Bluesky may get ads in the future, but reportedly they won’t disrupt your experience

There's no free lunch, and when there's a free platform on the internet, it's only a matter of time before it gets ads. Decentralized social media Bluesky currently doesn't have ads, but its CEO, Jay Graber, hinted that we may see ads on there soon - but not entirely how you would think.

Bluesky's CEO talked to TechCrunch and said that the platform is getting a lot of attention from new investors. So far, it has raised $15 million from investors. Graber also hinted at some potential revenue streams for the platform. She talked about social media subscriptions, a marketplace of algorithms, and selling domain names.

Graber didn't say there will be tons of ads on Bluesky, but she didn't rule them out as a source of revenue either. She also said the company wants to make sure its incentives are aligned with users and to make sure not to turn into a model where the user's attention is the product.

Graber says she doesn't want to repeat other social media networks' mistakes. The way that Bluesky is built would prevent it from solely relying on ads because users could create alternative feeds without ads on its open protocol.

Graber said that she believes people need to be able to control the social networks they communicate on. Of course, the possibility of using ads in some way as a revenue stream wasn't ruled out completely: ads may be introduced in a way that they don't ruin the core user experience. Reportedly, Graber said a less intrusive advertising method could be for example running ads in Bluesky's search results.

Also, the company doesn't want AI licensing deals as a revenue stream. Bluesky promised not to train AI on your posts.

People have been registering for Bluesky a lot recently as an alternative to X and Threads. In only two weeks, the platforms' monthly active user number grew from 20 to 24 million.

I'm a big fan of this approach and agree wholeheartedly that social media platforms should be more user-focused. I feel like we need to move away from the model where the user's attention drives things and apps do everything they can to almost forcefully keep you online. A more human approach to social media would be very beneficial to all of us.