On November 15, Peter Wang posted a message requesting ideas for a new incubator and fund to support experimental projects built on the burgeoning Bluesky/AT Protocol ecosystem. Four weeks later, Skyseed emerged with an initial commitment of $1 million. This turnaround, a speed underscored by the fact that the fund doesn’t even have a website […]
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Social network Bluesky has released a new update to its app that includes a separate mentions tab in notifications, protections against username squatting, and new controls for replies sorting. The company announced that it is adding a new mentions tab with the v1.96 rollout to let you see those posts separately. Until now, all notifications […]
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The fund will offer grants to those building on BlueSky’s open source AT Protocol.
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Social magazine app maker Flipboard is reinventing itself for the new era of the open social web. While the company’s original app allowed users to collect content from blogs, news websites, and traditional social media services like Facebook and Twitter in order to create curated magazines, its new app called Surf, launching into invite-only beta […]
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Bridgy Fed, which is working to connect the social network Bluesky with the wider fediverse (i.e., the open social web), which includes sites like Mastodon and others, will be the first app incubated within a new nonprofit called A New Social. The organization, announced Tuesday, aims to bring together developers, researchers, startups, and industry leaders […]
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Meta’s microblogging platform, Threads, is growing at a quick clip since it was launched last year, and it seems to have benefited from the exodus of users from its rival, X, a couple months ago. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that more than 100 million people use Threads daily, and that it […]
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Now with 25 million users, Bluesky is facing a test that will determine whether or not its platform will still be seen as a safe space and place of refuge from the toxicity of X. In recent days, a large number of users on Bluesky have been urging the company to ban one newcomer for […]
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Meta’s Threads is rolling out its own take on Bluesky’s “Starter Packs,” which are curated lists of suggested accounts that help new users find people to follow. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday that the social network is testing a way for users to find and easily follow collections of profiles that post about […]
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Since the dawn of the generative AI era a few years ago, the march of technology—toward what tech companies hope will replace human intellectual labor—has continuously sparked angst about the future role humans will play in the job market. Will we all be replaced by machines?
A Y-Combinator-backed company called Artisan, which sells customer service and sales workflow software, recently launched a provocative billboard campaign in San Francisco playing on that angst, reports Gizmodo. It features the slogan "Stop Hiring Humans." The company markets its software products as "AI Employees" or "Artisans."
The company's billboards feature messages that might inspire nightmares among workers, like "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" and "The era of AI employees is here." And they're on display to the same human workforce the ads suggest replacing.
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Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on the subscription model when detailing its $15 million Series A back in October. Now, mockups teasing the upcoming Bluesky subscription, along with a list of possible features, have been published to […]
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Now that the seal is broken on scraping Bluesky posts into datasets for machine learning, people are trolling users and one-upping each other by making increasingly massive datasets of non-anonymized, full-text Bluesky posts taken directly from the social media platform’s public firehose—including one that contains almost 300 million posts.
Last week, Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at open-source machine learning library platform Hugging Face, released a dataset composed of one million Bluesky posts, including when they were posted and who posted them. Within hours of his first post—shortly after our story about this being the first known, public, non-anonymous dataset of Bluesky posts, and following hundreds of replies from people outraged that their posts were scraped without their permission—van Strein took it down and apologized.
"I've removed the Bluesky data from the repo," he wrote on Bluesky. "While I wanted to support tool development for the platform, I recognize this approach violated principles of transparency and consent in data collection. I apologize for this mistake." Bluesky’s official account also posted about how crawling and scraping works on the platform, and said it’s “exploring methods for consent.”
404 MediaSamantha Cole
As I wrote at the time, Bluesky’s infrastructure is a double-edged sword: While its decentralized nature gives users more control over their content than sites like X or Threads, it also means every event on the site is catalogued in a public feed. There are legitimate research uses for social media posts, but researchers typically follow ethical and legal guidelines that dictate how that data is used; for example, a research paper published earlier this year that used Bluesky posts to look at how disinformation and misinformation spread online uses a dataset of 235 million posts, but that data was anonymized. The researchers also provide clear instructions for requesting one’s data be excluded.
If there’s one constant across social media, regardless of the platform, it’s the Streisand effect. Van Strien’s original post and apology both went massively viral, and since a lot of people are straddling both Bluesky and Twitter as their primary platforms, the dataset drama crossed over to X, too—where people love to troll. The dataset of one million posts is gone from Hugging Face, but several much larger datasets have taken its place.
There’s a two million posts dataset by Alpine Dale, who claims to be associated with PygmalionAI, a yet to be released “open-source AI project for chat, role-play, adventure, and more,” according to its site. That dataset description says it “could be used for: Training and testing language models on social media content; Analyzing social media posting patterns; Studying conversation structures and reply networks; Research on social media content moderation; Natural language processing tasks using social media datas.” The goal, Dale writes in the dataset description, “is for you to have fun :)”
The community page for that dataset is full of people saying this either breaks Bluesky’s developer guidelines (specifically “All services must have a method for deleting content a user has requested to be deleted”) or is against the law in European countries, where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would apply to this data collection.
