566. Rose Wang - Bluesky Social Aims to Help Users Escape the Tyranny and Toxicity of Social Algorithms

Silicon Curtain

It’s been claimed that on Election Day in the US 280,000 X users closed their accounts. At the same time, Bluesky saw a massive spike in new users, up from 13 million in October, surpassing 21 by November. Rose Wang, whom I’m honoured to speaking with today, is quoted as saying that the company's 20-person team has been in "firefighting mode" as this spectacular growth has far surpassed their projections and has caused some technical stress. Bluesky is touted as a far more decentralised and democratic digital experience, that aims to avoid issues that have dogged all other social platform as they scaled and commercialised their business models. Let’s find out how Rose and her team intent to achieve this. ---------- Rose Wang is Chief Operating Officer of Bluesky Social, a microblogging social media service. It was spun out from Twitter, after its acquisition by Elon Musk. Although similar to Twitter in look and feel, Bluesky Social has ambitions to expand and innovate its platform significantly. Rose was also CEO and Co-founder of Chirps, a snack product made from insect protein, with the progressive ambition to reduce land and water usage, and greenhouse gas emissions. ---------- LINKS: https://x.com/iamrosewang https://x.com/bluesky https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosewang20/ ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND: Save Ukraine https://www.saveukraineua.org/ Superhumans - Hospital for war traumas https://superhumans.com/en/ UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukraine https://unbroken.org.ua/ Come Back Alive https://savelife.in.ua/en/ Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchen https://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine UNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyy https://u24.gov.ua/ Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation https://prytulafoundation.org NGO “Herojam Slava” https://heroiamslava.org/ kharpp - Reconstruction project supporting communities in Kharkiv and Przemyśl https://kharpp.com/ NOR DOG Animal Rescue https://www.nor-dog.org/home/ ---------- PLATFORMS: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSilicon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconcurtain/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- Welcome to the Silicon Curtain podcast. Please like and subscribe if you like the content we produce. It will really help to increase the popularity of our content in YouTube’s algorithm. Our material is now being made available on popular podcasting platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.