Bluesky and Threads showed us very different visions for a post-X future

There is no question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most viable alternatives to the platform once known as Twitter. Even though the two services pursue some of the same goals, they have very different ideas about how text-based social networks should work.

Threads is of course controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And while the company claims to promote “public conversation,” it has also been consistent about promoting certain types of speech over others. The company throttled “political” content in an election year, forcing users to adjust their settings so that posts about elections or “social issues” would appear in their “For You” feed.

This desire to limit any content deemed “potentially sensitive” by Meta has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. The app for months from searching some topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. These restrictions have since been lifted, but there have been numerous and inexplicable instances of other moderation errors in threads.

In October, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri admitted that the company had “found errors and made changes” after users reported that their accounts had been penalized for usage like “Saltines” and “Crackers.” Earlier this month, Meta’s communications director Andy Stone said after users discovered that searches for posts about Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were blocked on the app because the content “may be linked to drug sales.” Stone did not provide an explanation but said the problem had been resolved.

Bluesky, on the other hand, takes less of a top-down approach to moderation. While the company uses some of its own 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 individual experience.

“Moderation is like governance in many ways,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. “And when we set the norms of a social space, we don’t believe that one person or company should decide that unilaterally for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations that are important to the state of the world.”

This philosophy plays out in other important ways too. Twitter was never one for most publishers, even before Elon Musk took over. But the platform played once in the news ecosystem. At a time when Elon Musk acknowledged that X and Threads’ top exec has said that Meta doesn’t want to “encourage.” Bluesky’s leaders have to encourage link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing this from Bluesky, compared to Threads and X.

But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta’s and Bluesky’s approach is the order in which posts appear in the first place. By default, Bluesky uses a reverse-chronological feed that shows posts from accounts you follow. Users can also opt to add based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow a “Cat Pictures” feed, which displays posts with photos of cats, and a “Trending News” feed, which displays links to news stories that are widely shared on the platform.

And while Meta recently released its own version of By default, the app still uses an algorithmic “For You” feed that displays a mix of actual content users want and unsolicited drivel so random and bizarre that it’s compared to one . (Meta said it would be It’s also telling that even content creators are paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for posting in threads the platform.

Even more significant changes are coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have been completely ad-free so far, both services will need to make money at some point.

Bluesky has experimented with other ways to make money so far, including selling custom domains and an upcoming one This provides additional features to paying users. However, Graber didn’t quite do that Advertisement, she has also made it clear that she does not want to ““The service is for advertising.”

Threads, on the other hand, is already connected to Meta’s multibillion-dollar advertising machine, an entity so intrusive that many people believe the company’s apps to their conversations (a theory that has been put forward repeatedly .) Even though Zuckerberg did it The company is in no rush to make Threads a “very large company,” one would imagine Reportedly in January, and there’s little reason to believe that Meta won’t eventually adopt the same gameplay principle as all other services.

All of this makes Bluesky even more of an outsider. Threads is already more than ten times larger and Meta has made it clear that it has no problem with the copy-or-kill feature against the upstart.

But that’s exactly why so many Bluesky users believe so strongly that the platform is the one that “.” While Threads and The platform has had its part but it gives its users far more control. It is a welcome developer that has created dozens of third-party apps for the service.

All of that may ultimately not be enough to fend off meta that can afford to throw billions of dollars at Threads. However, Bluesky’s vision of a decentralized, open source platform is about much more than just becoming the next big social media site. “Our goal is to fundamentally change the way social media works,” Graber said during a recent press event. “I want us to have a choice in what we see.”