Bluesky bets on the end of X and Meta’s social media grip
Social media is moving beyond platforms controlled by a “few billionaires”, according to Bluesky’s chief operating officer, as governments in the UK and Europe step up scrutiny of X, Meta, and other Big Techs.
Speaking at SXSW London, Rose Wang said Bluesky was built in response to a social media market dominated by a handful of firms that control what users see and monetise.
“Today, social media is controlled by a few corporations”, Wang said. “They control what information is in front of you and what gets taken away. In short, they control speech all over the world, and we’ve seen the consequences of this.”
Bluesky, which was originally incubated inside X – Twitter at the time – before becoming independent, has grown to 44 million users since opening publicly two years ago.
Wang said its growth had been driven by frustration with existing platforms, particularly after changes at X following Elon Musk’s takeover.
“When you have a new owner that comes in, they can change the culture and the rules of that platform overnight and make it inhospitable to many people,” she said.
Her pledge comes as Britain weighs a tougher approach to social media regulation, including a possible Australian-style ban on under-16s holding accounts on major platforms.
Tech secretary Liz Kendall has said the option is “definitely on the table”, after a consultation on children’s online safety drew more than 80,000 responses.
The Online Safety Act, which came into force only last year, has already given Ofcom powers to fine platforms and require them to remove illegal and harmful content, while ministers have also put pressure on X over its Grok AI tool.
‘Open web’ social media
Wang argued that Bluesky’s main difference from X, Meta and TikTok is that rather than keeping users and content locked inside one platform, Bluesky is built on an open protocol that allows outside developers to build their own feeds, apps and services.
“What we believe is that the world we’re going to build together with all the creators, all the developers, all the community organisers… will be so much more interesting and rich than the singular worlds that X, or Meta, or TikTok can build alone,” she said.
Bluesky’s app now sits alongside around 6,000 projects built on its underlying network.
Wang pointed to Skylight, a TikTok-style app built by two developers in Washington, which used videos already posted by Bluesky users to avoid the “cold start” problem faced by new social apps.
The company is also expanding into long-form content through an integration with Standard.site, different to X’s approach of keeping its long-form articles largely inside its own platform.
Wang said Bluesky was not trying to become “the next Facebook or Twitter”, arguing: “We’re not going to beat Twitter or Facebook as our small team of 43. We’re going to do it with all of the creators, builders, community organisers.”
She also criticised the ad model that has dominated social media for the past two decades: “The business model is what caused all the problems with the first wave of social. It’s dollars for eyeballs. It’s the attention economy.”
Wang said Bluesky was trying to avoid a system where platforms make most of the money while creators provide the value.
“How do we give most of the dollars from users and advertisers to the creators, community organisers, builders, who are building the experiences that people want?” she said.
Her words come as regulators continue to test whether existing competition laws can constrain the largest social media firms.
Meta recently avoided a forced break-up after a US judge ruled it did not hold a monopoly in the relevant market, although the Federal Trade Commission has appealed the decision.
But Wang argued that the issue is broader than formal monopoly law. “The way the world is online is very feudal,” she said. “We’ve got to make it much more democratic.”