asked to not show in Turkey. They will not see that. Alternative clients that are out there um may not follow that and they will like users will still be able to see content with those apps. So it's kind of like they're they as far as I know they have labelers for different countries to obey by the local laws. And that's also how we're seeing this comments content moderation as a tool that will have moderation teams in every country that then can produce labels specific to that country and to the legislation in that country. >> Yeah. Um I think now many people perceive like blue skies like a really niche tech insider platform. Uh do you see any ways for mass adoption and how is it possible if it's possible? Mhm. >> I do think so because of like we're in in politics again, but the way things go right now, I think a lot of people don't feel comfortable on traditional platforms any longer because the platform model ultimately always tries to capture users in their wall gardens. So the model is always the same. the users get the stuff for free and they monetize through ads and that ultimately leads to initification because you're like the algorithm tries to trap you and trap your attention and it hasn't ended well with any of these apps. So, um I think a lot of people realize that now plus they there's like a start movement in Europe right now. At least that's how it feels to me that people want to offboard um these US big tech uh uh platforms. So there is like this renaissance of of protocol-based solutions I think right now and the people I talked to are really enthusiastic about having something that gives Europe digital soenity like that is those two words you hear all over the place right now in Europe digital soenity like we need our own stuff and I think with adroto the the way the protocol works works. It basically only needs I mean it it worked super well with blue sky but like for other 80 proto apps because the user base is shared amongst all the users it basically only needs one or two apps to make it like to take it across the 100 million users right and all the other apps will benefit from that and I think that's the the the appeal of adroto that there's this instant audience when you're on board like on flashes like you log in and you post something and you immediately have an audience of uh 38 million users. Uh you don't have that with other apps that you start you always start from zero like with zero there's not this cold start problem. So I think there's a lot of potential that people now also see and that may give it this advantage over former uh open web solutions. Okay. Uh maybe you can share some advices for builders. So I mentioned someone wants to build maybe a client of blue sky or something relevant to that. >> Uh so what's your learnings from your path like of building or being a builder uh around blue sky and it like lessons learned for for other builders? be part of the community I think is big thing like they everyone is super appreciated they all help each other even the blue sky team is super approachable they will help out they're like they're building the protocol while building the plat like the the oh blue sky it's not a traditional platform I'm trying to avoid that word because it's it's it's a protocol or an app that lives in a protocol Um, so that would be my advice to just be super open, be join the deaf community, discord and um just build cool stuff. A lot of there's a lot of appreciation and even building small tools that solve the single isolated problem. Uh it I've seen people that have never contributed to anything being picked up by the community saying, "Hey, this is awesome. This person built this and you're immediately like uplifted from like this whole deaf community." So that would be my advice. Get in there and just um have fun. Well, it's nice. That's nice there is like such a supportive community and okay and going to like more user perspective like any uh hints or tricks uh like hacks like how can you go big on blue sky how and you get your audience and like large numbers of followers. I think the like the main trick is to be authentic. Mhm. >> I mean, this is like everybody says that I guess with like every platform, but especially with Blue Sky, you see that the way like you can see it from the referrals that get to other platforms. I think I think Blue Sky has more referral traffic to the Guardian than X. Although Blue Sky only has like 7% of the user base of X and they still create more referrals because the users are more organic. like it's the engagement is more organic. Um also I think majority of the of the scientists uh now publish their papers on blue sky whereas they used to post them on X but they they all say we get way more and better engagement on blue sky because the the there's a genuine user base. So it actually fits with like that narrative be authentic with this. It it's actually true and it it works. Oh wow, that's cool. I know about the academia world that it's there in its present. It's nice to know. And um for someone who had never used blue sky and that maybe heard but not really aware, how would you describe it and its difference on Twitter or other platforms and like what are the incentive for people in the end of the day to use it? Well, I mean, you have to know if you're like still if you're still feeling comfortable on Twitter or an X now. Like I stopped feeling comfortable two years ago. So that's why I moved over to Blue Sky. I what I liked about Blue Sky that it's like a super diverse community. The whole user base is super diverse. Um, and you I I personally find the discussion culture to be way better than it reminds me of Twitter in 200 what was it 9 2008 when I first joined Twitter like back then there was like it it was a different culture I guess it was it it was more about like having fun with with each other and and having decent discussions And this is like X is poison now. So um to me those are all good reasons to join Blue Sky instead of any of the other big tech platforms that are ultimately only showing you content that drives their uh growth and their their income, right? And with Blue Sky, you have the option of I don't know 50,000 tweets uh feeds 50,000 feeds already that you can choose from. So you you are in in charge of your timeline like the way your what what you want your timeline to be. So I think that's a big plus when it comes to blue sky or Yeah. >> Okay. Let's talk a bit about privacy. So we care about it and like just your take on privacy in general and maybe in the context of blue sky as well. >> Oh yeah. Um so I'm all for privacy. >> Happy to hear that. >> I I signal I try to get like the school rooms over to signal uh with more or less uh um success. But yeah, no definitely like especially we're back to politics