Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down

238 points by minimaxir 4 hours ago

https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-is-steppi... (https://web.archive.org/web/20260309191134/https://www.wired...)

https://toni.org/2026/03/09/coming-off-the-bench-for-bluesky...

arcalinea - 3 hours ago

Jay here: this is a transition I've been working towards for awhile, and I'm looking forward to advancing the vision and ecosystem as CIO (Chief Innovation Officer). Toni has been an advisor to us for years, and I personally recruited him to take over as CEO while I focus on new projects within the company. It's an honor to have him on board to lead us into this next stage of growth.

Dracophoenix - 3 hours ago

Since you're now focusing on the AT protocol, will E2EE/OTR become a priority?
- danabramov - 3 hours ago
  
  There's a recent post by Daniel (who works on atproto) on why E2EE is not a current focus: https://dholms.leaflet.pub/3meluqcwky22a
  - big_toast - an hour ago
    
    Is there any discussion somewhere about adding in the data that makes the x.com/twitter recommend/ranker so functional?
    The "Grok-based Transformer"[0] that uses P(click/dwell/not_interested/photo_expand/video_view) seems pretty important and I can't tell how atproto is capturing it. I use @spacecowboy17.bsky.social‬'s For You and from what I understand that feed wouldn't get that data?
    [0]:https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm?tab=readme-ov-file#sc... (this isn't an endorsement of grok/x, it's more that the transformer recommender has been very steerable via those signals in my experience)
    (I also struggle with the omni-purpose likes - endorsement, approval, discover-algorithm-input. Maybe a more prominent more/less button addresses this, but then provides less network signal.)
ChicagoDave - 3 hours ago

If there was an Internet Technology hall of fame, your work with atproto would qualify.
One big innovation is to drag a large bank or Stripe on board to enable payments on the network.
Good luck!
marxisttemp - 9 minutes ago

Why did you deliberately steal Mastodon’s thunder? Why don’t you support ActivityPub?
yieldcrv - 2 hours ago

I'm glad you were able to reach your goal, been following your professional journey since I met you at a silicon valley event 10 years ago, looking forward to what you do with the ecosystem
sourcegrift - 3 hours ago

[flagged]
- brendoelfrendo - 2 hours ago
  
  Er, I don't know if she's discussed this elsewhere, but I don't think Jay is trans.
egorfine - 3 hours ago

Is the new blocking age verification page the kind of innovation we should expect from BlueSky?
CactusBlue - 3 hours ago

How do you feel about the recent communication failures from the team to the userbase? As another builder of an open-source social platform, we must all understand that it is paramount for any company to not antagonize its customers, doubly so for a SOCIAL platform. I do understand that Bluesky and ATProto has to deal with a lot of baggage from both the old userbase and the new influx from the X/Twitter exodus, but engaging in user-antagonistic communication caused me to sour on the whole protocol.
- catapart - 3 hours ago
  
  Big time +1, here. Would love to hear something - anything - from the bsky team that takes some accountability.
- parl_match - 3 hours ago
  
  > user-antagonistic communication
  could you provide some examples? i didn't really see this, but maybe i just missed it
  - CactusBlue - 3 hours ago
    
    https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/05/waffles-eat-bluesky/
    
    parl_match - 3 hours ago
    
    I don't like Jesse Singal's work or his political positions (he fucking sucks!), but this is hardly antagonistic except to maybe a small group of terminally online posters who take posting too seriously.
    Although, I guess that is the audience bluesky was targeting when they first started. So I guess I understand the criticism.
    Also, it is a very ironic demonstration of the pancakes/waffles meme. Interjecting into an unrelated topic to ask the mods to ban someone you don't like is a tradition as old as dial up BBS. So I'm glad to see the torch is being carried forward to a younger generation.
    