I asked Neil Brown, a lawyer who specializes in internet law and GDPR, if that’s the case. The answer isn’t a straightforward one. “Merely processing the personal data of people in the EU does not make the person doing that processing subject to the EU GDPR,” he said in an email. To be subject to GDPR, the processing would need to fall within its material and territorial scopes. Material scope involves how the data is processed: “processing of personal data done through automated means or within a structured filing system, including collection, storage, access, analysis, and disclosure of personal information,” according to the law. Territorial scope involves where the person who is doing the data collecting is located, and also where the subjects of that data are located.
“But I imagine that there are some who would argue that this activity is consistent with the EU GDPR,” Brown said. “These arguments are normally based in the thinking that, if someone has made personal data public, then they are ‘fair game’ but, IMHO, the EU GDPR simply does not work that way.”
None of these legal questions have stopped others from creating more and bigger datasets. There’s also an eight million posts dataset compiled by Alim Maasoglu, who is “currently dedicated to developing immersive products within the artificial intelligence space,” according to their website. “This growing dataset aims to provide researchers and developers with a comprehensive sample of real world social media data for analysis and experimentation,” Maasoglu’s description of the dataset on Hugging Face says. “This collection represents one of the largest publicly available Bluesky datasets, offering unique insights into social media interactions and content patterns.”
It was quickly surpassed by a lot. There’s now a 298 million posts dataset released by someone with the username GAYSEX. They wrote an imaginary dialogue in their Hugging Face project description between themselves and someone whose posts are in the dataset: “‘NOOO you can't do this!’ Then don't post. If you don't want to be recorded, then don't post it. ‘But I was doing XYZ!!’ Then don't. Look. Just about anything on the internet stays on the internet nowadays. Especially big social network sites. You might want to consider starting a blog. Those have lower chances of being pulled for AI training + there are additional ways to protect blogs being scraped aggressively.” As a co-owner of a blog myself, I can say that being scraped has been a major pain in the ass for us, actually, and generative AI companies training on news outlets is a serious problem this industry is facing—so much so that many major outlets have struck deals with the very big tech companies that want to eat their lunch.
There are at least six more similar datasets of user posts currently on Hugging Face, in varying amounts. Margaret Mitchell, Chief Ethics Scientist at Hugging Face, posted on Bluesky following van Strien’s removal of his dataset: “The best path forward in AI requires technologists to be reflective/self-critical about how their work impacts society. Transparency helps this. Appreciate Bsky for flagging AI ethics &my colleague’s response. Let’s make informed consent a real thing.” When someone replied to her post linking to the two million dataset asking her to “address” it, she said, “Yes, I'm trying to address as much as I can.”
Like just about every other industry that relies on human creative output, including journalism, music, books, academia, and the arts, social media platforms seem to be taking one of two routes when it comes to AI: strike a deal, or wait and see how fair use arguments shake out in court, where what constitutes “transformative” under copyright law is still being determined. In the meantime, everyone from massive generative AI corporations to individuals on troll campaigns are snapping up data while the area’s still gray.
Bluesky has blown up this year thanks to a vibrant community of posters, user customization choices, and a decentralized protocol that doesn’t lock users into the choices of a billionaire CEO. But one question mark hanging over Bluesky is how the platform will eventually make money, and whether it will use the most common business […]
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Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is gaining an improved search interface, the company announced on Monday. The app, which offers a Meta-run alternative to Elon Musk’s X, but built on top of Instagram’s social graph, is rolling out a new way to search for specific posts, allowing users to filter searches by user profiles and […]
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A new app called GoBlue has launched to help those looking to track their following on Bluesky, the Twitter-like social network that’s rapidly grown in recent weeks to reach nearly 24 million users. Filling in a gap in the Bluesky ecosystem of third-party apps and utilities, GoBlue offers a simple interface for tracking your own […]
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As more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service has been facing more concerns around impersonation and verified identity. The Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that the company has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it should […]
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Bluesky has expanded its moderation team as curious social media users, many of whom are seeking an alternative to Elon Musk's X, flock to the app.
The official account for Bluesky's Trust & Safety team published a thread on Friday that shared details about its impersonation policy.
The company said the policy has been updated to be more "aggressive," adding that "impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed."
"We have also quadrupled the size of our moderation team, in part to action impersonation reports more quickly. We still have a large backlog of moderation reports due to the influx of new users as we shared previously, though we are making progress," a post read.
The company said that satire, fan, and parody accounts are allowed on Bluesky, but they must label themselves as such in the display name and bio for transparency. Identity churning — or changing an account's identity to mislead users — is prohibited on the app.
"If you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to a different identity that is no longer impersonation to keep that account, your account will be removed," a post read.
Bluesky also responded to users who have asked for more concrete verification methods.
"We also hear your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification," a post read. "We're exploring additional options to enhance account verification, and we hope to share more shortly."
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Representatives for Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Bluesky began as a Twitter project in 2019 but has gained traction recently as some social media users grow weary of X due to concerns over hate speech and misinformation.
