Bluesky has a feature that could be its biggest: “custom feeds” or custom algorithms. These are feeds with algorithms that show different types of posts from the “What’s Hot?” feed.
In practice, custom feeds are similar to Twitter lists . You can pin custom feeds in a similar way. They’ll appear at the top as tabs. The “My Feeds menu” in the sidebar of the app allows you to choose which feeds you want to pin. This tab includes feeds for the “What’s Hot”, “What’s Hot Classic”, “Bluesky Team”, “Posts by members of the Bluesky Team”, and “Popular With Friends”.
“What’s Alf”
My Feeds has a section for discovering new feeds. You can choose from a variety of feeds including “Cat Pics,” “Music,” and even feeds for the more bizarre side of Bluesky like “Hellthread feed” or “What’s ALF.”
So far, these custom feeds are working well. It’s great to have some control over what is served to me algorithmically, especially when Elon Musk posts can dominate Twitter. And TikTok feeds are extremely good for keeping me hooked into the app. It’s not surprising that I limit myself to only the feeds of people I am following. I already have too many distractions.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber stated in a blog post from March that the platform wants to create a future in which users can control what they see on social media . We aim to replace the traditional’master algorithms’ controlled by one company with a diverse and open’marketplace’ of algorithms.
Bluesky’s bsky.app and the latest versions of its mobile apps now support custom feeds. The Twitter alternative is still invite-only. You can only try it if you have an existing account or someone has sent you an invitation code.
