Ice Open Network’s Opinion section features commentary by our team on key news and issues that impact the Web3 space and the broader Internet community.
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On February 4, 2025, Meta’s Threads introduced public custom feeds, following suit from X in replicating a core feature of their decentralized alternative Bluesky.
The move didn’t make waves in the world of Web3 — with trade wars in the making, markets dipping, and AI spreading like wildfire, why would it? Yet it should have, and it’s news that we should all watch unfold.
Let’s put things into perspective.
Bluesky Social has 12 million monthly active users (MAU) — a measly number compared to its centralized peers Threads and X, which boast MAU in the ballpark of 300 and 415 million respectively. And while it is arguably the neatest, most mainstream-friendly decentralized social media platform currently available, Bluesky cannot compete with its Big Tech rivals in terms of features. It only recently launched a chat functionality, and it doesn’t support video, long-form content, or Spaces-type formats.
Bluesky is barebones microblogging — a David at the feet of multi-purpose, singing and dancing Goliaths. But what it does have, which neither Threads nor X has, is decentralization at its very core. That it has allowed its users to create custom feeds and make them public from the onset is perhaps the most tangible feature stemming from this key differentiator, and its foremost selling point to those seeking digital freedom, greater personalization, or simply suffering from social media fatigue.
Public custom feeds are a hallmark of Bluesky that is, at least in part, responsible for attracting the likes of The New York Times and The Onion, Stephen King and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the platform — each, in their own way, proponents of the paradigm shift that shapes Web3 narratives, blending libertarian ideals with critiques of power centralization and efforts to integrate progressive governance models.
They are a return to what social media, and the Internet, were originally conceived as and what Web3 has yet to achieve at scale — authentic, autonomous, community-driven, and censorship-free expression and interaction.
We should worry.
As Threads and X, with all their might and MAU, hijack a mechanism so intimately tied to the ideals that Bluesky stands for — and that our space hopefully continues to stand for — we should be concerned. At the very least, we should be mindful of the wolf in sheep’s clothing that so skilfully plays on the only-just-emerging mass need for digital sovereignty.
The availability of custom feeds and the opportunity to share them on large centralized platforms like Threads and X may, on the surface, seem like a welcome first step towards a New Internet rooted in user autonomy, but it isn’t. It is a smokescreen that creates a false feeling of digital freedom — an empty, and admittedly glossy casing for what a truly open Internet should be.
It lacks substance and it lacks authenticity, because it lacks the technological underpinnings. It’s all marketing, and what makes it dangerous is the sheer scale.
Threads and X have a combined registered user base of over a billion, versus Bluesky’s 30 million.
When more than a billion people — or about a fifth of the world’s Internet users – are given a placebo for woes they don’t yet know they have, the majority are bound to report satisfaction, thus stamping out any efforts to truly address the issue. This will hinder the development of the true remedies out there — projects like Bluesky and Ice Open Network, whose mission is to decentralize digital interaction and personhood.
The adoption by Big Tech of Bluesky’s core innovations is not a victory for decentralization — it’s a co-opting of its aesthetic, a repackaging of its promise without the substance. While it may create the illusion of user empowerment, it ultimately reinforces the control of centralized platforms over our digital spaces.
The real battle isn’t just about features — it’s about who controls the infrastructure of online interaction.
As Web3 continues to push for a truly open and autonomous Internet, we must remain vigilant against Big Tech’s appropriation of decentralization’s language without its principles. If we accept imitation as progress, we risk delaying or even derailing the real transformation that projects like Bluesky and Ice Open Network are striving to achieve.
The choice ahead is clear: embrace a convenient mirage or fight for an Internet built on genuine digital sovereignty.
In the meantime, just beware.
About the author:
Alexandru Iulian Florea is a long-time tech entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Ice Open Network. A vocal advocate for digital sovereignty as a fundamental human right, his personal ambition is to help bring the world’s 5.5 billion Internet users on-chain by putting dApps within everyone’s reach.