For years, we’ve been at the mercy of opaque social media algorithms that decide what we see. These black boxes are designed with one goal: keep you scrolling so platforms can sell your attention to advertisers. The result? Echo chambers, viral misinformation, and endless doom-scrolling that leaves us feeling worse, not better.
Bluesky offers something revolutionary: freedom of choice.
A New Paradigm: Choose Your Own Algorithm
Instead of forcing everyone through the same attention-harvesting funnel, Bluesky lets you choose from a marketplace of different “feeds” – essentially specialized algorithms that organize content in different ways. Want to see only posts from close friends? There’s a feed for that. Prefer chronological ordering? Easy. Interest in specific topics like science or art? Developers have created feeds for those too.
This isn’t just about having options – it’s about breaking the monopoly on your attention. No single algorithm controls what everyone sees, which means no single entity can manipulate public discourse through algorithmic amplification.
Competition Breeds Innovation
When algorithms compete, users win. On Bluesky, users can subscribe to multiple feeds, to prevent any one algorithm from having total control of their timeline. If a feed starts pushing too much sponsored content or creates an unhealthy environment, users can simply unsubscribe. This creates natural pressure for feed developers to actually serve user interests rather than advertiser demands.
Yes, Meta or other advertising companies could create feeds optimized for engagement and ad revenue. But unlike on traditional platforms, their feed would have to compete with alternatives that might prioritize quality, user wellbeing, or specific interests. May the best algorithms win.
Built to Last: Beyond Corporate Control
Here’s the brilliant part: Bluesky isn’t just building a better social platform – they’re building one designed to resist corporate capture. The team understands a hard truth about technology companies: given enough time and money, even the most idealistic ventures tend to succumb to profit-driven decision making. That’s why Bluesky is built on ATProto, an open protocol that acts like a constitution for the platform.
Think of it like email: even if Gmail started making terrible decisions, you could switch to another email provider without losing your ability to communicate with Gmail users. Similarly, if Bluesky’s corporate decisions start degrading the user experience, the open protocol means users and developers can migrate to alternative clients while maintaining their social connections and data. By building these protections into the foundation, Bluesky is creating something that could truly stand the test of time and market pressures.
Taking Back Control
Bluesky provides sensible defaults to get started, including a “Discover” feed that helps surface interesting content. But the power lies in being able to customize your experience. Don’t like how a feed works? Remove it. Found one that better matches your interests? Add it to your rotation.
This is what the future of social media should look like – platforms that give users genuine choice and control rather than forcing everyone through the same manipulation-optimized funnel. It’s time we stopped being products to be sold and became users to be served.
The technology is still early, but the vision is clear: social media doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom of our attention spans. By putting algorithmic choice in users’ hands, we can build healthier online spaces that actually enrich our lives rather than exploit them.
Want to read more about feeds on Bluesky? Checkout their blog post on Algorithmic Choice with Custom Feeds.
THE INTERNET IS SCARY 