After several intense and incredible years building Bluesky from the ground up, I've decided to step back as CEO and transition to a new role as Bluesky's Chief Innovation Officer.
After several intense and incredible years building Bluesky from the ground up, I've decided to step back as CEO and transition to a new role as Bluesky's Chief Innovation Officer.
In 2019, I set out to build an open protocol for social media, with the goal of enabling the development of a new generation of applications designed to empower users. The Bluesky app started off as a reference client for the protocol, but has since grown into a thriving platform with over 40 million users. Last year, we grew a world-class team, expanded the AT Protocol ecosystem, and proved that a values-driven social network could thrive at scale.
As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things. As part of this transition, Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and partner at True Ventures, will join our team as interim CEO, while our board runs a search for a permanent chief executive.
Toni believes deeply in the Bluesky mission, and has been an advisor to the company and me personally for over a year. Both Automattic and True Ventures are also investors in Bluesky, and support the development of a more open, user-driven internet. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has built their business on open source software, working to make the web a better and more participatory place. Toni was a key part of guiding that mission, and is someone who leads with genuine curiosity, takes the long view, and deeply understands what it means to build a company around a mission. I am confident that he is the right person to lead us into this next chapter.
Scaling up this company has been a learning experience unlike anything else. I've grown a lot as a leader and had the privilege of assembling the best team I've ever worked with. As we've grown, I've found that people thrive when they're in a role where their passions overlap with their strengths. This is as true for me as it is for our team. I'm most energized by exploring new ideas, bringing a vision to life, and helping people discover their strengths. Transitioning to a more focused role where I can do what brings me energy is my way of putting that belief into practice.
I'm excited to dig into the next frontier of what decentralized social can be, while bringing Toni in to support our team as an experienced operator and leader. The work that got us here was just the beginning, and I'm grateful to keep building alongside this team and community.
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Jay here: this is a transition I've been working towards for awhile, and I'm looking forward to advancing the vision and ecosystem as CIO (Chief Innovation Officer). Toni has been an advisor to us for years, and I personally recruited him to take over as CEO while I focus on new projects within the company. It's an honor to have him on board to lead us into this next stage of growth.
Question about Bluesky and Persona integration. As i understand there are plans to delegate government id verifications to Persona? (https://withpersona.com)
Any confirmation? Comments?
By blackqueeriroh 2026-03-115:57 You understand it from where?
By popalchemist 2026-03-107:431 reply Jay please answer this.
Did you notice that not one company who implemented KYC has answered any comment on this in HN?
By popalchemist 2026-03-1022:58 Yes, they are scumbag bootlickers who are willingly and knowingly accelerating the end of western values and the creation of a dystopia.
By sbinnee 2026-03-101:03 Thanks for commenting on here. I do own bluesky account, but it's been dormant, shamefully. So I appreciate your comment on HN!
Can folks, including me, have hints what sorts of innovative features or changes we will see?
By ChicagoDave 2026-03-0920:262 reply If there was an Internet Technology hall of fame, your work with atproto would qualify.
One big innovation is to drag a large bank or Stripe on board to enable payments on the network.
Good luck!
By brchr 2026-03-102:30 FYI, There is absolutely an Internet Hall of Fame and anyone would be welcome to nominate Jay! https://www.internethalloffame.org
Why would Jay get the award when they didn’t actually lead or build such protocol?
By pfraze 2026-03-1015:42 Jay was directly involved in the design of the protocol
By Dracophoenix 2026-03-0920:131 reply Since you're now focusing on the AT protocol, will E2EE/OTR become a priority?
By danabramov 2026-03-0920:212 reply There's a recent post by Daniel (who works on atproto) on why E2EE is not a current focus: https://dholms.leaflet.pub/3meluqcwky22a
Is there any discussion somewhere about adding in the data that makes the x.com/twitter recommend/ranker so functional?
The "Grok-based Transformer"[0] that uses P(click/dwell/not_interested/photo_expand/video_view) seems pretty important and I can't tell how atproto is capturing it. I use @spacecowboy17.bsky.social's For You and from what I understand that feed wouldn't get that data?
[0]:https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm?tab=readme-ov-file#sc... (this isn't an endorsement of grok/x, it's more that the transformer recommender has been very steerable via those signals in my experience)
(I also struggle with the omni-purpose likes - endorsement, approval, discover-algorithm-input. Maybe a more prominent more/less button addresses this, but then provides less network signal.)
By johnecheck 2026-03-103:401 reply Personally, I really like that my feeds aren't getting that level of granular detail. I prefer the explicit control I have with 'Show more like this' and 'Show less like this'.
By big_toast 2026-03-104:07 I generally think that. But letting dwell time/clicks/open-rates expand the recommender and then (bound to swipe) 'disinterested'/'show less like this' to cull has been pretty efficient. I used to feel dumped into simclusters and now I see a more specific subset of posts I prefer (while still casting what feels like a wide net).
I really liked when bsky introduced the 'show more/less' and then expanded it to custom feeds. But I'm afraid the recommender systems work better with more data. And I think the feed operator alone gets sent a limited set of interactions?
I'm not exactly sure how it would work in atproto but I could imagine an enriched 'graph-interactivity' where you can turn on and off which/how much signal/privacy you want.
By tclancy 2026-03-100:06 That you for signing up to make this comment, strange, new account.
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:094 reply How do you feel about the recent communication failures from the team to the userbase? As another builder of an open-source social platform, we must all understand that it is paramount for any company to not antagonize its customers, doubly so for a SOCIAL platform. I do understand that Bluesky and ATProto has to deal with a lot of baggage from both the old userbase and the new influx from the X/Twitter exodus, but engaging in user-antagonistic communication caused me to sour on the whole protocol.
By parl_match 2026-03-0920:123 reply > user-antagonistic communication
could you provide some examples? i didn't really see this, but maybe i just missed it
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:132 reply By parl_match 2026-03-0920:173 reply I don't like Jesse Singal's work or his political positions (he fucking sucks!), but this is hardly antagonistic except to maybe a small group of terminally online posters who take posting too seriously.
Although, I guess that is the audience bluesky was targeting when they first started. So I guess I understand the criticism.
Also, it is a very ironic demonstration of the pancakes/waffles meme. Interjecting into an unrelated topic to ask the mods to ban someone you don't like is a tradition as old as dial up BBS. So I'm glad to see the torch is being carried forward to a younger generation.
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:223 reply I don't even think having Jesse Singal on the platform is the problem (like it or not, I believe that all beings must have the right to communicate); the problem here was the communication failure when communicating this decision to the userbase. They could have just reiterated their rules and left it at that; instead, they chose to mock their userbase, write them off as harassment, and banned users left and right, abusing their position in network to censor people at every layer of the protocol.
