Bluesky and Threads showed us a very different vision of X’s future

There’s no question that Threads and Bluesky have created some of the most useful ways on the platform known as Twitter. But while the two services may share similar goals, they have presented very different visions of how social media should work.

The thread, of course, is managed by Meta, which is managed by Mark Zuckerberg. And while the company says it will accept “public discourse,” it has also put its finger on the scale of encouraging certain types of speech over others. The company cracked down on “politics” in an election year, forcing users to change their settings so that election posts or “social topics” appeared in their “about” feeds.

The desire to minimize anything that Meta described as “potentially difficult” has also led to some questionable decisions. For months, the program searching for other topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. That limit has since been removed, but there have been many and mysterious cases of other traffic failures on Threads.

In October, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri admitted that the company had “found errors and made changes” after users reported that their accounts had been penalized for using it. such as “saltines” and “crackers.” Earlier this month, Meta communications director Andy Stone After users realized that the search for documents about Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, was blocked from the program because the content “may be related to drug trafficking.” Stone did not elaborate but said the issue has been resolved.

Bluesky, on the other hand, has taken a slightly more low-key approach. Although the company uses its moderators to enforce “primary control,” users can control the amount of suspicious or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own for more personalized information.

“Control is, in many ways, like control,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. “And in creating social media culture, we don’t think that one person or one company should think that out of all the social media that people talk about in the world, it’s the most important thing in the world.”

That wisdom works in other important ways. Twitter has never been a about cars to many publishers, even before Elon Musk took over. But the platform played in environmental issues. At the time Elon Musk admitted that X and the head of Threads has said that Meta does not want to “encourage” Bluesky leaders have it encourage link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing it from Bluesky, compared to Threads and X.

But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta’s approach and Bluesky’s is how the text looks. Bluesky turns it into a dynamic feed that displays posts from the accounts you follow. Users can also choose to add based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow the “cat pictures” feed which contains pictures of cats and “trending stories” which links to the most shared stories on the platform.

And while Meta has recently come out with its own brand of the app still defaults to an “about you” feed that combines with people it wants and doesn’t ask for—on the drivel that’s so random and weird it’s been compared to . (Meta said it would (allowing users to make their next feed unedited, but not providing updates.) It also says that even the creators of their content are paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on Threads. platform.

There are also big changes coming in 2025. Although Threads and Bluesky have so far been ad-free, both services will need to make money.

Bluesky has so far tried other ways to make money, including selling domains and upcoming content which provides additional features to paying users. Even Graber didn’t advertising, he also expressed his unwillingness to “” service due to advertising.

Thread, on the other hand, has already been linked to the multibillion-dollar ad machine Meta, a group that many people believe is the company’s software. in their discussions (an idea that has been repeated over and over again Even Zuckerberg is The company isn’t in a hurry to turn Threads into a “very big business,” it can see its own in January, according to reports, and there is no reason to believe that Meta will not use the same book as the rest of the works.

All of this makes Bluesky a little less. The thread is already 10 times the size and Meta has shown that it has no problem using copy or kill. against the original.

But that’s why many Bluesky users wholeheartedly believe that the platform is the “.” While Threads and X put public discussion in the hands of independent billionaires, Bluesky is an independent organization and has democratized its platform. The platform has had its share but it puts more power in the hands of the users. Developers are welcome, who have created many third-party service programs.

All of which may not be enough to protect the Meta, which can throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Bluesky’s vision of an open source platform is more than just being the next big website. “We wanted to change the way social media works from the ground up,” Graber said at a recent press conference. “I want us to have a choice in what we see.”