There’s no question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most effective alternatives to the space known as Twitter. But while these two services may share similar goals, they show very different ideas of how text-based social networks should work.
Wires, of course, is controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And while the company says it welcomes “public discussion,” it has also tipped its thumb on the scale to encourage certain types of speech over others. The company promoted “political” content in an election year, forcing users to adjust their settings to allow posts about the election or “social topics” to appear in their “your” feed.
This desire to limit any content that Meta has described as “potentially sensitive” has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. For months, the app has evolved to search for specific topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Those restrictions have been lifted, but there have been numerous and mysterious instances of other moderation failures in Threads.
In October, the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri admitted that the company “found mistakes and made changes” after users reported that their accounts were penalized for using “saltines” and “crackers.” Earlier this month, Meta’s director of communications Andy Stone after users noticed that searches posted by Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were banned from the app because the content “may be related to drug trafficking.” Stone did not provide an explanation but said the matter has been addressed.
Bluesky, on the other hand, took a slightly more top-down approach. Although the company uses some of its moderators to enforce “basic moderation,” users have a lot of control over how much questionable or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own for an even more personalized experience.
“Equity has many forms, like governance,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said earlier this year. “And we set local social norms, we don’t think that one person or one company should decide independently that in every living system where people have important social discussions in the world.”
That philosophy plays out in other important ways. Twitter has never been the number one publisher, even before Elon Musk’s takeover. But the platform once played in the media ecosystem. At the time when Elon Musk admitted that X and Threads’ top exec said that Meta does not want to “encourage” , Bluesky leaders should encourage link sharing, and several publishers have reported that they saw in Bluesky, compared to -Threads and X. .
But perhaps the most obvious difference between the Meta and Bluesky methods is in the order of posts and appearances. Bluesky automatically becomes a reverse chronological 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 a “cat pictures” feed that shows posts with pictures of cats and a “trending news” feed that shows links to stories that are widely shared on the platform.
And even though Meta just came out with its own version of , the app still defaults to “your” algorithmic feed that presents a mix of content users want and random and weird unsolicited drivel to compare to. (Meta said it would allow users to automate their next feed, but did not provide an update.) It also says content creators are being paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on the Threads platform.
There are even more important changes coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have so far been blissfully ad-free, both services will need to eventually make money.
Bluesky has so far tried other ways to make money, including selling custom domains and in the future offering additional features to paying users. Although Graber has not completely advertised, he has also made it clear that he does not “want” to do the service for the sake of advertising.
On the other hand, threads, already attached to the Meta ad machine of billions of dollars, which is a strange business many people believe that the company’s applications in their conversations (a theory that has been repeated many times.) Although Zuckerberg has a company that is not in the program. the rush to turn Threads into a “very big business,” could see in January, according to reports, and there’s no reason to believe that Meta won’t end up using the same. playbook with all its other services.
All this makes Bluesky an underdog. Threads are already more than 10 times their size and Meta has made it clear that they have no problem using their copy-or-kill against the upstart.
But this is also why many Bluesky users deeply believe that the platform is “”. While Threads and X put public discussions in the hands of private billionaires, Bluesky is an independent organization and has structured its platform in a more democratic way. The platform has had its share , but it puts more control in the hands of its users. Welcome developers, who have created dozens of third-party applications for the service.
All of that may not be enough in the end to protect Meta, which can throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Bluesky’s vision for an open source platform is about more than just being a massive social networking site. “We are determined to change the way social media works from the ground up,” said Graber during a recent press event. “I want us to choose what we see.”
