So, doesn't that leave the company sort of vulnerable to a hostile takeover like, like what we saw from Elon Musk? If you build up something big, what's stopping a billionaire from coming and trying to squeeze it for all it's worth?

Yeah, I think the important thing here is to understand that we're open source all the way up, and what this means is that the power of exit, so the right for users to leave, is built into the system.

So, if Bluesky, the company, were to enshittify, for example, if Bluesky starts sticking ads in between every single post on the main algorithm that we provide as a default when you sign up, there's actually thousands of other algorithms you can switch to, and you can just move your timeline over and uninstall the one that's the default, and then you wouldn't be on our own feed, even within the Bluesky app.

So, that means we wanna keep that feed good.

We don't want to shove so many ads in that you get sick of it.

So, what's at stake if we don't redefine how we communicate online?

I think the future of democracy is at stake because democracy depends upon pluralism, people being able to have different viewpoints, find compromises, and right now, social media, I think, has accelerated some of that breakdown in our belief in democratic norms.

I don't think a single app is the solution.

Jack Dorsey says, "We want to do a decentralized social networking." So you, that appeals to you, but what is it about decentralization that excites you? Why do you think that's inherently a good thing? Is it inherently a good thing?

Uh, I think that there's, uh, benefits to both centralization and decentralization.

They are ways to build things.

They're system properties.

You see it across, um, at animals and the, you know, organic world (laughs) and you see it in organizations, and you see it pretty much everywhere once you start looking for it.

And what decentralization is good for is parallel experimentation and resilience.

So you can do a lot of things at one time because it's like all the arms of an octopus.

It's like a theological idea almost.

Today, big and small news outlets alike, from The Boston Globe to The Guardian to The New York Times, have reported seeing considerably higher traffic from their links on Blue Sky than on competitors like X and Threads, despite Blue Sky having a much smaller user base right now.What role do you see Blue Sky playing in our kind of news industry crisis moment?

Other sites let you grow your audience up until you want to convert them and take them off through a link to subscribe or to read your article and then they down rank that because they want to keep you scrolling on their timeline because that's where they're showing you ads.

And so by not pursuing this single timeline ad-driven model, what we're doing is being a neutral gateway and so we're just passing users directly through to show them the stuff that they're following.

It's a simple concept, but it means that people get a direct connection with their followers and they get way more traffic and subscriptions as a result.

We're not trying to stall users on our site to capture that ad traffic.

So what's at stake if we don't redefine how we communicate online?

I think the future of democracy is at stake because democracy depends upon pluralism, people being able to have different viewpoints, find compromises, and right now social media, I think, has accelerated some of that breakdown in our belief in democratic norms.

I don't think a single app is the solution.

I'm just curious to get your thoughts on it broadly.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, I think, the question of just authenticity and dealing with impersonation, which can be a real problem.

Like, people can get scammed, or there can be fake news spread around by somebody who's pretending they're someone they're not.

And so that's one issue, and that can kind of be handled partly through moderation and other ways through reputation signals of making sure this is the right account.

And then there's, I think, verification is in, also in some ways about status.

Like, people care a lot about what it means.

But I'm just curious about you're the platform, you're the person who seems to be doing it right at this moment, and I'm curious what your vision is for the next generation of social media.