Bluesky's Radical Idea: Let Users Set The Rules Of Social Media

Yet today's web experience has become less open. Those who 'surf the web" now spend at least half their time on a few sites owned by companies like Meta Platforms, Google and Amazon.com. The sprawling, creative wilderness of the early internet is a distant memory - one that Jay Graber is trying to bring back.

The CEO of Bluesky Social wants to "change the model of social media", so that after a decade of industry consolidation, consumers can have more control over feeds, algorithms and profiles, she tells me. Bluesky was created inside Twitter but then spun off after Elon Musk took over. Graber, a former software engineer, became CEO in 2021, and so far its rapid expansion has been keeping her busy.

A year after its public launch, Bluesky has amassed 32.5 million registered users, many of them refugees from the now-named X who dislike the site's more chaotic direction under Musk.

What makes Bluesky unique is the control users have over what they can do on the platform. Instead of scrolling posts and images picked by an algorithm, they can choose from more than 50 000 feeds made by other users. The 'science feed", for example, is curated by a handful of experts including a zoologist and marine biologist.

The consolidation of control in social media mirrors a broader pattern in technology that AI scientist and entrepreneur Ben Goertzel has been warning about for years. The concentration of AI is part of a concentration of wealth and power, says Goertzel, who has his own community-governed AI network called SingularityNET. Human connections have been reduced to engagement metrics and algorithmic triggers, making social media more transactional.