Who Really Controls Your Feed on Bluesky?

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to take back control of your social media feed, Bluesky might be your answer.

Starting the app felt like entering a small village devised by groups of interest, quite, calm and at peace, none trespassing other fields, they might be curious, but always polite.

Coming from years on other platforms, I was so used to “the algorithm”, a mysterious, all-powerful force that decides what was important for me to see. On Bluesky, that force seemed… absent.

By discovering the app step by step, I realized that power wasn’t missing. It had just been handed to me by the feature “Feeds” tab.

The Bluesky app loading screen

And that, dear reader, is the point of Bluesky, or what is called the AT Protocol, a new system that lets people build and control their own social networks.. But is this newfound power a recipe for user empowerment, or a fast track to a completely fragmented social world? I’ve been diving down this rabbit hole, and here’s what I’m finding.

The “Old Way” vs. The “Bluesky Way”

Starting by the old way , and by that I mean the way how Instagram and Twitter (still refusing to call it X) run. Your feed in these applications are a combination of what is viral, what’s important, and what you see next, and all that decided by a one-size-fits-all algorithm designed by a team of engineers in a California office. You have some input, sure, but don’t forget you’re ultimately a passenger in their car where they are the drivers, they get to decide where they are taking you to and how, you just get to add your opinion on the music on the ride, to slow it down or to change the channel.

Bluesky flips this model on its head. It’s built on the AT Protocol, which in simple terms, is designed for one thing: choice.

Instead of one master algorithm, Bluesky allows for many. These are the “Feeds.” They aren’t just hashtags or lists; they are essentially mini-algorithms, or as I like to think of them, different lenses you can apply to the same network.

So, Who Holds the Power Now?

This is where it gets interesting. The power is split in a new way.

On one side, you have the feed creators. Think of them as chefs. Anyone with a bit of coding know-how can step into the kitchen and cook up a custom feed. A feed about cute dogs, deep science, emerging artists…(etc) These chef-creators have the power to curate reality through their own special recipe: a specific theme or ranking system.

On the other side, you have us, the users. We are the clients, the second power holder in this restaurant. Our power is all about choice. We sit down with a menu (Feeds tab) and we get to choose our course. You can order (these are real feeds if you wanna follow them) :

• Your “Following” feed (the pure, chronological one).
• The “What’s Hot” feed for trending posts across the network.
• The “Cute Animals” feed for your daily dose of fluff.
• The “Science Sky” feed for the latest discoveries and geeky debates.
• The “Artverse” feed for creative projects and digital artists.

You mix and match, pinning your favorites to the top. You are the curator of your own algorithmic experience.

The Bright Side: This is User Empowerment!

This is the new way of enjoying social media to its fullest, fulfilling its core goal we all know. No fights with the algorithms to see my friends’ posts and switching between feeds anytime. The platform serves me, not the other way around. It fosters niche communities and gives them a central place to thrive, rather than being buried in a massive, homogenous feed.

The Potential Pitfall: Are We Building Echo Chambers 2.0?

However, as I am learning more about freedom and about how each of us has a unique combination of feeds, I realized we are not experiencing the same network anymore! The “shared public square”, like on Twitter, where we encounter different viewpoints, or on Instagram where content goes viral across demographics, has disappeared.

I personally appreciate this aspect, which I see as a strength rather than a flaw. With these customizable feeds, the risk is that we silo ourselves more efficiently than ever before. I can live entirely in my “Tech News” and “Philosophy” bubble, while you stay in your “Anime” and “Fitness” bubble. Our paths might never cross. Could this lead to a deeper social fragmentation, where common ground becomes even harder to find?

Echo chambers is the term that came up to me while I am digging more and more in AT Protocol. To simplify the meaning if this term, it is the place where your opinions are echoed back instead of challenged, thus at a certain moment of time you start believing everyone agrees with you, because you are following and engaging just with the people of the same interest and mindset as you.

Is the AT Protocol a sophisticated form of echo chamber? Or is this true user empowerment, finally giving us the keys to our own digital lives?

I see this application as a social platform that is built on curiosity rather than trends. Bluesky, actually, did not removed the algorithms, it handed them to us. It might be the beginning of a more human and transparent internet one where we decide what matters. Yet, a part of me believes that this might lead to the loss of the shared spaces that once connected us all.

What do you think? Have you found your perfect blend of feeds? If you controlled your digital world, what would you filter in or out? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

About this article

This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.