Interview with Swiss-born Toni Schneider, CEO of Bluesky: „Advertising will not be our main business“
How is Bluesky funded?
The investor money will last for a few more years. All data in ATproto is public; anyone can view it by using the open version of the Firehose and the PDS. However, we now also have a new version for companies that want to work with us – essentially the enterprise version. We’re already getting enquiries, and we’re going to monetise those. It’s a bit like Amazon’s AWS, but for the ‚Atmosphere‘ instead of the web: PDS hosting, the Firehose, and there will be more to come.
On the consumer side, meaning within the app, we are seeing commercial business models emerging in the network: people doing fundraising, selling newsletter subscriptions, or selling independent games. This is proving very successful, precisely because there is no advertising on our network. We send millions of clicks to various publishers every day – and that’s already happening organically.
That is where we want to step in and make it easier to buy and sell things on the network. It will take a while, but that is our next goal. We will take a percentage, similar to an app store model, but much less than the usual 30 per cent. And it will be an open system: not just our payment system, but several, usable not only in Bluesky but in all apps across the network. Content purchased in one app should also be usable in others. So it’s never just about one company or one app, but always about being part of the entire network.
We aren’t ruling out advertising, but we don’t want it to become our primary revenue model. It also doesn’t work well in a decentralised system; most apps don’t want ads. There are a few companies developing open social ad systems – if those work, we would give them a try, but we aren’t working on that ourselves.
What does the future look like beyond microblogging?
In the initial phase, it was about providing an alternative to Twitter and Threads, and the apps are all very similar but work together – which is good because it’s now an open system. However, we want to see many more apps emerge that aren’t just for microblogging. The next chapter of this story involves thousands of different apps and communities that all stay connected but no longer just focus on microblogging.
We are already seeing this every day: games, event apps, group apps. The latest part of the protocol is called ATProto Spaces, and it’s about private data and private communities. This is the number one request from our users and developers: not always being on a public app where everything is visible, but moving back towards private groups. That is actually the original idea of social networking, which doesn’t really exist on social media anymore.
About two weeks ago, this was released as an alpha version, and we are already seeing dozens of new apps trying it out. The Bluesky app itself will continue to grow, but we also want to bring in all the other apps that offer new forms of social networking.
What exactly does „private“ mean here – non-public or encrypted?
Non-public. You can create a Space and control access. The fundamental idea of ATproto is that user data belongs to you: there isn’t one database per app, but millions of small databases per user – the PDS, or Personal Data Server. It belongs to you, you can host it yourself, and it works with all apps.
For private data, you can create a dedicated PDS for a Space that belongs to the people who create it. Only those in the group can see the data. This could be for publishers who want to sell articles, or for a private group chat. The important thing is: everything remains user-owned. The app is just a „lens“ – as Bluesky, we don’t actually have control over the data itself.
How do you deal with different international laws?
That’s one of the reasons why it’s expensive and difficult for small companies to get into the business. We have two lawyers on the team; Meta has thousands. It’s particularly difficult with age restrictions – every country, every state has different rules that are constantly changing. On top of that, there are the various data privacy regulations, which are especially complicated in Europe, and with more AI in products, it’s going to get even more complex.
In our case, it’s different in that the app and the data aren’t in the same place. When it comes to deletion or information requests, it’s less about moderation and more about the system we have in place for it.
And requests from law enforcement agencies?
They happen all the time; it’s been that way for years, and it’s relatively stable, especially in America and Europe. We also reject a lot and have transparency reports – but because it’s been running for a while, it’s a fairly established process.
What about requests from authoritarian states – for example, data on journalists or dissidents?
We would certainly say no. We have very little data; the system is designed that way. If a PDS is hosted elsewhere, such as on Eurosky, we have zero control over the data. Direct messages are private with us, but not encrypted – not a good system for very sensitive content. If someone needs that, we say: someone else should develop it. For example, there is Germ, a system that enables encrypted direct messages on ATproto without having to reveal your phone number. Bluesky has already integrated this; you can communicate via a button directly through it.
Jay Graber said the system is „billionaire-proof“. Would you repeat that?
Yes, so far it is. If we sell Bluesky tomorrow, the rest of the system – the protocol – is independent. Realistically, other projects would have to step in to take over certain services that we provide for free today, such as the Firehose. There are already smaller projects doing that. We’ve had two major DDoS attacks in the last two months that paralysed our network for hours – other projects like Black Sky continued to run completely normally, independent of us and yet one hundred per cent interoperable. Unlike Twitter under Elon Musk, users could immediately switch to another app and carry on without anyone noticing.
Eurosky and WSocial have launched in Europe and are building on ATProto – how are you observing this?
Europe is very interesting at the moment because everyone is looking for alternatives – even more so in Europe, because America has isolated itself in recent years and European companies feel they now have to do it themselves. Data sovereignty is a major topic, especially in social media, and we are seeing extreme interest there.
We are an American company and we support other projects doing this from Europe. Eurosky was first and is doing a great job: non-profit, part of the open system. WSocial is the second; they take a more traditional approach with a private company that has raised over 20 million euros, and they bring people in more through marketing.
For us, both are very good; we support both and hope they work together – and that there will be even more, because it takes more than just two.
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