When Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tasked an internal team at the social media platform with developing an open, decentralized protocol in 2019, he envisioned a reboot of sorts. Dorsey lamented the company’s early days, saying that social media incentives pushed platforms to focus on “content and conversations that [spark] controversy and outrage.
Five years later, that vision is taking shape with Bluesky, the social media platform born from Twitter (now called X under Elon Musk’s ownership). Bluesky, which became an independent company in 2021, has amassed millions of users since opening to the public earlier this year.
Proponents of decentralization say the time may finally have come for open platforms, as social media moves toward a more fragmented future.
“Centralized organizations cannot meet the needs of diverse communities,” Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky, told Yahoo Finance. “That’s why I think users feel left out.”
Bluesky’s more than 24 million users represent a fraction of X’s estimated user base, but the platform saw significant growth following President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.
Last month, Bluesky remained at the top of Apple’s App Store, and the app’s daily downloads even briefly surpassed those of X.
Bluesky’s platform is built on the “AT Protocol”, a decentralized and open source technology that allows users to control their online experiences.
Unlike the Meta suite of applications (META) or Google’s YouTube (GOOG), where the company holds the keys to the algorithm and dictates the platform experience, decentralized platforms allow users themselves to shape their experiences, including content moderation.
“It reminds me of the promise of the early days of the internet, where everyone is an editor of their own content – very egalitarian,” said Damian Rollison, director of market research at marketing platform SOCi.
The company’s ambitions extend beyond social media. Instead of confining users to a single platform, it aims to allow users to move their identity seamlessly from one platform to another.
“The idea is you can put Reddit, Facebook, dating apps, Goodreads, anything on top of our protocol,” Wang said. “Why do you want to do that? Because then your identity, your data can actually move from one platform to another, and you’re not locked into these walled gardens. You own your identity on Bluesky rather than to let platforms own your identity.
The Bluesky app logo is displayed on a smartphone with the Bluesky icon with ·NurPhoto via Getty Images
According to Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the push for more distributed control of online experiences is growing.
A recent Ipsos survey analyzing the role of digital platforms in eight countries found that users have negative perceptions of social media and are increasingly opting for “platform ambivalence”, turning to multiple media outlets. information.
“Wrapped in [the migration to alternative platforms] it’s the desire to be in a space that’s not controlled by one billionaire,” McGregor said. “I think people want to not bow to the whims of big companies, but also to singular personalities.”
Bluesky is not the first to seek to shake up the social media landscape. A handful of companies have attempted to reinvent the online experience.
Mastodon has recently positioned itself as the alternative to Twitter after Musk acquired the company in 2022. And right-wing platforms like Parler and Gab have become popular alternatives for more extremist views.
Trump himself launched Truth Social (DJT) after his Facebook and Twitter accounts were suspended in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.
But none of these platforms have attracted a large enough user base to compete with the X or Meta apps.
While Bluesky now claims over 24 million users, that number pales in comparison to the 275 million monthly active users on Meta’s Threads.
“For a long time, Meta spent a lot of its money buying competitors,” McGregor said. “So even if there had been other places people could have gone, [Meta] bought these places, integrated them into their own suite of applications. There were business practices that made other options impossible. »
Some signs could change. Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet to curb what it sees as anticompetitive behavior in the tech sector.
And the Trump administration is unlikely to abandon Big Tech.
New federal communications chairman Brendan Carr said the agency plans to take “wide-ranging action” against big tech companies, including a review of Section 230, the law that protects companies from responsibility for third-party content on their platform, in a letter he wrote. last month.
Rollison said all of this suggests a potential opening for a decentralized platform like Bluesky to finally catch on.
“There will be platforms that meet a variety of needs and adhere to a variety of people’s goals and values,” Rollison said. “This calcification of services centered around a few very large platforms probably doesn’t serve consumers very well in the long term. I think we’re starting to see that disruption.
Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on @AkikoFujita.
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