By easterncalculus 2026-03-0921:51 > instead, they chose to mock their userbase
It's a CEO's personal account. CEOs do this on Twitter all the time without it becoming a techcrunch article.
Let's just be honest about what happened - the CEO of Bluesky gave a (still not proportionally as) absurd response to an extremely absurd harassment campaign. That's what this and the article intentionally obscure.
Again, this is never how the web was supposed to work, and it (BARELY) holding on to that is the real story.
By parl_match 2026-03-0920:251 reply > instead, they chose to mock their userbase
Doing the pancakes/waffles thing in the thread about pancakes/waffles is so fucking on the nose and demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness.
> They could have just reiterated their rules and left it at that; instead, they chose to mock their userbase, write them off as harassment, and banned users left and right, abusing their position in network to censor people at every layer of the protocol.
The more I dig into it, the more your one-sided whinging falls apart. I agree they could have handled it somewhat better, but I have very little sympathy for the terminally online bullshit that I'm seeing coming from the banned users.
Anyways, I feel we're apart on this issue. Feel free to have the last word if you wish.
> Doing the pancakes/waffles thing in the thread about pancakes/waffles is so fucking on the nose
Wait what do you think “the pancakes/waffles thing” refers to? You posted 2 hours ago that you had never heard of it.
I can see that how it could be confusing because there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay wrote about about people complaining to the CEO when the moderation team doesn’t respond as being equivalent to that meme, and then there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay started posting pictures of pancakes and waffles as some sort of… joke or dunk? I never quite got the 4D comedy chess there.
It doesn’t seem like anybody is “doing the pancakes/waffles thing” in either case. Nobody is asking Jay, as CEO, to ban anyone in the thread about Jay not being the CEO anymore. And I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ironically posting metahumor pictures of pancakes.
The term has become so overused that definition creep now means that it could mean “anything that might bother Jay” in this context.
By parl_match 2026-03-0923:431 reply > Wait what do you think “the pancakes/waffles thing” refers to? You posted 2 hours ago that you had never heard of it.
Quote me where I said I've never heard of the pancake/waffles thing? Of course I've heard of it, it's been around for a decade or so.
> I can see that how it could be confusing because there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay wrote about about people complaining to the CEO when the moderation team doesn’t respond as being equivalent to that meme, and then there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay started posting pictures of pancakes and waffles as some sort of… joke or dunk? I never quite got the 4D comedy chess there. It doesn’t seem like anybody is “doing the pancakes/waffles thing” in either case. Nobody is asking Jay, as CEO, to ban anyone in the thread about Jay not being the CEO anymore. And I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ironically posting metahumor pictures of pancakes. The term has become so overused that definition creep now means that it could mean “anything that might bother Jay” in this context.
I want you to read this out loud, to yourself. Maybe you'll feel as insane as I did when I read it.
> Quote me where I said I've never heard of the pancake/waffles thing? Of course I've heard of it, it's been around for a decade or so.
Here is a link to your comment about not having seen it in the context of the discussion you are posting in. When people talk about the pancakes/waffle thing in this context they are not talking about a meme from several years before Bluesky existed but rather a specific event (which I have apparently failed to communicate to you).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47314798
> I want you to read this out loud, to yourself. Maybe you'll feel as insane as I did when I read it.
That seems unnecessarily hostile, especially given I was responding to this comment of yours.
> Doing the pancakes/waffles thing in the thread about pancakes/waffles is so fucking on the nose and demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness.
I was talking about the topic of the thread, you seem kind of focused on swearing and insulting people. My bad, I hadn’t seen your other posts and did not realize how much this subject has flustered you.
By parl_match 2026-03-105:121 reply > When people talk about the pancakes/waffle thing in this context
That makes sense. The original meme was widespread and this is fairly niche.
> That seems unnecessarily hostile, especially given I was responding to this comment of yours.
No man, I really mean it. Maybe it's hostile, but also, people talking about this legitimately sound, I don't know... unhinged? Off? I am flustered, because of how ridiculous this all is to me. I'm serious.
Like, "the CEO of blue sky said waffles to me and it was a 4d comedy dunk!" or whatever. It's like a Ralph Wiggum quote. What the fuck?
So, I think this topic is at its end. But really, read aloud what you wrote. Seriously, try it, you might find it grounding.
It is ok if you just didn’t/don’t know what people were talking about, I hope you are doing well.
To put my point as simply as possible for someone that isn’t ‘terminally online’ and understands that ‘posting isn’t praxis’ but also uses those phrases unprompted: People have criticized Jay for getting Poster’s Madness because of a time when she, as an admin, appeared to respond to any criticism saying everybody else has Poster’s Madness.
By karlgkk 2026-03-1021:21 im also one of those people who is struggling to understand why people seem so passionate. its a twitter clone.
i also dont know whats going on, although it is a obscure drama from a relatively small community
i think maybe that is this disconnect. that relatively small community is extremely important to you but many other people here lack similar footing. i dont think the hostility is warranted but i can feel myself furrowing my brow and asking out loud what is happening when i read some of the posts from bluesky users in this thread
i guess i am glad i never got big into twitter or bluesky or the attention economy
By inquirerGeneral 2026-03-0921:491 reply The offended people are the type I least respect on the internet and remember how much better it was before they existed
By Karrot_Kream 2026-03-0921:17 > Although, I guess that is the audience bluesky was targeting when they first started. So I guess I understand the criticism.
I was in the invite only cohort of Bluesky users and I don't really think so. I think what happened is after the election a bunch of very online, political news addicted anti-Musk folks migrated to Bluesky and created the current culture. Even though I'm pretty sure most folks on the network shared pretty much the same politics, the culture on the network changed completely within a few days of this.
By mossTechnician 2026-03-0920:264 reply The central complaint doesn't seem to be distaste, but rather the fact that he is uniquely privileged over other users, despite violating Bluesky's terms of service.[0]
[0]: https://www.change.org/p/bluesky-must-enforce-its-community-...
The central complaint isn't "distaste" because you can't call for someone to be banned because of a "distaste".
"Jesse Singal has distributed private medical information on Bluesky without the consent of the patient" translates to publishing a quote from a patient included in a therapist's letter of support for hormones.
The problem in this situation is that the complaint itself as well as the whole drama surrounding the person is an exercise of harassment towards Singal. In this context, I don't think that saying "waffles" is out of order. I'm not sure of what else can be done about crybullying, since by its very nature innocent bystanders would be surely affected if action was taken against those complaining.