like in times like these privacy is super important. Bruska is an is an is a public network like a public social network and I see a lot of people asking for private data on like protocol private data on blue sky and whenever someone argues about that with me I must say there like to me it's okay the way it is because I choose like if I want to keep stuff private I will not post it on any social media network. I would rather share it in a signal group or something. And I think we've gotten since these all these platforms try to copy off each other, you know. Um, this platform introduced direct messages. So, this platform also has direct messages. Although there are dedicated apps that do direct messaging way better than X or any of the other guys. So we've gotten used to these platforms like X or Facebook or like they do everything and maybe they shouldn't. Maybe there is a good reason there is signal for private conversations for encrypted conversations for only sharing with the people you want to share and not have your data show up in some data leak because X or whatever platform didn't take care of privacy. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agree and uh if you talk about the internet of future so the internet of future how we imagine that right like private secure uncensored uh like how would it look like and how would the life look like there's this meme with this f futuristic city >> yes >> no to be honest like I'm I'm I'm fearful when it comes to the future of the internet Because with the recent AI movement and like OpenAI trying to acquire Chrome, I it only clicked for me like afterwards that where like right now I read a study where like 60 or 70% of the the uh 12 to 14 year olds uh use chat as a search lang like a search engine and they don't check these these things that it produce for facts, right? So um what happens to outgoing links? They just get swallowed up in the produced content that so once one of these companies acquires a a browser which is the ultimate tool to browse the web and to uh go to places in the open web. and they instead of search results just give you produced content from a large language model that maybe doesn't even contain any any outgoing links. That would be the death of the web as we know it. So yeah, I'm I have sort of a fear for for the open web. So the ideal web would be that we go back to respecting outgoing links, not suppressing outgoing links and have content available not through aggregation and spitting it out but through actual pointing people to places. Okay. Uh okay. your hot take on AI and um is there a way to use it consciously? think so if you use it as an interface I think and not as a search engine and people I think it's it's kind of shitty to make this text so small that they put below it you need to check this for uh uh or verify the the facts that this thing produces it needs to be way bigger because people now use it like a search engine and it still produces a lot of stuff that is not true. And a lot of still a lot of hallucinations. >> Plus, these models are biased in the worst ways. And the big tech companies try to put guard rails on this, but they're still biased towards racism, like towards sexism. All that is inherent in because of the data that they got trained on. It's our history. So, I would rather have AI. I use AI myself, but I would rather have it as something like like we use speech processing before, which was kind of bad always. With this, it actually works. So I would rather have it steer the the functionality and do searches itself and then kind of use those searches presented to you and not like used large language models to try to solve every problem. Like all the companies, 90% of the eye companies that pop up right now, they just built this wrapper around open open AI and that can't be it. I mean, this is like a bubble to bust. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's that's not an easy situation. [Laughter] Okay. Um, let's talk about cypher punk. So, uh, what do you feel about cypher punk now and like the current vision or feeling of like what does it mean to be a cypher punk today? >> This is my first cyber punk event. So I can only speak for what it felt like yesterday and what it feels today. Like today feels super awesome. Yesterday I was like astonished to see so much talent like concentrated in one place and I was like oh wow this guy is here. Oh wow this so I've heard of some of the people at Henon but never met him. So uh I love the whole ethos of of providing democratic access to data and um yeah it resonates with me. >> Okay. Yeah. It just I don't know I and me we I think we don't perceive cy punk is just like this small group of people that's here. It's more just >> it's like a whole community right and well I mean it's just a word first of all. It's just I don't know. It's like when you're more it's about certain values. That's how I feel it at least like let's say more into human rights activism less into this casino of like many coins. I think that's a movement. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And it's like not about being like know in this small niche but it's like more broad in my opinion. >> I I I consider myself to be more on the uh rights side and you know internet rights everything like as in that direction. Yeah. >> Yeah. And what's your experience with that like? >> Well, we're trying the thing with Durus guy, right? To give people access and to do this as a nonprofit. So, >> yeah. I mean, ideally, this is how the web should be. Like, you shouldn't have to deal with corporations that want to mint you for your data and stuff like that. So, yeah, that that would be my experience with that. >> And what's your lesson learned from being a for from building a nonprofit? So, >> we we don't have a nonprofit yet, but it's it's common at some point. >> Okay. So um but the lesson is hard like funding everything. So we're kind of hopefully lucky that there is like this big movement with digital soenity. So maybe we can like um take advantage of that with with the nonprofit. But who knows? But yeah, of course, like right now a lot of the money goes into AI and and funding and yeah, social networks are not the biggest win right now in and infrastructure for open web protocols. Okay. Um yeah, I think we need to round up this. Um okay. Uh the last thing maybe [Music] how would you describe a blue sky if it was an animal was an animal? Oh, I could be an and say an elephant, but I won't. No, I don't. Maybe it would be like a like a butterfly. Um probably won't make sense if blue, right? Like a blue butterfly, maybe. >> Yeah, why not? That makes sense. Sense. >> Okay. Thanks for coming. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. >> Thanks for watching. Ciao. Ciao. [Music]