Fast Company

03/18/2025

Bluesky’s developers have created an open-source ecosystem called the ATmosphere—the AT stands for the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (or AT Protocol, for short)—that untethers social media from the command of any one person or organization. It allows users to create and curate their own algorithms that prioritize the voices and content they care about most; take their followers and posts with them if they switch platforms; and escape the influence of a given company’s seemingly arbitrary or politically motivated moderation policies. Users have several effective tools to block unwelcome followers and dozens of options for screening out different types of unwanted content from their feeds. People can also compile and share “starter packs” of accounts to follow, providing an easy, safe, and congenial onboarding ramp for newcomers.

The question is whether both the protocol and the app can scale in an increasingly chaotic and crowded social media landscape. Despite its setbacks, X (now a private company) remains a force, and Meta claimed in November that Threads, which is essentially CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s answer to X, has 275 million monthly active users. And then there is the question of monetization: Bluesky has teased a premium subscription model for months and has quietly considered integrating advertising onto the platform, but so far that’s all hypothetical. Graber promises that Bluesky will never resemble the ad-stuffed feeds of other social platforms. “Our goal is to make sure that, if advertising has a place, it’s a much smaller role in a larger economy,” she says. “If we brought the experience quality down, then users would move away.”