By mossTechnician 2026-03-0921:182 reply Distributing private medical information without consent is a violation of Bluesky's terms.
And to me, that sounds like a much more concrete example of someone being a bully.
By Levitz 2026-03-0922:57 >“Don’t use Bluesky Social to break the law or cause harm to others,”
Is this, quoted in the change.org, the relevant line?
The law was not broken, it is also fairly evident that the intention was not to "cause harm to others", nor has any harm has seemingly come upon the patient for this (it requires a huge stretch of imagination to think of a case in which it could)
By mossTechnician 2026-03-0922:472 reply In my opinion, inappropriately leaked information should probably still be considered private, even if it was made publicly accessible. But even if not, Singal says the same leaker directly contacted him with a new leak, which he also published.
> In my opinion, inappropriately leaked information should probably be considered private.
How is that relevant to BSky's terms of service? The information was public and did not identify the person.
> But even if not, Singal says the same leaker directly contacted him with a new leak, which he also published.
I notice that you didn't say whether this new leak was private information, or whether it was also already public knowledge, or whether it in any way identified a person.
By mossTechnician 2026-03-0923:141 reply > I notice that you didn't say whether this new leak was private information
The new leak was, according to journalist Jesse Singal himself, absolutely private information.
Please cite Singal's statement and let's see what he actually said.
By mossTechnician 2026-03-101:071 reply I think this entire thread has run its course; if it's not this detail, it'll be another, as a few others have already moved goalposts further down the discussion than the ones you're setting here.
But if you wish to sate personal curiosity, it is in his Substack, linked from the first link I posted, which was itself from the link posted by its GP.
By naasking 2026-03-1012:15 The only thing that seems remotely related to your claims is this:
What's your problem with what happened exactly? Is it your position that your "private information" cannot be used, ever, to expose what some see as a medical scandal, even though it cannot identify you or in any way be associated with you? What does "private" even mean to you if sharing this dataset did not violate HIPAA?When the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey began an investigation, [Reed] said she handed over the spreadsheet, after scrubbing out the personally identifying information that could spark HIPAA problems. She shared a copy of it with me as well — it contains 17 alleged detransitioners or desisters and 60 allegedly worrisome cases.
By easterncalculus 2026-03-100:28 > In my opinion, inappropriately leaked information should probably still be considered private.
I'd love to see the limitations of this opinion you definitely hold honestly and without favor.
You started by posting a change.org petition that links to a deleted post - in other words an "appeal to petition" that has no evidence. Now you are suggesting there is another leak that was published (presumably not mentioned in this petition?) that also has no evidence. Where is the evidence?
Everything from an actual search engine request for these posts (which to be clear, are deleted) suggests that these are anonymized and public, and contain no identifying information.
By easterncalculus 2026-03-0921:53 Yeah here's the problem with this argument:
1. People want him banned for any and no reason, so this is a post-hoc justification. The same people (let's be real, likely including you) wanted Singal banned the second he made his account.
2. This change.org petition, despite proving how many uninformed people will blindly click agree on a petition, proves nothing about how Singal broke literally any rule anywhere, in law or on Bluesky.
By tekla 2026-03-0921:25 Why do people keep lying about this?
He pulled a quote from a publically available affidavit.
There was no identifying information whatsoever either.
By parl_match 2026-03-0920:29 [flagged]
By jmcgough 2026-03-0921:15 I think Jesse Singal is an awful person, but Jay responded appropriately there.
By easterncalculus 2026-03-0921:482 reply There aren't really any, the user you're replying to is just disappointed the campaign to ban users for no (on platform, or really any) reason was not successful.
By hitekker 2026-03-1018:01 Yeah, that's the vibe I got after reading more into it.
I respect the CEO for laughing at a melodramatic harassment campaign. The last thing those outrage addicts need is coddling & corporate babytalk.
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0922:33 I don't care about the specific situation either way; What I am observant of is how the core team has handled their userbase and lack of protocol robustness.
By rakovsky89 2026-03-0921:22 [flagged]
By jauntywundrkind 2026-03-0921:56 Meh. People are going to antagonize themselves. Trying to win em all is a fools game.
I wrote this to a discord on the 7th:
> i know it's so obviously stupid, but i like that they are having fun with being online, even if it is at their users expense. and omg the users are so so awful to them, so much. again, it seems obviously bad to do, but i can't help but want them to keep at having fun online anyways.
That was in semi private. I'd de-enohazize the expense part seirously, I'd spin it a little differently now, emphasizing more the Douglas Adams nature of it all:
> In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move.
But that is also not owning it either, and I think this is an ownable lesson in just being human too, in deciding whether online mediums are corporate, lawyer, marketing, and engineer checked reviewed approved and wise correct words, or whether there must be some permission to be ourselves online, and some expectations that people are only human, and we should be thankful they are sharing their human experiences with us or not. It's not just having fun: whether we can be ourselves online is in question. Whether that is socially allowed.
(And generally I haven't found the character of the team to be deeply off. They haven't been, in my view, going out of their way to create injury, but they have been sharing sides that people have never wanted to hear!)
I see how this has been a bad taste for some. And I don't want to belittle your feelings here at all. Yes being more correct would be the wise obvious choice. Ultimately though I think these team member's are more beholden to remaining human, having fun, enjoying themselves.
And to creating (to credit another soul in the discord) personal / compsable moderation & filter systems (not top down enforcement!) such that they can enjoy being a "main character" online (like it or not), even in the midst of strident focused directed continual hostility. Which is a capability atproto is truly uniquely without compare set up to support & enable.
Props to the team. Please keep posting. Sorry about humanity. Sorry to people who are upset and turned off by this. No one is perfect, we work with what we got, and our responses are human and our own and valid, whether they are the wisest sharpest most all correct choice or no. With the good willing souls, we work towards synthesis & understanding; hopefully all sides find that agreeable.
The most vocal and obnoxious of the Bluesky userbase get antagonized by pretty much anything. Pleasing that lot is a fruitless task.
What Bluesky should do now is focus on expanding their userbase away from this particular group of insufferables.
By subscribed 2026-03-102:59 What do you compare this userbase to? Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? HN? All of these places have similar or worse userbase and worse filtering/blocking options than bsky.
By clitui 2026-03-101:43 [dead]
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0922:492 reply As a startup founder, your userbase is your god. Either treat them with utmost respect, or learn to explicitly fire your customers.
By yuestion 2026-03-0923:00 If they want to remain a niche echo-chamber platform rather than become a major social network, that would be an appropriate strategy. However, I expect they have higher ambitions.
