The writer is chief executive of social platform Bluesky
Social media was supposed to be a democratising force. But social platforms have given a handful of individuals more control over public discourse than any media executives in history. A few oligarchs now control what billions of people around the world see, hear and read.
This isn’t a natural outcome of technological progress. Deliberate choices to eliminate competition, lock in users and optimise for engagement — regardless of the cost — have produced the toxic social media ecosystem that we find ourselves in today.
A social media company is one of the hardest businesses to start because it only works at scale and platforms don’t want to let users leave with their data and connections. This has resulted in a situation in which the customer has little leverage. If you don’t like what a platform does — you disagree with its moderation policy, say, or its use of your data — your only options are starting over from scratch or lobbying for change.
I’m convinced that the anger that people feel against Big Tech is a direct result of their powerlessness. They’re shocked by the decisions the leaders of these companies have made, and frustrated that they have nowhere else to go.
The situation is not getting better. Recently X allowed users to generate non-consensual intimate images in seconds via its AI chatbot Grok, harassing women and endangering children. This crosses a line the industry held for decades. Yet it is also a symptom of the same distorted incentive: to keep you scrolling at all costs. The result is a growing campaign to protect the most vulnerable members of society: children.
Last year, Australia became the first country to ban children from 10 social media platforms, including Facebook and TikTok. The government there pointed to the deliberate design of features that encourage children to spend more time on screens.
France is debating bills that would prevent under-15s from accessing social media. In the UK, a consultation on banning under-16s has been backed this week by the House of Lords. Denmark, Norway and Malaysia are discussing similar restrictions.
I believe that competition and innovation could help better protect young people, without denying them the benefits of communication and sharing responsibly. There is so much we could do, if the regulatory framework was a partner rather than a cudgel.
While age-verification laws are sensible in theory, the way they’re being implemented around the world risks compromising free expression and creating barriers to competition by favouring the giants they claim to police.
Public companies with thousands of employees can comply with cumbersome regulations, while start-ups with a few dozen engineers face serious, even existential burdens. Meta has more people working on compliance than Bluesky’s entire team. Regulations that impose fixed costs on every company hit the smallest ones hardest.
We built Bluesky based on lessons learnt from earlier social media controversies. A decentralised, open network provides greater opportunities for innovation and experimentation, and for iterating improvements instead of dictating a one-size-fits-all approach to every problem.
Competition can be an effective way to change things. For years, regulators and users petitioned Meta to bring back a chronological feed. Meta ignored them until users started migrating to rivals. At that point Meta added it as an option. Closed platforms don’t just lock in users, they lock out experimentation. The current outcry in response to the tools offered by Grok represents the latest demonstration of collective user frustration.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Open networks like Bluesky are created in a way that means no one, including us, can lock in users or capture their data. The identity of users and their relationships are portable, so they can leave without starting over. The goal is to connect users with what they want to see, not to extract as much attention as possible.
Open networks also let developers innovate. Right now, there are over 400 apps built on the same social graph, each trying something different. Skylight, for example, is a TikTok-style app built by two developers who are unaffiliated with Bluesky.
There are two futures before us. In one, closed platforms strangle competition, keeping everything we see under the control of a few companies with no incentive to make things better.
In the other, open networks let anyone with a good idea build a better version of social media. The second future won’t happen on its own. It requires users choosing open alternatives and regulation that levels the playing field.
Social media was supposed to give everyone a voice. We can do this thoughtfully and responsibly, while protecting young people and promoting innovation. Social media can fulfil its original promise, but only if we build systems that make capture impossible.
