"The steady rise of decentralised networks this year is transforming social media... By moving towards a digital landscape that can’t be monopolised by one big player, we also see broader improvements to network resiliency and user autonomy" - EFF
This statement was originally published on eff.org on 1 January 2025.
The steady rise of decentralized networks this year is transforming social media. Platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads are still in their infancy but have already shown that when users are given options, innovation thrives and it results in better tools and protections for our rights online. By moving towards a digital landscape that can’t be monopolized by one big player, we also see broader improvements to network resiliency and user autonomy.
The Steady Rise of Decentralized Networks
Fediverse and Threads
The Fediverse, a wide variety of sites and services most associated with Mastodon, continued to evolve this year. Meta’s Threads began integrating with the network, marking a groundbreaking shift for the company. Only a few years ago EFF dreamed of the impact an embrace of interoperability would have for a company that is notorious for building walled gardens that trap users within its platforms. By allowing Threads users to share their posts with Mastodon and the broader fediverse (and therefore, Bluesky) without leaving their home platform, Meta is introducing millions to the benefits of interoperability. We look forward to this continued trajectory, and for a day when it is easy to move to or from Threads, and still follow and interact with the same federated community.
Threads’ enormous user base – 100 million daily active users – now dwarfs both Mastodon and Bluesky. Its integration into more open networks is a potential turning point in popularizing the decentralized social web. However, Meta’s poor reputation on privacy, moderation, and censorship, drove many Fediverse instances to preemptively block Threads, and may fragment the network..
We explored how Threads stacks up against Mastodon and Bluesky, across moderation, user autonomy, and privacy. This development highlights the promise of decentralization, but it also serves as a reminder that corporate giants may still wield outsized influence over ostensibly open systems.
Bluesky’s Explosive Growth
While Threads dominated in sheer numbers, Bluesky was this year’s breakout star. At the start of the year, Bluesky had fewer than 200,000 users and was still invite-only. In the last few months of 2024 however the project experienced over 500% growth in just one month, and ultimately reached over 25 million users.
Unlike Mastodon, which integrates into the Fediverse, Bluesky took a different path, building its own decentralized protocol (AT Protocol) to ensure user data and identities remain portable and users retain a “credible exit.” This innovation allows users to carry their online communities across platforms seamlessly, sparing them the frustration of rebuilding their community. Unlike the Fediverse, Bluesky has prioritized building a drop-in replacement for Twitter, and is still mostly centralized. Bluesky has a growing arsenal of tools available to users, embracing community creativity and innovation.
While Bluesky will be mostly familiar to former Twitter users, we ran through some tips for managing your Bluesky feed, and answered some questions for people just joining the platform.
Competition Matters
Keeping the Internet Weird
The rise of decentralized platforms underscores the critical importance of competition in driving innovation. Platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky thrive because they fill gaps left by corporate giants, and encourage users to find experiences which work best for them. The traditional social media model puts up barriers so platforms can impose restrictive policies and prioritize profit over user experience. When the focus shifts to competition and a lack of central control, the internet flourishes.
Whether a user wants the community focus of Mastodon, the global megaphone of Bluesky, or something else entirely, smaller platforms let people build experiences independent of the motives of larger companies. Decentralized platforms are ultimately most accountable to their users, not advertisers or shareholders.
Making Tech Resilient
This year highlighted the dangers of concentrating too much power in the hands of a few dominant companies. A major global IT outage this summer starkly demonstrated the fragility of digital monocultures, where a single point of failure can disrupt entire industries. These failures underscore the importance of decentralization, where networks are designed to distribute risk, ensuring that no single system compromise can ripple across the globe.
Decentralized projects like Meshtastic, which uses radio waves to provide internet connectivity in disaster scenarios, exemplify the kind of resilient infrastructure we need. However, even these innovations face threats from private interests. This year, a proposal from NextNav to claim the 900 MHz band for its own use put Meshtastic’s experimentation – and by extension, the broader potential of decentralized communication—at risk. As we discussed in our FCC comments, such moves illustrate how monopolistic power not only stifles competition but also jeopardizes resilient tools that could safeguard peoples’ connectivity.
Looking Ahead
This year saw meaningful strides toward building a decentralized, creative, and resilient internet for 2025. Interoperability and decentralization will likely continue to expand. As it does, EFF will be vigilant, watching for threats to decentralized projects and obstacles to the growth of open ecosystems.