What they should also do is redesign (or remove) the "nuclear block" feature. In its current state, it helps perpetuate a hostile and exclusionary atmosphere to new users, which isn't going to help Bluesky grow an active and diverse userbase.
By jauntywundrkind 2026-03-0922:581 reply You have more than one user base.
You have to make hard product decisions about which user bases to serve.
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0923:001 reply Then explicitly refuse service, instead of mocking your userbase.
By pfraze 2026-03-0923:26 By... banning them? What are you suggesting?
By marxisttemp 2026-03-0922:522 reply They should focus on implementing ActivityPub instead of their useless proprietary protocol
By danabramov 2026-03-0922:571 reply It's not "proprietary", it's openly specified and is literally being taken to IETF: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf
Also, unlike ActivityPub, it's actually useful for building features that normal people expect from social apps — for example, algorithmic feeds and search, and a single interlinked world (rather than fragmented "servers").
By bschmidt1 2026-03-1012:32 [dead]
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0922:59 Eh, AP has its own sets of problems (underspecified protocol, split-brained on discoverability, new developments are met with hostility in the community)
By catapart 2026-03-0920:12 Big time +1, here. Would love to hear something - anything - from the bsky team that takes some accountability.
By stackghost 2026-03-101:44 Hi Jay,
It's my understanding that Toni was so uninterested in bsky that his account was inactive. What makes Toni the right person at the helm, even in the interim?
By yieldcrv 2026-03-0920:55 I'm glad you were able to reach your goal, been following your professional journey since I met you at a silicon valley event 10 years ago, looking forward to what you do with the ecosystem
By etchalon 2026-03-104:33 You did such amazing things. I'm excited to see what you do next.
With the new CEO in place, are there any plans to deal with the obnoxious userbase of Bluesky, and perhaps try to expand it out to reach people who don't exhibit such high levels of toxicity?
By subscribed 2026-03-102:512 reply And that in comparison to Reddit ot Twitter?! :D
By datahack 2026-03-104:59 The majority of humanity is not meaningfully engaged even if they are active on social media platforms.
It has a long way to go.
Yes, in the case of Twitter/X. A considerably wider range of expressed preference&opinion is permitted there before platform moderators will aggressively ban or users start flag/report brigades.
By blackqueeriroh 2026-03-116:02 Oooh not true
As one of the first 10k beta users, who was fairly active, then moved back to twitter, I agree with this. The userbase is extremely off putting from the get go- it's not the fault of Graber or anyone else- but they should allow people to turn off the turbo redditor type people with a few settings.
By deaux 2026-03-103:40 > The userbase is extremely off putting from the get go
Fair enough
> moved back to twitter
"The summer heat in Phoenix is extremely off putting, so I moved to Riyadh"
By SecretDreams 2026-03-101:18 All social media roads lead back to the same place, imo. The only thing keeping HN for getting there sooner is its lack of popularity.
By pcthrowaway 2026-03-102:513 reply > As one of the first 10k beta users, who was fairly active, then moved back to twitter, I agree with this. The userbase is extremely off putting from the get go
Very surprised to hear this... the few times I've visited Twitter in the last year I've been met with a deluge of racist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic comments. Like there's practically no moderation on there. People saying "Hitler was right the whole time" and shit like that.
I don't use Bluesky much either but I definitely wouldn't have considered it worse than Twitter
By acjohnson55 2026-03-103:34 Twitter still attracts top quality initial posts from prominent people, even though the replies are garbage, or worse. Honestly, it doesn't compute to me how people can justify continuing to contribute there.
By animal_spirits 2026-03-103:05 Its not worse than twitter. It's not close in compared to toxicity; though i've personally noticed a high-minded snobbishness toxicity that shuts down discussion on it.
By tinfoilhatter 2026-03-103:332 reply [flagged]
By pcthrowaway 2026-03-109:541 reply The response was to someone commenting the discourse on Bluesky was "off putting" so they went back to Twitter.
I wasn't touching on freedom of speech, just the relative quality of speech in both platforms.
As a centralized service operating in Canada and the EU though, I do believe Twitter is legally required to remove certain kinds of hate speech. The qualification for removal might be debatable (e.g. "the Austrian painter was right" is another thing people say which is a dogwhistle, but probably not explicit enough for companies to be compelled to remove it) but the requirement is there.
> but I'm sure you hold dear the right to say whatever you want, whether others agree with it or not
You know, reflecting back on my youth, I wish certain things I said (and might have posted on social media had it been so present) were immediately stricken from the record. Banning hate speech which incites violence against a minority group is a slippery slope, but I think it's for the better. At the same time, of course it can be abused, such as with the IHRA definition of antisemitism used in many jurisdictions, under which many valid criticisms of Israel would be deemed "antisemitic"
By tinfoilhatter 2026-03-1014:142 reply I agree that the rampant toxicity on X / Twitter is quite extreme, but it's also there on BlueSky, just in a different form. Both platforms have polarized bases but the only difference in my mind is that one platform resorts to banning speech it doesn't like whereas the other does little to curb it. Neither is ideal in my mind.
> Banning hate speech which incites violence against a minority group is a slippery slope, but I think it's for the better. At the same time, of course it can be abused, such as with the IHRA definition of antisemitism used in many jurisdictions, under which many valid criticisms of Israel would be deemed "antisemitic"
Anti-semitism definitely gets weaponized and while I don't agree with people that praise Hitler, I also don't pretend the history I learned about WWII and the persecution of Jewish people was objective truth either. It's important for me to remember who the people defining what is and is not hate speech are as well.
> I also don't pretend the history I learned about WWII and the persecution of Jewish people was objective truth either.
I'm not sure what you expect by spewing stuff like this apart from downvotes without comments.
By tinfoilhatter 2026-03-1114:46 Spewing stuff like what? Robert Maxwell, Ghislane Maxwell's father (a proud Zionist and Mossad agent) was the co-founder of McGraw Hill, the second largest textbook publishing company in the US. Are you trying to tell me a proud Zionist who is publishing textbooks is making it his priority to ensure they paint an objective picture of history in relationship to Israel? My textbooks (whether in High School or University) certainly didn't talk about the Sabbateans or Jacob Frank / Frankism - yet understanding their history is critical to anything approaching objectivity.
What I expect is for all narratives to be able to be questioned, and not for there to be one that is unquestionable. When narratives can't be questioned, it's a pretty good indicator that something is being lied about.
And you won't ever call me a liar either.
