Public without maximum distribution
Bluesky added a setting that lets users ask its Discover feed not to recommend their posts to people who do not follow them. The company said the change can take up to an hour to apply.
Posts remain public. They can still be found on a profile, shared by followers or surfaced by other services built on the AT Protocol. The setting controls one recommendation system rather than changing the underlying visibility of the account.
TechCrunch reported that the preference is recorded at the account and protocol level, although other applications decide whether to honor it.
A different idea of user control
Social products have usually treated reach as an unconditional reward. The new control recognizes that virality can bring harassment, context collapse or an audience a user never sought.
The limit is important: opting out of Discover is not privacy. Anyone who needs restricted access should use a private or otherwise limited sharing tool. Bluesky’s setting is a distribution preference for people who still want to participate in public.
The feature could become a useful protocol norm if other applications respect it. That would let users express a preference once and carry it across compatible services. Until then, people should assume each app has its own recommendation behavior and verify settings separately when they want to limit distribution.