Bluesky’s radical idea: Let users set the rules of social media
The platform could spark an internet renaissance if it does not get caught up in dry technicalities.
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A year after its public launch, Bluesky has amassed 32.5 million registered users, many of them refugees from Twitter, now X.
PHOTO: AFP
Parmy Olson
If you are a child of the 1970s or 1980s in the United States, your first experience of the internet was probably AOL Inc. The hum, crackle and static screech of the connecting modem ushered you into busy chatrooms and vibrant forums.
That era did not last long. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, AOL’s walled garden crumbled as millions of websites populated what we now call the open web. Protocols like “HTTP” and “SMTP” allowed people to jump between pages or send e-mails between international servers.
