Despite the fact that the two text-based platforms have some of the same objectives, they nearly never use the same strategies to achieve those objectives.
It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Threads and Bluesky have developed the most feasible alternatives to the platform that was formerly known as Twitter. However, despite the fact that the two sites may have some of the same objectives, they have demonstrated completely different perspectives regarding the way text-based social networks ought to function.
It goes without saying that Threads is under the control of Meta, which is under the control of Mark Zuckerberg. Moreover, despite the fact that the organization has asserted that it is open to "public conversation," it has persistently demonstrated a preference for certain forms of speech over others. Over the course of an election year, the firm restricted access to "political" content, compelling users to make adjustments to their settings in order to make it possible for postings about elections or "social topics" to appear in their "for you" stream.
This determination to restrict any content that Meta referred to as "potentially sensitive" has also resulted in several moderation judgments that are problematic. Over the course of several months, the application restricted users from conducting searches on certain subjects, including those associated with COVID-19 and vaccines. Since then, those constraints have been relaxed; nonetheless, there have been other instances of additional moderation failures on Threads that are beyond explanation.
After users protested that their accounts had been penalized for using common phrases such as "saltines" and "cracker," Instagram's chief of operations, Adam Mosseri, stated in October that the business had "found mistakes and made changes." At the beginning of this month, Andy Stone, the communications director for Meta, issued an apology after users reported that searches for postings concerning Austin Tice, the American journalist who vanished in Syria in 2012, were prohibited on the app due to the fact that the information "may be associated with the sale of drugs." The situation has been resolved, according to Stone, who did not provide a rationale for his statement.
On the other side, Bluesky has adopted a moderating strategy that is less based on a top-down leadership style. Although the corporation does use some of its own moderators to impose "baseline moderation," users have a great deal of flexibility over the amount of content that they want to view, including anything that may be harmful or problematic material. People are also able to construct their own moderation services using Blueksy, which results in an experience that is even more personalized.
The Chief Executive Officer of Bluesky, Jay Graber, shared with me earlier this year that "moderation is in many ways, like governance." "And setting the norms of a social space, we do not believe that a single individual or one company should be able to unilaterally decide that for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations that are important to the state of the world,"
This philosophy manifests itself in a variety of different significant ways. The majority of publishers never considered Twitter to be a significant source of traffic, even before Elon Musk took control of the platform. However, the platform was once an essential component of the ecosystem of the journalism industry. At a time when Elon Musk has admitted that X penalizes posts that contain links and when the top executive of Threads has stated that Meta does not want to "encourage" hard news, the leaders of Bluesky have actually attempted to encourage link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing significantly more traffic from Bluesky in comparison to Threads and X.
On the other hand, the order in which postings are shown is likely the most salient distinction between the approach taken by Bluesky and that of Meta. Default settings on Bluesky include a feed that displays posts from accounts that you follow in reverse chronological order. In addition, users have the option of adding bespoke feeds that are specific to hundreds of different subjects. An example of this would be that I follow a feed called "cat pics," which displays posts that contain photographs of cats, and another feed called "trending news," which displays links to news stories that are being extensively shared on the site.
The program still defaults to an algorithmic "for you" feed, which displays a mix of stuff that users truly desire and unasked-for rubbish that is so random and weird that it has been compared to a gas leak. This is despite the fact that Meta has recently released its own version of bespoke feeds. Although Meta has not yet issued an update, the company has stated that it would test the possibility of allowing users to make their following feed the default. In addition, it is revealing that even the content creators who are paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to publish on Threads do not have a solid understanding of the site.
In the year 2025, there will be improvements that are even more important. Both Threads and Bluesky have been completely free of advertisements up to this point; but, in the future, both services will be required to generate revenue.
Bluesky has, up to this point, experimented with several other methods of generating revenue, such as the sale of custom domains and a forthcoming subscription service that will provide more benefits to users who contribute to the service. Graber has made it very apparent that she does not intend to "enshittify" the service for the purpose of advertising, despite the fact that she has not completely disregarded the possibility of advertising.
Threads, on the other hand, is already connected to Meta's multi-billion dollar advertising engine, which is such an intrusive entity that many people believe the company's applications really listen to their chats (a theory that has been repeatedly discredited). According to reports, even though Zuckerberg has stated that the firm is not in a hurry to develop Threads into a "very large business," it is possible that the first advertisements for the site may appear in January. Furthermore, there is little reason to expect that Meta will not eventually apply the same playbook that it has used with all of its other services.
Due to all of these factors, Bluesky is now an even bigger underdog. Even while Threads is already more than ten times its size, Meta has made it very obvious that it has no trouble employing its copy-or-kill strategy against the fledgling competitors.
On the other hand, this is precisely the reason why a large number of Bluesky users are adamant in their conviction that the platform is the one that "has the juice." Bluesky is an autonomous organization that has built its platform in a manner that is significantly more democratic than Threads and X, which put public discourse in the hands of dictatorial billionaires. Even though the platform has been involved in its fair share of moderation disputes, it places a significantly greater amount of control in the hands of its users. Developers, who have produced scores of third-party applications for the service, have expressed their satisfaction with it.
Because Meta is able to afford to spend billions of dollars at Threads, it is possible that all of this will not be sufficient to fend against Meta in the end. However, Bluesky's ambition for an open-source decentralized network is about a great deal more than simply reaching the status of the next major social media website. "We set out to change the way social media works from the bottom up," Graber said during a press event that took place not too long ago or recently. I would like for us to have the ability to choose what we view.