Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
Jack Dorsey’s criticism of Bluesky was about more than content moderation. In a May 9, 2024 interview, the former Twitter chief executive argued that Bluesky had drifted from his original vision of an open social-media protocol into a conventional company with venture capital, a board, a flagship app and centralized enforcement.
Bluesky’s response was that Dorsey was conflating its default app with the broader AT Protocol. The protocol is designed to support multiple services, clients, feeds and moderation providers. The dispute therefore turns on a difficult question: can a social network remain meaningfully decentralized while its main app still moderates users and removes content?
The short version
Dorsey made two connected arguments in his interview with Mike Solana of Pirate Wires:
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches- Bluesky became a company rather than remaining only an open protocol. Dorsey had envisioned an open layer that Twitter—and eventually other social platforms—could use.
- Bluesky adopted moderation and account-removal systems. He viewed that decision as a return to the kind of centralized platform power he believed Twitter had struggled with.
Those are Dorsey’s conclusions, not an established finding that Bluesky is technically equivalent to Twitter. Bluesky’s architecture is materially different, but its default app remains a company-operated service with its own policies and enforcement.
Dorsey’s departure was publicly acknowledged by Bluesky on May 5, 2024. The interview explaining his position was published on May 9. He was an early funder and board member who helped initiate the project, but he was not running Bluesky’s day-to-day engineering or policy operations when he left.
What Dorsey originally wanted Bluesky to be
The original concept was closer to a protocol project than a direct Twitter replacement. The idea was to create an open standard for social networking that could support:
- Multiple apps and services instead of one mandatory platform;
- Portable identity and data;
- User-selected algorithms and feeds;
- Less dependence on a single company controlling identity, ranking, moderation and distribution; and
- Twitter as the first major client of the new system.
Dorsey described an “algorithm store” in which users could choose how posts were ranked and filtered. In that model, Twitter would have been an interface to a broader network rather than the sole owner of the social layer.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →That plan changed after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Bluesky became an independent public-benefit corporation in 2022, while the AT Protocol continued as the open-source technology beneath the service. Bluesky engineer Paul Frazee later said the Twitter-client plan ended with Musk’s takeover, according to contemporary reporting.
What Bluesky became
There are three things readers should keep separate:
- The Bluesky company: The independent organization that develops and operates services around the protocol.
- The Bluesky app: The familiar, Twitter-like product most users encounter. It has default community guidelines, moderation policies and enforcement tools.
- The AT Protocol: The open-source networking layer intended to let different providers, applications, feeds and moderation services participate in the same social ecosystem.
Dorsey’s complaint focuses on the first two as much as the third. His concern is that the practical experience of the network could still be dominated by one company even if the underlying protocol is open.
Bluesky’s counterargument is that an organization can operate a convenient default app without owning every possible way to access the network. In its response, CEO Jay Graber described Bluesky as “structurally open,” emphasizing that users can use default moderation, add other moderation layers or access the network through different clients.
Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minutePC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11How the AT Protocol’s moderation model works
Bluesky does not treat decentralization as a promise that every post must be displayed everywhere. Its official architecture separates several functions:
- Personal Data Servers, or PDSs: Host account data and repositories.
- Relays: Aggregate and distribute network data.
- AppViews: Index data and make it available to applications.
- Clients: Provide the user-facing experience.
- Labelers: Classify accounts and content with moderation or other labels.
- Feed generators: Provide alternative ranking and discovery systems.
A simplified path looks like this:
Post → personal data server → relay or AppView → labelers and client rules → what the user sees
Bluesky’s moderation-architecture documentation describes this as stackable moderation. The Bluesky app supplies baseline moderation. Independent labelers can add classifications, warnings, filters or other annotations, and clients can decide how those labels are displayed or enforced. Another AT Protocol application could use a different set of policies.
This means moderation may happen at several layers. A client may hide a post, a labeler may flag it, an AppView may omit it from an index, or an infrastructure provider may refuse to host or distribute it. Those actions should not automatically be described as one unified “Bluesky ban.” Nor does an open protocol guarantee universal availability: a post may remain in one repository or service while being blocked or omitted elsewhere.
Recommended Free Tools
Why Dorsey’s criticism is persuasive
Dorsey’s strongest point is institutional rather than narrowly technical. An open protocol can still be experienced as a centralized platform if nearly everyone uses one company’s app, defaults and infrastructure.
His argument is essentially:
- A company with investors, employees, a board, legal obligations and safety policies faces pressures similar to those that shaped Twitter.
- Account removals and built-in enforcement give the service a central authority over participation.
- A dominant default app can become the de facto gatekeeper even when alternatives are technically possible.
- Users may not realistically feel portable if their audience, habits, feeds and social connections remain concentrated in one product.
