Don’t personally see much difference except surface level stuff.
Definitionally, an AppView is not just a different frontend, it’s perhaps better described as an indexer, it’s a sense-making tool for the raw data of the firehose with its own API. And Blacksky.community as of now is still using the bsky.app API.
You can verify this yourself with developer tools:
Thus, Blacksky.community is a different frontend, but not a different AppView. The only full parity alternative AppView to my knowledge is still Zeppelin.social.
Skimmed the documents they make available and found nothing, so I wonder if it’s a fork or an instance. And if either, I wonder if it can communicate with bsky.app and other potential AT Protocol-powered sites.
Edit: I found the github repository for their fork, https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/blacksky.community
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It’s an instance as in they host people’s data and people can have an account on it (so “PDS” in bluesky speak), a moderation service as well.
According to This video https://blacksky.community/ is indeed a frontend fork but not much more detail is given.