By pcthrowaway 2026-03-1121:52 This is a perfect example of when I think freedom of speech restrictions (such as laws criminalizing Holocaust denial) are a net positive.
My grandparents were holocaust survivors, so I know directly from them what they went through, and I know about my family members who were killed.
I have no sympathy for people who publicly spread lies and misinformation to deny or downplay the severity of any genocide.
Sorry not sorry.
By bschmidt1 2026-03-1012:35 [dead]
By SmirkingRevenge 2026-03-101:40 You basically can, can't you, with it's robust blocking features and feeds?
Personally, I've found bsky has a far healthier culture than Twitter, even before Musk turned it into his own personal megaphone/therapist and neo-nazi safe-space (and I follow a lot of political accounts)
The lack of payouts for engaging posts and the robust blocking really does change the incentive structure over there. That twitter-style toxic engagement-bait type posting doesn't get rewarded as much.
There are some far-left groups there who are very toxic and will harass some people, but they are easy to block. Most of them seem to block people at the drop of a hat anyways, and so end up in their own isolated bubbles.
By whattheheckheck 2026-03-0922:44 Yeah its the same plans Elon has for X
This is a valid question. I agree politically with a lot of Bluesky users and still find it to be an awful space to hang out in.
By acjohnson55 2026-03-103:28 I agree, I'm sorry to say.
I personally believe it's because they replicated the same incentive structure as Twitter. Being provocative generates engagement, which gets you reach and creates the perception of relevance.
At first, people were just happy to be at an alternative to Elon Twitter. But good vibes only get you so far when the incentives point the other direction.
By meowface 2026-03-106:18 It's insufferable, yes. Even though I'm a left-liberal, it feels foreign to me. Twitter is worse at the limit (endless neo-Nazis and Maoists) but at least I feel some diversity while I'm there. Bluesky is so uniform in the annoyingness of its community.
By sourcegrift 2026-03-0920:071 reply [flagged]
By brendoelfrendo 2026-03-0920:43 Er, I don't know if she's discussed this elsewhere, but I don't think Jay is trans.
By rps93 2026-03-101:37 [flagged]
By marxisttemp 2026-03-0922:512 reply Why did you deliberately steal Mastodon’s thunder? Why don’t you support ActivityPub?
By danabramov 2026-03-0923:02 ActivityPub does not solve any of the stated goals of atproto.
Comparing ActivityPub with atproto is like pitting Email against Web. These are just differently shaped solutions to differently shaped problems.
What thunder? Mastodon has had nearly a decade to go mainstream and it's still mostly tech enthusiasts explaining to their friends what an 'instance' is.
ActivityPub is fine if you enjoy your identity being held hostage by whatever random server admin decides to keep the lights on. Want to move servers? Hope you're cool with losing your followers. Want real account portability? Too bad. Want scalable search and flexible moderation? Also too bad.
ATproto wasn't built to compete with Mastodon out of pettiness, it was built because ActivityPub fundamentally cannot accomplish the task that ATProto/Bluesky is aiming for: a decentralized social network that isn't a cumbersome pain in the ass to use.
By danabramov 2026-03-1012:55 This isn’t Mastodon so a “Bluesky server” isn’t a thing.
Mastodon is shaped like email so you have “servers” sending messages to each other.
Atproto is shaped more like RSS with aggregation. Everyone posts data to their hosting (which anyone could move at any time), and apps like Bluesky aggregate data from everyone’s hosting.
So a concept like “Bluesky server” is nonsensical. What you have is “atproto hosting” (which can be provided by Bluesky, by other communities, by other companies, or can be self-hosted — it’s all open source and you can even implement your own) and “Bluesky app” (of which there’s only one — but there are forks like Blacksky which fork the entire stack including the server). There also “other atproto apps” like https://leaflet.pub, https://tangled.org, etc, which have nothing to do with Bluesky.
With ActivityPub you have to build... actual relationships with people (yes also those that do the work and walk the walk!)
I know that for Twitter-brained people this is considered an anti-feature (and yes account mobility is an issue), but a PITA to use it really is not
By safarimonkey 2026-03-1011:29 I made my account on a server that a personal friend span up. Said friend deleted it on a whim after a few months after not using it much, not really aware of the implications. Personal connection was not the issue here, ownership of my digital identity was.
Besides, people sometimes have fallings-out.
Is the new blocking age verification page the kind of innovation we should expect from BlueSky?
Counterpoint - its a legal requirement in several parts of the world now (and rapidly expanding), how do you think they should handle it whilst you know...still being able to exist?
By egorfine 2026-03-109:11 It's not a legal requirement in my country. Thus they are volunteering to go extra mile in the implementation of the repressive laws.
I think they should resist as much as possible. Yes it was a legal requirement to gas the Jews and it was illegal to hide them.
Who do we cheer now? Those who abided to the law or those who broke it?
It was supposed to be decentralised though, meaning there would be no central party to pursue.
By danabramov 2026-03-0923:53 Sure, which is why it's perfectly possible to work around those restrictions using any of the alternative apps that show the same data (but don't implement the legal restrictions).
By subscribed 2026-03-102:55 It is. The block is on the client level, not the network.
By egorfine 2026-03-109:11 How long until it KYC at bluesky becomes a centralized requirement?
What makes you think a nation state level entity can't pursue in this case...?
By wolvoleo 2026-03-101:59 The same reason even nation state actors have not managed to eradicate torrents. You take one tracker down, another pops back up.
It kinda of confuses me when use the term "nation state" instead of just "state". For example Canada is not a nation-state but surely they are powerful and important enough that they could also pursue this kind of case.
By lII1lIlI11ll 2026-03-1113:49 This has been a pet peeve of mine for some time now. It seems people just feel smarter using a fancy terms instead of "a state" or "a government".
By idiotsecant 2026-03-0923:321 reply I don't know why people have to be like this. Are you not capable of asking the question without the aggressive snark? Just be cool for a second and maybe you'll get an actual conversation where you learn something.
I live in a country where this is not a legal requirement. Yet my account was blocked due to no birthdate.
This makes me have zero respect for those who volunteer to go the extra mile in the implementation of repressive laws.
By idiotsecant 2026-03-1012:13 Let me explain how to ask this without being an ineffective rage dork: 'I don't have age verification laws in my country but was blocked anyway. Why is that?'
This move came from Jay so that she could focus more on the atproto ecosystem and forward looking development. Personally, I'm happy for her. The CEO role gets extremely wrapped up in operations & org building, and as a technologist I'm not sure it would be for me.
