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Counterpoint to this... I would happily pay $50/month for an atproto-based Bluesky clone that promises "no ads, ever" as long as it was interoperable. So anyone who is building that, just know that you've got at least some customers waiting, especially if you refuse to take VC money.

Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]@skillstopractice.com

I won't mince words, the day Bluesky rolls out ads is the day that I make this place syndication only and stop hanging out here, and then plot an exit entirely from the platform within 6 months after that. It'd be a broken promise, in *any* form. bsky.app/profile/zipp...

I've got 20 years of experience in designing business models + looking at them from a systems thinking and human psychology/sociology lens. Ads by default with a premium opt out route is still, in every possible way, an advertising based business model. This topples democracies.

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I don't have an issue with *publications* having sponsors or advertisements. Platforms have much too much power for that ever not to be a fundamental poisoning of the well. And Bluesky is still a platform until it has at least *one* independent sustainable alternative on the same protocol.

Just seeing this now. Doesn't really matter one way or another because you're not trying to run a global communications network as the sole operator at the moment and I'm not against ads. It's only when your scope of influence is "everyone" that this stuff starts to matter.

This is about how Bluesky makes money, and only is relevant until atproto has at least two other alternative providers for microblogging with self-sustaining business models and comparable network effects. It's not about customer UX but about global scale governance...