Bluesky is not Billionaire Proof

I do not believe, not even for one second, that Blueksy is billionaire proof. Bluesky has accepted investor money which makes them susceptible to a hostile takeover in some form and, thus far, it’s not a decentralised platform.

I’ve been looking for a piece that critically examines Bluesky’s corporate structure, the people behind their investment rounds and how both might affect Bluesky’s future. “Without Sky: Social Media and the End of Reality” is a pretty good start.

For several reasons, Bluesky has a target painted on its back. First, it has no plausible revenue model that can make it self-supporting anytime soon. Second, it is facing large and quickly-growing costs as it seeks to scale and fend off adversarial attacks. Third, it has attracted a fairly homogeneous audience of exhausted, well-meaning liberals that would be tempting to target for manipulation. And crucially, it already has a board member who has a fiduciary duty to serve a variety of crypto-related interests.

With the most recent investment from Blockchain Capital and Blockchain Capital’s Kinjal Shah subsequently joining Bluesky’s board comes the necessity to make money, at least at some point. If the returns don’t materialise, investors will try to recoup their investments another way; therefore opening the plausible possibility of a billionaire take-over.

If that takeover happened today, there would be no alternative. The AT Protocol allows for decentralisation, but only on paper. There is only one Bluesky instance.

Bluesky is effectively evolving as a centralized service. Until or unless there is a second company or concern competing with Bluesky using the same protocols and able to somehow fund its operations, it is effectively operating as a clone of Twitter, but with a very selective audience, and similar cost structures.

I said it before, Bluesky is not a distributed system, and probably never will be.