I've met with Toni a couple of times and he seems really excellent. He was CEO of Automattic (Wordpress) from 2006 to 2014, and that means a fair amount of expertise making an open-source-first company work. He cares about an open internet and protocol, and seems very keen to drive the mission forward.
For a little extra assurance, atproto is hopefully quite close to establishing an IETF working group, and the DID PLC Directory is likewise close to establishing the independent entity. Our priorities for an open network are unchanged.
There is a very common inflection point in companies where the CEO needs to be about maintaining what is built instead of growing forever. You cannot, for instance, when you have 60% market share expect the company to keep growing linearly. The people who do end up stooping to questionable means to grow new markets they have no business growing, like for instance children.
Some orgs will go through three, from founder, to growth, to sustaining.
By tcbrah 2026-03-102:35 The WordPress analogy is actually pretty apt here given Toni's background. Automattic went through exactly this - Matt stayed as the visionary/product guy while bringing in operators to handle the scaling side. And WordPress is arguably one of the most successful open source projects in terms of actual mainstream adoption.
The tricky part with Bluesky is figuring out which phase they're even in. 40M signups sounds like growth phase, but the retention numbers tell a different story. They might need a sustaining CEO before they've actually finished growing, which is an awkward spot to be in.
By arbglhcs0 2026-03-0922:48 [flagged]
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:184 reply We don't need "open" networks (Digital Panopticons), we need private networks.
By jauntywundrkind 2026-03-0922:21 We have never had an online open public space where each of us has our voice, can shape our experience, can use our own compsable moderation, can integrate with whatever apps we choose.
How, in spite of having no data on what it would be like, people are so confident that leaving shared open connected mediums behind is the only way to go is such a mystery to me.
The radio station I'm on just played a modem tone, Mountain Chill Radio. But I was already gearing up to write what an amazing era this has been, how incredible a rise it has been that we can connect & talk, with so many people. My dialtone travels so much further & that is glorious. I have no idea, feel like I would have no chance to build a good private network for myself, that my life would stagnante and closed, if I had to build my networks myself in private, smuggling the light of my soul to others rather than being able to let it out.
I am happy to be online. I am proud of my "data", my voice, my app records. There's some less pleasant less shiny corners! But it is mad incredible that I get to do this live, that I get to have so many edges of connection and serendipity. People provide the most wild interesting comments and suggestions and topics, ongoingly. I benefit so much from them sharing their lives.
I spiritually believe deeply that we have our light to share with the universe. To turn your nose up at sharing, to renounce & see only evil, to let the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, this spectre of the closed/bad/no-good controlling systems shape our thinking here is a pandora's box: I say you are shutting the door right as hope is finally trying to get out.
By pfraze 2026-03-0920:22 Both are good
What are your thoughts on people self hosting their own websites and blogs instead of posting to big tech platforms? I’d say that extra openness was a good thing. I absolutely believe in privacy as well, and think ownership is important too.
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:252 reply We already could've done that before, just throw a HTML file on a HTTP server on a cheap VPS
By danabramov 2026-03-0920:301 reply That's pretty much what atproto is, except it's typed JSON rather than HTML, and HTTP+WebSockets to allow aggregation.
I wrote more about how it works here if you're curious: https://overreacted.io/a-social-filesystem/
By CactusBlue 2026-03-0920:372 reply and I actually don't hate that bit (I really like lexicons, although I might have approached it in a different way) - what I hate is the aggregation layer. I know that it is possible to have an AppView-less atproto app (e.g. RedDwarf), but I feel like much of the ecosystem still defaults to the assumption that it will go through the Bluesky AppView.
By danabramov 2026-03-0920:39 Unrelated apps (https://leaflet.pub/, https://tangled.org/, http://semble.so/) don't go through Bluesky Appview (since they need aggregations of different kind of data). I think aggregation is the only model that can compete with centralized services on UX, but of course different apps would need different backends.
By verdverm 2026-03-0921:04 You may be confusing the Relay, a protocol component run by Bluesky, with the Bluesky AppView
By jeffbee 2026-03-0921:15 This is like saying anyone can open a lemonade stand in Mogadishu.
By Hamuko 2026-03-0920:31 Who is this "we" and where can I read their opinions?
By multisport 2026-03-0919:2710 reply Just to say the obvious: the new CEO is a VC partner and former CEO of Automattic. That seems very bad, no matter how "committed" they are to the vision of Bluesky.
Ultimately the goal "build a nice community where people can enjoy social interactions" is fully incompatible with "build the next Everything For Everyone Social Website like twitter/facebook/instagram/youtube/tiktok/etc so that we can get 5 billion users and start pushing ads at people". Unfortunately once you take VC funding, you no longer have the option of doing the former.
From an actual content perspective Bluesky is fine, but there's no investor who would take a look at the site's user statistics[0] and say "oh yeah things are going great." There needs to be drastic changes if investors hope to have any return on investment.
Another problem is that Twitter's demise left people who liked the format disenchanted and suspicious (and rightly so), and because of that, trying to recreate Twitter is bound to fail, at least until some more time passes.
By unselect5917 2026-03-101:022 reply >Twitter's demise
I just checked https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts/6009 and X (formerly twitter) is the #1 news app followed by substack, CrimeRadar Dispatch Audio, and coming in at 4th place is reddit.
So if twitter's dead, what does that make reddit, 3 spots behind it? Well, not dead, obviously. Pretending that twitter is gone or dead is just not rational behavior.
While still in business, X is shrinking fast (https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-user-decline-in-uk-...) and sliding in the rankings, where it is well behind Reddit and LinkedIn, and even behind Pinterest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_social_pl...).
I'm not saying it's "fully dead", but it clearly lost the cultural relevance and impact it once had.
By unselect5917 2026-03-102:441 reply That's a two year old article and X is the #1 news app today. How can you possibly construe that as "shrinking fast" if two years later it's in the top spot literally today? It seems like wishful thinking on your part rather than being reasonable based on first principles and the data at hand, from where I'm sitting.
The ranking compiled on Wikipedia is from a couple months ago. X is now behind Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn (and of course, the major social players). Also, why would it be "wishful thinking"?
BTW, on US iOS App Store, Claude today is way ahead of Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Surely you don't think it means it's used by more people.
By unselect5917 2026-03-104:481 reply Again, the ranking from Apple is from today. Not "a couple months ago". And again, it's #1 while reddit is #4. So which is incorrect, Apple, or Wikipedia? It has to be one of them.
>Also, why would it be "wishful thinking"?
Because you've Motte & Balley'd twice now, each time in the direction of downplaying X's success. Because X is objectively doing great. #1st place is objectively great.
>BTW, on US iOS App Store, Claude today is way ahead of Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Surely you don't think it means it's used by more people.
