Bluesky, the social media platform that has seen a recent influx of leftists fleeing X/Twitter, is designed to be “billionaire proof,” according to CEO Jay Graeber.
in recent interviews CNBC and person who moves moneyBluesky CEO Jay Graber spoke about the platform's rapid growth and unique features that set it apart from competitors such as Elon Musk's X and Mehta's Threads. Graeber emphasized that Bluesky's open design is intended to give users the option to leave the service with all of their followers, which could hamper potential acquisition efforts.
“The billionaire proof is in the way we design everything, so even if someone buys us or Bluesky goes out of business, everything will be open source,” Graber explained. “What happened to Twitter can't happen to us, either, because we always have the option of moving right away without having to start over.”
Bluesky has skyrocketed in popularity since the US presidential election earlier this month, gaining more than 7 million new users in just two weeks as it transforms into a left-wing echo chamber. Although the platform currently boasts over 21 million users, it still lags behind X and Threads in terms of user base. Threads, launched by Facebook's parent company Meta in July 2023, has about 275 million monthly users, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. X, formerly known as Twitter, had an estimated 318 million monthly users as of October, based on data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Its growth has been erratic as left-wing platforms are flooded with reports and even child pornography. As Breitbart News previously reported:
After several days of explosive growth on the platform, the Bluesky Safety team announced Friday that it had received 42,000 moderation reports in the past 24 hours. This compares to 360,000 in all of 2023. The most troubling thing is that the company admitted that it had received reports of “CSAM.” or child sexual abuse material, commonly known as child pornography.
On X/Twitter, users note that the new platform will quickly censor anyone who thinks the wrong way. That includes one user who was reportedly banned from his account the same day he signed up, reflecting previous Twitter moderation rules before Elon Musk bought the company.
Bluesky was first created as an internal Twitter project by Jack Dorsey in 2019 during his second term as CEO. The company will become an independent public benefit corporation in 2022, and Dorsey resigned from the board in May of this year. Mr. Graeber previously founded the events-focused social network Happening and has led the development of Bluesky from its inception.
“In 2019, Jack had a vision to make social media better. That's why he chose me to build this. We're grateful to him for launching this. We’re really grateful and we’ve continued to do this,” Graeber said. “We are building an open source social network that anyone can develop and build with their own hands. This is fundamentally different from anything that has been done on social media before. No one else is as open, transparent, and puts so much control in the hands of users.”
Bluesky's business model involves offering subscriptions that give users access to special features. The platform also plans to add more services for third-party programmers as part of its “developer ecosystem.” Notably, Graeber said BlueSky has ruled out the possibility of allowing advertisers to send algorithmically recommended ads to users, adding that the platform could “just push ads to the user. He emphasized that he does not rely on a model that “encloses people.”
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship issues.
