viewing a profile requires logging in

[mvdan]

Describe the bug

Bluesky describes itself as open source and built on an open protocol and public data, so I would fully expect to be able to navigate the web UI without logging in. This is particularly important for projects or organisations using a Bluesky account to share news with a large number of people - requiring each one of them to create an account and log in to just see the feed of posts will drive them away, making the platform significantly less useful.

I'm personally classifying this as a bug rather than a feature request, since I assume that there's no good reason to require a login to simply read public content. I also imagine that such read-only operations without authentication are already possible at the protocol level.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Visit https://bsky.app/profile/cuelang.org while not logged in, e.g. in incognito.

Expected behavior

Being able to see the profile and recent posts.

Screenshots

Logged in as @mvdan.cc on the left, incognito window without a login on the right.

Details

• Platform: desktop Firefox on Linux
• Platform version: ?
• App version: ?

Additional context

I tried asking on the platform a few times, but no luck :) https://bsky.app/profile/mvdan.cc/post/3k2kozsatjg25

[pfrazee]

This has been a long-planned update and it spawns from a relatively unfortunate mistake we made early on. Essentially we were moving quickly on the beta and didn't have the facilities for unauthed reads yet, so we didn't implement them before releasing the web build. This has in turn created an incorrect concept of the public visibility of information -- that it's only for account holders, when in reality it's widely available.

As a consequence, we not only need to implement the public visibility, but we now need to educate users in advance of the change and give them a chance to remove any content they're uncomfortable with showing ahead of time. We're working iteratively toward it, but it's going to take a little bit of time.

[mvdan]

Makes sense, it's good to hear that it's planned. Would love to see update here when you have any.

[mvdan]

This happened about six months ago :) Thanks! https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3kgbz6tc6gl24