Are any of those news apps? This is the third Mott & Bailey. Again in the direction of denigrating X with bad data. So first principles and neutral data sourcing cannot be the reason for the inaccuracies - I dare say lies. It's flailing at this point.
Putting a lot of weight on a single data point there. How does Apple even choose the top apps? Why assume it’s some reliable metric for use?
By unselect5917 2026-03-108:591 reply The discussion is about trends, and the most recent datapoint shows it at a point of primacy when the argument was it was in decline two years ago. Clearly that claim was incorrect.
By denkmoon 2026-03-112:16 A single datapoint does not disprove a trend. That's basic stats.
By jauntywundrkind 2026-03-0923:353 reply One of Twitter's strengths was that it was a constructive community where near services & informational/radiative bots chilled. It was a connective fabric, it made information available.
That's all been gone. The algorithm fav'ing paid blue check users massively made things worse from there.
Bluesky attempts to be better on all fronts here. Interesting apps/services are welcome, permissionless. There is no top down pro-facsism pro-racism pro-MAGA finger-on-the-dial algo-shaping.
Sure there's some who will just be burned out & not interested. But there's so many interesting structural safeguards & such a openness to play & creativity & tuning... I really encourage folks to give it a time. I would definitely hope that "bound to fail" is perhaps not a cast die, that, we tried something great once, it's gone, never again, is not how this works.
By rcruzeiro 2026-03-101:22 I remember being in 20 years old, at the start of my career, and complete broke. I thought Twitter was just a toy website, until one day I radically changed my mind.
I was a customer of a bank that treated me with nothing but contempt. Whenever I called the bank because of a problem, I would stay on the line forever to eventually talk to an unbothered representative. One day, instead of calling, I complained on twitter and tagged the bank. Half an hour later the bank apologised and fixed my problem.
By cindyllm 2026-03-0923:38 [dead]
By chaosharmonic 2026-03-101:061 reply Elon Musk is all of those things personally (see: that heil-handing incident), and it's public knowledge that he made the Twitter engineering team amplify his own posts.[1]
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/report-musk-had-...
For whatever faults the old Twitter had pre-Musk, it did establish a certain critical mass for a certain type of short form threaded discussion which seems to be largely dead at this point.
By throw-the-towel 2026-03-0923:48 And it should well stay dead. Short form social media is just too good a fit for outrage farming.
Jack seemed interested in the protocol side of the house and making a good product that was in spirit of the internet, it also had a mix of people you might know IRL (with reasonable privacy defaults) and official sources/public figures. I don't think he was much interested in the censorship, it feels they got run over by a bunch of activist types during covid (who decided it was de rigeur to censor real doctors for perceived 'misinformation'). Jack started work on Bluesky and now is involved in Nostr
Speaking personally, supposedly Twitter now (X) still has a bunch of censorship and I don't especially like Musk (but what he did was valuable, showing Jay Bhattacharya he'd be put on a trending blacklist) and the site is... well, I should be able to follow threads without having an account but they crippled it so much. It reminds me of Instagram, "log in to see any PUBLIC page"
Court orders are different from psyops. The Bhattacharya thing, and the entire narrative around that stuff was essentially a psyop. Geo-restricting a Turkish politician because the authoritarian govt arrested him and gave a court order to restrict his account is - first of all - what all social media platforms must adhere to legally, and second of all is currently being contested by X in court.
I don't know if it was a psyop. Twitter banned tons of people during covid for completely ridiculous reasons, unless it was somehow all forced by court order or something
By guelo 2026-03-117:52 you don't know the people that are banned now but you knew the people back then. why do you think that is?
By ValentineC 2026-03-0921:402 reply Twitter's main problem wasn't the network, but fElon Musk running amok.
By unselect5917 2026-03-101:422 reply It was the censorship. Which isn't gone, but is way less restrictive than it was. And I've actually started seeing bangers (auto) translated from Japanese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese lately, which is fantastic. I don't really want an English hivemind. I want to see what the whole world thinks. It's kinda fantastic tbh.
Who needs censorship when you have an algorithm to feed people what you want them to see and you've self-selected for only people who aren't morally opposed to the new site?
Don't be fooled into thinking you're getting a dose of unfiltered reality on X.
By unselect5917 2026-03-102:271 reply >Who needs censorship when you have an algorithm to feed people what you want them to see and you've self-selected for only people who aren't morally opposed to the new site?
It feeds you what you engage with, and it changes surprisingly quickly. It caught onto my ARC raiders interest almost instantly. I engaged with a Portuguese post once, and now I get wonderful translated posts in Spanish, French, and Arabic too.
>Don't be fooled into thinking you're getting a dose of unfiltered reality on X.
What evidence could you possibly have that I'm not? There's lots of "politically incorrect" things which is a symptom of low filtration. Besides, you can't have seen my feed. Completely baseless allegation. So what's the real reason for taking the anti-X stance?
> There's lots of "politically incorrect" things which is a symptom of low filtration.
Politically incorrect things might be a symptom of low filtration on almost any other site, but not one run by Elon Musk. He has a clear agenda and is not shy about putting his finger on the scale at X. It's so blatant and well documented that it's almost hard to imagine you could be commenting in good faith.
By unselect5917 2026-03-106:131 reply >Politically incorrect things might be a symptom of low filtration on almost any other site,
Why would that change anything? I've always found political incorrectness to be a symptom of free speech.
>but not one run by Elon Musk.
Why would that be any different? Same symptom. Same free speech as far as I can tell.
>He has a clear agenda
What's the agenda?
>is not shy about putting his finger on the scale at X.
What instances of him putting his finger on the scale do you have? He gets community noted hilariously often.
>It's so blatant
What makes it blatant?
>well documented
By people who clearly hate the man and have lost their ability to reason over it. Like the ones who lost the narrative control of twitter.
>it's almost hard to imagine you could be commenting in good faith.
Having different opinions than you isn't bad faith. I brought up that the censorship is better than before (but still not great), and mentioned some cool new developments I've seen. You've attempted to steer the conversation to be about Elon Musk or myself. These are both ad hominem attacks, which is textbook bad faith.
I think the lady doth protest too much.
Sorry, I don't find it very interesting to debate whether the sky is blue. We can agree to disagree.
By unselect5917 2026-03-114:54 We can agree you've contributed nothing but bad faith nonsense to this thread and are mad nobody is buying your MDS addled nonsense.
If you think censorship is gone, try to talk about Israel's apartheid in Palestine and see how far you get.
