Meta is in turmoil after announcing plans to remove politics from recommendations across Instagram and Threads (a new Twitter-like app for text-based posts). This leaves a window of opportunity for startup Bluesky. The company's CEO, Jay Graber, recently said Meta's decision was based on the types of problems that can arise when “one company runs one algorithm,” and how Bluesky's app works. He explained that it symbolizes how different things are.
“It's kind of a black box, and companies can do whatever they want, but users don't really have a choice,” Graeber said in an interview on the podcast Techmeme Ride Home in response to a question about political censorship by Meta. . . “The purpose of including algorithmic choices at the start of Bluesky was to give you the ability to choose the type of feed you get at any time. You can control the scrolling,” she added.
On BlueSky, users can have a highly political social experience or exclude politics altogether by following politically-themed custom feeds and trending topics, Graeber said. said.
“Two people using the same Bluesky app, one has a very cozy, quiet experience, no politics, just seeing posts from friends and maybe pictures of moss or cats. ” suggested Graber. “And someone else might be following what's going on, whether it's trending topics, Super Bowl chatter, or politics.”
Or, as Graeber himself does, you can switch back and forth between different modes based on what you want to see at the time.
Unlike centralized platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Threads, run by Meta, or even X (formerly Twitter) run by Elon Musk, Bluesky represents a different approach to social media. This is similar to his open source Twitter competitor Mastodon. It also provides a decentralized social networking service, but it utilizes a different networking protocol, the AT protocol, rather than ActivityPub, which Mastodon integrates with.
Threads also plans to integrate with ActivityPub, but even if it becomes one node on a larger federated network that includes Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered apps, Meta's moderation decisions will ultimately depend on Threads. It will apply to everyone who uses it. Additionally, Threads had more than 130 million monthly active users as of the fourth quarter, according to Meta's website, compared to the rest of Mastodon, which currently has about 1 million monthly active users. It looks small.
Bluesky, on the other hand, is already bigger than Mastodon, nearly doubling its user base since it went public last week. The app is now approaching his 5 million user mark (currently at 4.86 million) and is working to enable federation later this month, the company said earlier.
But the biggest draw for users may not be which protocols they use for social networking, but the ease with which they can customize their experience. This is something even more lacking in Mastodon, which struggles with usability. For example, until its September release, Mastodon's users couldn't even search for posts and had to rely on hashtags.
BlueSky also aims to offer hashtags, Graeber said. “It's actually in the works,” she said in an interview, referring to the hashtag's introduction.
But at Bluesky, the CEO pointed out that hashtags aren't just a way to surface terms and trends; they can also power custom feeds. Thanks to Bluesky's API, developers have built custom tools like his SkyFeed. This allows anyone, even non-developers, to create their own feeds using a graphical user interface.
“…You can start building custom feeds that do different things based on lists, based on hashtags, based on words, based on regular expressions, based on machine learning,” Graber said. states. “And these tools are getting better and better, creating more options for people who want to get creative and have an idea for a feed but don't know how to code.”
As election season approaches, the promise of customized, personalized social media could appeal to a user base that has wanted an alternative to Twitter – X takes a different direction including payments, shopping and creator content – but directed by a single person moving in a direction where the rules don't apply, or, in the case of meth, created out of fear of punishment by lawmakers and regulators.