    CactusBlue - 3 hours ago
    
    I don't even think having Jesse Singal on the platform is the problem (like it or not, I believe that all beings must have the right to communicate); the problem here was the communication failure when communicating this decision to the userbase. They could have just reiterated their rules and left it at that; instead, they chose to mock their userbase, write them off as harassment, and banned users left and right, abusing their position in network to censor people at every layer of the protocol.
    
    easterncalculus - an hour ago
    
    > instead, they chose to mock their userbase
    It's a CEO's personal account. CEOs do this on Twitter all the time without it becoming a techcrunch article.
    Let's just be honest about what happened - the CEO of Bluesky gave a (still not proportionally as) absurd response to an extremely absurd harassment campaign. That's what this and the article intentionally obscure.
    Again, this is never how the web was supposed to work, and it (BARELY) holding on to that is the real story.
    
    parl_match - 3 hours ago
    
    > instead, they chose to mock their userbase
    Doing the pancakes/waffles thing in the thread about pancakes/waffles is so fucking on the nose and demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness.
    > They could have just reiterated their rules and left it at that; instead, they chose to mock their userbase, write them off as harassment, and banned users left and right, abusing their position in network to censor people at every layer of the protocol.
    The more I dig into it, the more your one-sided whinging falls apart. I agree they could have handled it somewhat better, but I have very little sympathy for the terminally online bullshit that I'm seeing coming from the banned users.
    Anyways, I feel we're apart on this issue. Feel free to have the last word if you wish.
    
    jrflowers - 25 minutes ago
    
    > Doing the pancakes/waffles thing in the thread about pancakes/waffles is so fucking on the nose
    Wait what do you think “the pancakes/waffles thing” refers to? You posted 2 hours ago that you had never heard of it.
    I can see that how it could be confusing because there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay wrote about about people complaining to the CEO when the moderation team doesn’t respond as being equivalent to that meme, and then there’s “the pancakes/waffles thing” where Jay started posting pictures of pancakes and waffles as some sort of… joke or dunk? I never quite got the 4D comedy chess there.
    It doesn’t seem like anybody is “doing the pancakes/waffles thing” in either case. Nobody is asking Jay, as CEO, to ban anyone in the thread about Jay not being the CEO anymore. And I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ironically posting metahumor pictures of pancakes.
    The term has become so overused that definition creep now means that it could mean “anything that might bother Jay” in this context.
    
    inquirerGeneral - an hour ago
    
    [dead]
    
    Karrot_Kream - 2 hours ago
    
    > Although, I guess that is the audience bluesky was targeting when they first started. So I guess I understand the criticism.
    I was in the invite only cohort of Bluesky users and I don't really think so. I think what happened is after the election a bunch of very online, political news addicted anti-Musk folks migrated to Bluesky and created the current culture. Even though I'm pretty sure most folks on the network shared pretty much the same politics, the culture on the network changed completely within a few days of this.
    
    mossTechnician - 3 hours ago
    
    The central complaint doesn't seem to be distaste, but rather the fact that he is uniquely privileged over other users, despite violating Bluesky's terms of service.[0]
    [0]: https://www.change.org/p/bluesky-must-enforce-its-community-...
    
    Levitz - 2 hours ago
    
    The central complaint isn't "distaste" because you can't call for someone to be banned because of a "distaste".
    "Jesse Singal has distributed private medical information on Bluesky without the consent of the patient" translates to publishing a quote from a patient included in a therapist's letter of support for hormones.
    The problem in this situation is that the complaint itself as well as the whole drama surrounding the person is an exercise of harassment towards Singal. In this context, I don't think that saying "waffles" is out of order. I'm not sure of what else can be done about crybullying, since by its very nature innocent bystanders would be surely affected if action was taken against those complaining.
    
    mossTechnician - 2 hours ago
    
    Distributing private medical information without consent is a violation of Bluesky's terms.
    And to me, that sounds like a much more concrete example of someone being a bully.
    
    Levitz - 3 minutes ago
    
    >“Don’t use Bluesky Social to break the law or cause harm to others,”
    Is this, quoted in the change.org, the relevant line?
    The law was not broken, it is also fairly evident that the intention was not to "cause harm to others", nor has any harm has seemingly come upon the patient for this (it requires a huge stretch of imagination to think of a case in which it could)
    
    zdragnar - an hour ago
    
    Is it private if it is in a public affidavit?