X's approach to moderation faced criticism when Musk took control in 2022. After his arrival, Musk laid off content moderators and staffers on the moderation team. However, X's head of business operations told Bloomberg in January that it planned to hire 100 employees tasked with content moderation and build a content moderation center in Austin.
While Bluesky is still chasing X's success, it could challenge Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's own Twitter knockoff.
Bluesky announced in October that it had over 13 million users. One month later, Bluesky's COO told Business Insider that it had "blown past" its user growth projects and had surpassed 21 million users. The COO said the company had to acquire more servers to keep operations running smoothly.
Xavier Lorenzo/Getty Images
A splintered social media world is on the horizon — and it's paving the way for a new, more authentic breed of influencer.
"People are just trying to find authentic communities," Eric Wittman, CEO of photo-editing app VSCO, told Business Insider.
Wittman pointed to Reddit's surge in users and skyrocketing earnings as an example. Bluesky's user base has also risen in recent weeks to 21 million, and Mastodon is seeing more modest growth, with about 90,000 new sign-ups this month, according to its CEO.
In a white paper published earlier last year, Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci, who researches digital public infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there's a reboot taking place.
He believes that will include the rise of "very small online platforms" that host the kind of intimate conversations that are lacking on today's major platforms.
"It will create a lot more fragmentation in the market," said Wittman. "It's going to be more interest-driven and more community-driven, which I think is healthy."
Audiences appear to be more discerning. Some are getting cynical about sponsored posts and bored of being sold to, especially when products or brands don't align with their values.
For example, TikTok can feel like a pseudo-shopping channel where every other video seems to be an ad.
Kate Smoothy, an SEO specialist and the founder and director of Webhive Digital, is also a content creator with 47,000 TikTok followers. She told BI she only partners with brands that she believes in because she values her audience's trust.
"As soon as you lose that trust, you may as well kiss the whole content creator thing goodbye," she said.
Smoothy said she sees things changing, with different "tiers" of content creators emerging from the industry's oversaturation. The top ones will have prioritized their community and built trust with their audience.
"Ultimately, the 'lower down' creators will struggle to establish themselves or pivot as the industry adapts to new platforms and changes in trends," Smoothy said.
Lucy Edgerley, the head of influence at the global social media agency Born Social, told BI that Gen Zers, in particular, are craving creativity, entertainment, and inspiration.
Some may choose alternative platforms like VSCO, Bluesky, and Mastodon over the major players of Instagram, TikTok, and X.
Others are following their favorite creators to subscription services like Substack or Patreon.
"Platforms like Pinterest, which foster ideas-driven content, are thriving because they align with this demand," she said.
Wittman said that 57% of VSCO's user base is between the ages of 18 and 24, and the app is seeing a million new sign-ups a month. He pointed to the lack of ads on the platform — none if users opt for the paid service, which starts at a monthly fee of $2.50.
"We are very restrictive on who can advertise on our platform," Wittman said. "When we do these brand partnerships, we want to make sure that it's a brand that kind of suits our principles and philosophies as well."
Young people who have grown up with social media are learning the lessons about the dark side of it — the mental health toll, the bullying, and the over-consumerism — the hard way, he said.
"They're looking for healthier places to go to where they're not feeling manipulated," he said.
Not everyone sees it this way. While newer platforms such as Threads and Bluesky are reporting impressive numbers, Kim Murray, the founder of the influencer marketing agency Virality Boost, told BI that many influencers are likely to stay put with what they know.
"Most creators find it challenging to build and maintain audiences across an ever-expanding array of platforms," she said.
Audiences are already more selective than they used to be, she added, so influencers will have to evolve wherever they are, regardless of their follower count.
"This shift signals a transformation rather than an endpoint," Murray said. "The real opportunity lies in how influencers adapt to meet this heightened selectivity by focusing on distribution strategies that deliver genuine value to both audiences and brands."
Wittman said the bar has been raised, and he sees a move toward "intellectual influencers" emerging, where people gravitate to creators who offer something unique.
"They actually want experts," he said. "They want it to be fun, and they want it to be creative. They don't want just some crazy infomercial."
Edgerley agreed we're witnessing a shift. Despite the success of YouTube shorts and TikTok, long-form storytelling is on the rise, she said, suggesting users want deeper engagement rather than endless scrolling.
"Ultimately, it's about meeting audiences with humor, inspiration, and substance," she said. "Not just ads."
Threads is rolling out a redesign that keeps your feeds visible on the home screen, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Wednesday. The redesign allows you to quickly swipe between different feeds just like you can on X. The change is rolling out on Android on Wednesday, and will launch on iOS in the coming […]
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Hoping to quell some of the momentum behind social network Bluesky, a competitor to X and Meta’s Threads, Meta is developing a feature that takes inspiration from one of Bluesky’s more popular additions: the concept of “Starter Packs,” or hand-curated lists of suggested users that help newcomers find people to follow. Meta’s version of these […]
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Bluesky might not be training AI systems on user content as other social networks are doing, but there’s little stopping third parties from doing so. Per a report by 404 Media, Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at AI firm Hugging Face, pulled 1 million public posts from Bluesky via its Firehose API for […]
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