22. Making a Bot Account (Bluesky)#
Choose Social Media Platform: Reddit | Discord | Bluesky | No Coding
In using this textbook, you will have opportunities to create and run social media bots. Here we will run through how to create a Bluesky account (note: unlike most social media sites, we don’t have to do extra steps to get bots to enable bots on Bluesky accounts).
While we have made a fake version of Bluesky for you to test all the code in this book, we highly encourage you to make a Bluesky bot account and try it out for real!
22.1. Sign up for Bluesky#
We suggest making a new, separate Bluesky account, just for making Bluesky bots, since you don’t want to accidentally get your main Bluesky account banned or labeled as a bot. Also we suggest using a different password than you use for other accounts, since you might accidentally share it with your code.
Make sure you record your full handle (should look something like: “info103-teacher.bsky.social”) and your password.
Note 1: When I chose a handle, I got warnings about “handle too long” though I think the actual problem might have been that they didn’t accept a handle that included the words “bot” or “test.”
Note 2: If you want to make a new account and you already have one, you may need to sign out from your current account, or use a different web browser (e.g., Mozilla, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari).
22.2. Test your keys#
Now that you have your Bluesky handle and password, you can test out your code in chapter 2.3.8 (Demo: Try Running the Bluesky Bot!). Try running the code and replacing the fake handle and password with the ones from your account, and see if you can use the code to make an actual Bluesky post to your account.
22.3. Understand Bluesky Rules for Bots#
Before you try doing anything too creative with Bluesky bots, make sure you look over the Bluesky Bot Policy, and the Bluesky Community Guidelines, that way you don’t get yourself banned.