X, Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads: What do they tell us about the future of the web?

X, Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads: What do they tell us about the future of the web?

Over the last few years, the social media landscape has become almost unrecognisable. The popularity of the once-dominant Facebook has continued to wain, Instagram is flooded with ads and sponsored posts, and TikTok has well and truly captured the attention of our younger generations. Oh, and Twitter became X after Elon Musk was forced to buy it for $44 billion.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 marked a new direction for the platform, and - either in response, or by coincidence - two new players shot up soon after; Bluesky and the meta-owned Threads.

These three primarily text-based platforms offer competing visions for how social media should be, and in this article I’ll consider what this all means now and for the future of the web, and society more generally.


X: Pay-to-Play

Moving Fast and Breaking Everything

After Elon Musk took charge of Twitter in 2022, it underwent a massive transformation. While the name change - from the recognisable Twitter to literally just a random letter from the alphabet - might seem like a big change, it saw bigger changes in its internal structure and the features in the app itself.

Musk’s approach is what I would describe as ultra-capitalist, built on free-market principals, based on the belief that private, for-profit organisations will be the most efficient and innovative players in any competitive marketplace, and that regulation and employment protections are unnecessary red tape that slow down technological progress and growth.

With this in mind, after taking charge he immediately cut huge chunks of the Twitter (or X, let’s go with that) workforce, and vowed to cut down on the bots on the site by making users pay for features, in effect verifying themselves as human through the payment process.

Free Speech Absolutism

Musk is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, suggesting any attempts to discourage freedom of speech is an attempt to censor the speaker (we’ll get to that later), and in the months following his purchase he re-instated the accounts of several high-profile people who had been banned from the platform by its old ownership, including alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate and controversial US president Donald Trump. Musk’s reasoning - if you can call it that - was that while they are controversial, they should not be excluded from the conversation.

At this point, Musk was effectively telling X users that content will no longer be moderated, or that content that would have been removed in the past for being racist, homophobic, or pure dis/misinformation is now fine to share. For a free speech absolutist, this is fine, right?

Advertisers did not agree.

Huge corporations began withdrawing their dollars from the platform, keen to ensure their brands’ ads were not presented to users on the timeline alongside hateful or controversial content.

Disney, Apple, IBM, Sony and many others all withdrew, equating to hundreds of millions of lost revenue for the platform.

Musk’s response? Try a new monetisation strategy, and get users to pay for the privilege of having their content seen by others.

Monetisation

What once operated as a free and open forum for public discourse now revolves around monetisation and algorithmic visibility. X’s premium plans, X Premium and X Premium+, increase post visibility, offering paying users an advantage over those using the free tier.

Got money? Get ahead. Sounds pretty capitalistic, to me.

Users are now referred to as Creators, and can also receive ad revenue shares if they meet an engagement threshold, effectively monetising their ability to engage others, or their popularity.

X’s transition to a marketplace-style model goes beyond user interactions. Twitter’s API had a generous free tier, and users were encouraged to build third-party tools on top of the platform, to extend its features. When Musk came in, this got shut down quickly.

Now, the platform’s API costs a frankly ridiculous $42,000 per month. This effectively priced out researchers, developers, and smaller organisations that once relied on its data to build tools or study trends​, locking down both the data and the features of the app itself.

Grok and Generative AI

Next, let’s consider Grok, X’s generative-AI. Without getting in to technical specifics, the key difference between Grok and other well-known gen AI tools is Grok is less restrictive in terms of what it will let you generate.

For example, in the run up to the US election, Grok was used to create less-than-flattering images of politicians, images that ChatGPT or Claude would have blocked from being generated on ethical grounds. Again, Grok is designed to reflect Musk’s free speech absolutism, even if the images could potentially defame the character of the people featured in them.

All of these features and strategies reflects Musk's broader vision of the internet as a capitalist ecosystem. In this world, influence is a commodity, everything is a transaction, and visibility comes at a price.

While some argue this model incentivises creators and reduces reliance on advertising partners, critics note that it creates a two-tiered system where those that can pay can play. Those that cannot pay just get to sit and watch.

