Bluesky now has a feed with custom algorithms. This means that with the new rollout, there is now an AI-focused feed on the app and platform.
Bluesky Feed with Custom Algorithms
One of the potentially biggest features of Bluesky is upon us: custom algorithms or what it refers to as “custom feeds.” The main idea here is that you can now subscribe to feeds that have algorithms tuned to showcase various types of posts than what you might get to see in the main “What’s Hot” feed of Bluesky.
The custom feeds in practice, work a lot like Twitter lists. And very much similar to those, you can also pin specific custom feeds, and they will show up at the top of your timeline as different tabs to select from. You can also get to pick which feeds to pin from a new “My Feeds” menu in the sidebar of the app.
That very tab by default has feeds for “What’s Hot” (“Top trending content from the whole network”), “What’s Hot Classic” (“The original What’s Hot experience”), “Bluesky Team” (“Posts from members of the Bluesky Team”), as well as “Popular With Friends” (“A mix of popular content from accounts you follow and content that your follows like”).
Bluesky’s My Feeds Also Features a Section to Discover New Feeds
My Feeds also features a section to discover new feeds. There are quite a lot of options already, and this is inclusive of tame feeds, such as “Cat Pics” and “Music,” but also feeds that get to cater to the weirder side of Bluesky, such as “Hellthread Feed” and “What’s Alf.” Best of everything, you don’t actually have to pin any feeds, thus meaning that, if you want, you can set things up so that you only get to see a reverse chronological timeline of posts reportedly from the people you follow on the platform.
Bluesky’s CEO’s Reaction to the New Development
So far from what I have seen, I really like the implementation of these custom feeds. It is really nice to feel like I have some control over what gets to be served to me algorithmically, especially in a world where Elon Musk’s posts can easily take over Twitter and TikTok’s feed is extremely and excellently good at keeping me sucked into the app. And I would not be surprised if I at most times limit myself just to the feed of the people I follow as I already have enough distractions in my life.
“We want a future where you control what you see on social media,” Jay Graber Bluesky CEO in a March blog post about the platform’s vision for algorithmic choice wrote. “We aim to replace the conventional ‘master algorithm,’ controlled by a single company, with an open and diverse ‘marketplace of algorithms.’”
Custom Feeds Availability
Custom feeds as you should know are available at the moment in the latest version of the mobile apps and on the web client of Bluesky, bsky.app. The Twitter alternative however remains invite-only, so the only medium that you can try this for yourself is if you already have an account or if someone gets to send you an invite code. (I don’t have any spares, sorry!)
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