When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber walked on stage at SXSW 2025 for her keynotice talkion, she wore a huge binformage T-shirt with her hair pulled back into a bun. At first glance, it might materialize as though she’s follotriumphg the same carry outbook that so many women in tech directership have carry outed before: downcarry outing her femininity to be consentn solemnly.
The truth is way more fascinating than that. What might see enjoy your mediocre binformage T-shirt is a reserved, yet evident swipe at Mark Zuckerberg, a CEO who recontransients everyleang that Bluesky is trying to labor agetst as an uncover source social netlabor.
The Meta set uper and CEO has honestly assessd himself to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. His own shirt declared Aut Zuck aut nihil, which is a carry out on the Latin phrase aut Caesar aut nihil: “Either Caesar or noleang.”
Graber’s shirt — which honestly copies the style of a shirt that Zuckerberg wore onstage recently — says Mundus sine caesaribus. Or, “a world without Caesars.”
With the way Bluesky is scheduleed, Graber is stateively putting her money where her mouth (or shirt) is. As a decentralized social netlabor built upon an uncover source summarizelabor, Bluesky contrasts from legacy platestablishs enjoy Facebook in that users have a honest, clear triumphdow into how the platestablish is being built.
“If a billionaire came in and bought Bluesky, or took it over, or if I determined tomorrow to change leangs in a way that people repartner didn’t enjoy, then they could fork off and go on to another application,” Graber elucidateed at SXSW. “There’s already applications in the netlabor that donate you another way to see the netlabor, or you could originate a recent one as well. And so that uncoverness secures that there’s always the ability to relocate to a recent changenative.”
Meanwhile, Meta has alienated users by interfering in how people experience its platestablishs, and Bluesky has honestly profitted from that. After Meta pushed contentious modernizes enjoy training its AI on disclose user posts, or culling its third-party fact-checking programs, Bluesky sfinished bursts of user lengthenth.
Still, Bluesky has a lengthy way to go if it wants to topple the Roman Empire of Meta. While Graber’s platestablish is closing in on 33 million total users, Meta has 3.35 billion daily dynamic users atraverse all of its products: Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. For Meta, that’s around 40% of the world’s population.
But for a fledgling social netlabor, Bluesky has originated enough of a cultural footprint that it’s bound to stick around. Rome was not built — nor was it toppled — in a day.