Bluesky and Mastodon

Ownership Matters

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon recently. After Musk’s controversial role in the re-election of Donald Trump, millions of users worldwide began leaving X to join alternative platforms better suited to their own beliefs about either politics, or how the web should work.

Threads is perhaps the best known of the alternatives on offer, created by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (the parent company of Facebook) and launched in 2023.

Bluesky was quietly launched much earlier, in 2019, by its creator, the founder and then-boss of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.

Lastly, Mastodon, a non-commercial, privacy-focused, open source alternative started back in 2016, ironically because its created was dissatisfied at where Twitter was heading at the time.

All three have different models of ownership, and this matters. Threads is of course owned by one of the largest companies on earth, Bluesky is owned by software engineer Jay Graber, and Mastodon is decentralised in that no single individual can claim ownership.

As we’ve seen with X, when ownership is consolidated to one person (or a very small group of people), the app can change direction on the whim of its owner, sometimes in directions that its users don’t necessary like.

Algorithms and APIs

While X is heavily criticised for the way its algorithm seems strangely aligned with interests of Musk (ie amplifying right wing voices, flooding Grok news with Tesla and SpaceX stories, hiding content that he does not agree with), these tools all approach algorithms quite differently.

Threads, with its consolidated ownership, applies a one-size-fits-all algorithm. Bluesky - built on Authenticated Transfer Protocol (AT Protocol), a decentralised framework designed to give power back to users - allows individuals to choose or even create algorithms tailored to their preferences. Mastodon simplifies the entire thing, to essentially just display content in chronological order.

All three platforms have free-to-use APIs, encouraging the community to build tools, features, or (in the case of Bluesky and Mastodon) entirely new platforms on top.

This openness contrasts sharply with X’s restricted API and closed systems.

Philosophically, Bluesky represents a belief in the internet as a democratised space, where users retain control over their data. With data being as valuable commodity as it is, its refreshing to find a platform take this approach.

Importantly, while all three are competitors, they’re in some ways designed to co-exist alongside one another, with shared technology and the Fediverse making it easy for users to connect their accounts across platforms. Again, a very different approach to the one taken by X.

Threads: Sitting in the Middle

Threads, Meta’s entry into the microblogging space, occupies a middle ground between X’s ultra-capitalist ethos, Bluesky’s open-source approach, and Mastodon’s decentralised ideals.

Originally launched as an extension of Instagram, Threads cleverly positioned itself to attract users disillusioned with X in the early days of Musk’s takeover.

Its tight integration with Meta’s ecosystem meant users could seamlessly port their account across from Insta to Threads. This was helpful, but also underscores the platform’s centralised nature and the data they hold on users.

Meta’s approach to monetisation in Threads has been more cautious - at least for now. Unlike X, Threads does not yet offer premium subscriptions or ad revenue sharing. However, Meta’s business model is historically rooted in data collection and targeted advertising, raising concerns about privacy and user autonomy as well as what Threads might look like in the near future.

Scandals like Cambridge Analytica - where millions of Facebook users’ data was harvested without consent and used to influence the 2016 US election - highlight the risks of entrusting Meta - or any corporation for that matter - with your personal information​, so the jury is out on this one, for now.

What Will the Web Look Like in Future?

The divergence between X and Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads reveals more than just differing business strategies; it highlights conflicting ideologies about the internet’s purpose and future.

X’s pay-to-play model envisions the internet as a marketplace where visibility, influence, and access are commodities. This approach rewards those who can invest financially in their presence while sidelining those who cannot, further widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.]

Threads may, for now, paint a picture of a more open web than the one envisioned by X, it still suggests the power would ultimately remain consolidated in the hands of some powerful corporations and individuals.

Bluesky and Mastadon’s open-source, decentralised vision offers hope for a more democratic internet if they can overcome the financial hurdles that will inevitable exist along the way.

For users, these platforms serve as a reminder that social media platforms are not neutral, and they impact both the web, and the real world.

The policies, algorithms, and business models they adopt reflect deeper values about what the web should be, and by examining them in this article, I hope you can make informed choices about the platforms you support.


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