On those points, Dorsey is right that “open protocol” and “decentralized user experience” are not the same thing. Default settings still matter, and theoretical portability is less meaningful if moving providers is technically difficult or socially costly.
Why Bluesky says the comparison is incomplete
Bluesky’s strongest response is that Dorsey treats the app’s policies as though they define the entire protocol.
The company argues that:
- Moderation of one app is not control of every application on the network.
- Users can subscribe to additional labeling services.
- Independent clients can apply different moderation policies.
- Alternative feed generators can change how content is ranked and discovered.
- Account migration and provider diversity are intended to reduce dependence on one operator.
Bluesky’s 2024 protocol roadmap described work involving federation, account migration, feed generators, labeling and related infrastructure. Its later 2024 retrospective said those areas had continued to advance.
That does not eliminate centralized power. Infrastructure providers can still make hosting and distribution decisions, and users may prefer the safety and convenience of the default app. But it does mean that moderation in Bluesky’s main service does not necessarily prevent other services from using the same underlying network.
Is moderation incompatible with decentralization?
There is no purely technical answer because the disagreement is also about values.
| Model | Main benefit | Main cost |
|---|---|---|
| No meaningful moderation | Strong resistance to a single authority censoring participation | More spam, harassment, illegal material and difficulty satisfying app stores, hosts, regulators and users |
| Centralized moderation | Consistent rules and a predictable experience | Concentrated power, opaque decisions and greater exposure to political or cultural disputes |
| Composable moderation | More user and community choice | Complexity, inconsistent enforcement, gaps in coverage and uncertainty about responsibility |
Bluesky chose the third approach, while retaining defaults for ordinary users. That creates its own failure modes. Independent labelers may lack funding or coverage. Abuse can move between services faster than moderation systems can respond. Users may not understand which provider handled a decision or where to appeal. And a marketplace of algorithms and filters may empower experienced users while overwhelming everyone else.
The AT Protocol team has explicitly treated moderation as an ecosystem problem. In a May 2024 announcement, it described grants for independent labeling services and the need for community-run safety tools. Bluesky’s roadmap also identified harassment mitigation, takedowns, appeals and communication between users and moderation services as ongoing work.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Bluesky versus Nostr
Dorsey praised Nostr as a more censorship-resistant alternative, while acknowledging that it was harder to use. He has also financially supported Nostr-related development. His preference reflects a different design priority rather than a universally accepted technical verdict.
| Issue | Bluesky and AT Protocol | Nostr |
|---|---|---|
| User experience | Designed to be familiar and accessible to mainstream social-media users | Dorsey characterized it as more difficult and less polished for many users |
| Moderation | Default app moderation plus stackable labelers and client-level choices | More dependent on the policies of relays and clients; associated with a stronger censorship-resistance orientation |
| Governance | Independent company operating alongside an open protocol | Less conventional corporate governance, according to Dorsey’s description |
| Identity and data | Portable identity and account migration are core design goals | Uses key-based identity and relay-based distribution |
| Central trade-off | Usability and safety versus concern about company-operated defaults | Openness and resistance to control versus usability, abuse and coordination challenges |
Nostr should not automatically be described as having no moderation or as being completely decentralized. The practical experience depends on the relays, clients and services a user chooses.
How to judge the claim
The most useful test is not whether Bluesky uses the word “decentralized.” It is whether the network works differently for users and developers in practice.
- Governance: Who controls the company, protocol specifications, infrastructure and default moderation?
- Portability: Can users move their identity and data to another provider, and what do they lose by doing so?
- Application choice: Can independent clients access the network without permission from a single app operator?
- Algorithmic choice: Can users select alternative feeds and ranking systems?
- Moderation choice: Can communities add, replace or remove labeling services?
- Enforcement power: Can an app, host, relay or provider still suspend accounts, remove content or deny access?
- Accessibility: Can ordinary users benefit from the choices without technical expertise?
- Economics: What incentives shape the company and the infrastructure on which the network depends?
The verdict
Dorsey is correct that Bluesky became a company-operated social product with moderation, account enforcement and a dominant default app—features that resemble the institutional structure he criticized at Twitter.
But the broader claim that Bluesky is simply repeating Twitter’s mistakes is incomplete. The AT Protocol separates data hosting, distribution, indexing, clients, feeds and labeling in ways Twitter did not. Those differences create room for alternatives and user choice, even though they do not guarantee that alternatives will become popular, easy to use or independent of infrastructure providers.
The real test is practical: whether independent clients, providers, labelers, feeds and account-migration tools become viable enough that Bluesky’s default app is not the only meaningful gateway to the network. If they do, Bluesky can combine moderation with a more pluralistic protocol. If they do not, Dorsey’s warning—that an open project can still become another centralized platform in everyday use—will remain a serious governance concern.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