By sunaookami 2026-03-108:491 reply What are you talking about? X is full of this shit, how can you claim that this gets censored when it is EVERYWHERE?
By unselect5917 2026-03-109:011 reply Show the class where you talked about it on X and it didn't get censored.
By sunaookami 2026-03-1019:19 Go to X and use the search function and you find a lot of posts about it, even with more than 100k views and >10k likes.
By pron 2026-03-0922:26 Of course, but the damage was done.
That user number is not reproducible last time I tried (~8 months ago). I was looking at the code the other day and saw what I believe is one of the reasons, but I still couldn't find several million accounts (>10%), which is pretty hard to lose. (8+ bsky run pds equivalents)
This also does not account for (1) people with multiple accounts (labellers, feeds, bots, intent) or actual activity (significant % are likely churned, didn't delete)
Even if the stats are off by a factor of 10 it wouldn't matter. You could remove the numbers from the user axis entirely and it would paint the same story: there were massive user influxes after the 2024 US election and the inauguration in January, but user retention has been on a steep decline for the year+ since.
Again, this is not a reflection of anything bad about Bluesky as a user. IMO a smaller and more focused is a good thing for the actual community, hence why I read/post on HN and not Reddit or Twitter. However as an investor there's basically no way to interpret those statistics as anything but bad.
Strong agreement, though I would say it looks to have reached a stable level for now. I've found several subcommunities that I can get good info from. I'm curious how the '26 election cycle will affect things, already seeing increase political discourse.
By ajsalminen 2026-03-1010:131 reply I don't think it's quite stable. The external events that caused waves of new users to arrive from X are getting rare and bringing in fewer. When those aren't happening it's been a slow, gradual decline.
By verdverm 2026-03-1016:44 Perhaps "leveled off" is a better phrase. There seems to be a base level of users, much like Mastodon.
By unselect5917 2026-03-100:57 >From an actual content perspective Bluesky is fine
From a content perspective nothing important is permitted to be discussed there. It's just another hivemind with the exact same opinions as reddit and HN. Completely pointless and nothing more than the output of a temper tantrum over not getting to be the censors in charge and the whole world knows it.
By clitui 2026-03-101:45 [dead]
To be honest, I was never entirely on board with Jay's almost exclusively cryptocurrency background. I think she's done an acceptable job as CEO, but I have also felt that leadership at Bluesky was never good enough to see legitimate success.
Today, Bluesky remains largely undermoderated and they have managed to bake in more toxic features Twitter ever did in such a short timespan. Its success is largely driven by having a UI closer to Twitter's original UI than any other alternative, and taking a stronger stance against far-right rhetoric than Twitter.
The only technical saving grace is the broad control you can take over the algorithm to avoid the content you don't want to see, but Bluesky is generally covered with more calls for violence than their nascent content team could ever actually deal with.
And I have yet to actually see a real use of ATproto that isn't just immediately blown out of the water by ActivityPub.
But I digress, the new CEO pretty much hammers that final nail in the coffin for me. I have zero belief in Bluesky to be anything but another awful corporate corner of the web that I should avoid.
By reverius42 2026-03-0922:34 > Its success is largely driven by having a UI closer to Twitter's original UI than any other alternative, and taking a stronger stance against far-right rhetoric than Twitter.
These things are very valuable, and if Bluesky can't succeed doing them, I hope someone else can.
By danabramov 2026-03-1013:04 > And I have yet to actually see a real use of ATproto that isn't just immediately blown out of the water by ActivityPub.
ActivityPub doesn’t remotely even try to solve problems solved by atproto. What are you talking about?
In short, atproto makes apps interoperable by default by decoupling data hosting from applications. This means that apps become projections of everyone’s data, and can embed and interpret typed data from each other. ActivityPub doesn’t offer anything close, which is why you don’t have projects like http://leaflet.pub, https://standard.site, https://tangled.org, https://semble.so in the AP ecosystem.
If you genuinely want to learn about atproto, I have two longreads for you:
By bdavisx 2026-03-1012:55 > they have managed to bake in more toxic features Twitter ever did in such a short timespan.
Not arguing, just curious - what toxic features are you talking about?
He's only meant to be filling in temporarily per the Wired article, but we'll see.
By multisport 2026-03-0919:371 reply Fair enough, I've never been involved in a CEO recruitment, I can't imagine the candidate pool tends to include people like the previous CEO of Bluesky
By marksomnian 2026-03-0919:431 reply It's not that unusual to have an interim CEO hold the reins (read: sign anything that needs the CEO's signature) while a permanent one is found.
By alterom 2026-03-0920:02 That's not what the comment you're responding to is about.
By jnwatson 2026-03-0923:04 Transitioning to an interim CEO is never a good look. Should have waited until conclusion of the executive search.
By ribosometronome 2026-03-0919:371 reply Apologies, I'm probably under a rock, but why is that bad? I see they're behind WordPress but am not sure what the 1:1 is. The WP Engine stuff?
By Legend2440 2026-03-0919:414 reply There was some WP drama between Automattic and the WP community a while back.
Also the whole point of Bluesky is that they aren't supposed to be a big evil silicon valley tech company. But now you have a silicon-valley VC running the thing.
Matt M. was behind the drama from WordPress' side though. It looks like Toni Schneider left in 2014.
Toni was in fact the adult supervision brought in by Automattic’s board when the company was young and Matt was inexperienced.
By qingcharles 2026-03-0922:16 And still needed...
By bananamogul 2026-03-0920:49 "Some drama"...yeah, the way there was drama between Germany and the Soviet Union back in 1941.
Automattic's Matt Mullenweg is downright insane. Just google their war with WP Engine and by extension the entire WordPress community.
By captainbland 2026-03-0919:45 They'd already taken VC money hadn't they? It's got to be said though that tech startups are getting very formulaic. Monster of the week vibes.
By sieabahlpark 2026-03-0919:54 [dead]
By blackqueeriroh 2026-03-116:08 Former CEO that kept Wordpress open source and never oversaw any layoffs.
By isodev 2026-03-103:11 They put it quite plainly indeed:
> As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution
Translation: enshittification
That’s the other shoe where they will iterate on ways to monetise the party. Ads, paid “verification”, making users pay to use atproto apps (or making developers pay to use the managed storage)… the sky is the limit.
In a way I’m happy Bluesky never took root and outside a few enthusiasts in my bubble it’s practically unknown.
By Bnjoroge 2026-03-0920:19 The vision of Bluesky isnt compatible with it existing in a capitalistic society.
By paxys 2026-03-0920:00 Why is that bad?
By plsft 2026-03-0919:32 thats not a good sign
