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A senior social media executive has issued a warning over the direction of major online platforms, as the spread of artificial intelligence continues to reshape how people interact on the internet.
Bluesky chief operating officer Rose Wang made the comments after speaking at SXSW London, where she criticised rival platforms including Meta and X.
Bluesky, which was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019, has grown rapidly in recent years as users have looked for alternatives to larger social media networks.
The platform has been pitched as a more open version of social media, built on the AT Protocol, which allows users and developers to create connected services rather than being locked into one company’s app.
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However, Wang’s warning centres on what she sees as a deeper problem facing the industry: the way AI is being used to replace human interaction online.
Wang told Metro: “What we don’t like is when AI is just slop; when it is replacing humans in a way that cuts off what makes humans special, it cuts off the relationship.”
“It takes away what makes humans human, which is the social relationship, and I think that it’s the direction that AI is being implemented.”
Wang accused competitors, including Facebook owner Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) , of becoming ‘basically AI companies at this point’.
Her comments come amid growing concern over AI-generated material on social media, including low-quality posts, synthetic images, automated engagement, and wider questions about how user data is being used.
Bluesky has sought to distance itself from that model, with developers previously saying the platform does not use posts to train generative AI.
Wang said the structure of Bluesky is designed to prevent one company from gaining too much control over users.
She said: “If Bluesky went evil, everything about Bluesky is open-source, so you can just go to a new app with a click of a button.”
“There are all these other providers out there competing with us, which forces us to align our interests with the user.”
Wang also rejected the idea that Bluesky is simply trying to become a replacement for X.
She said: “We’re not trying to build the next Facebook or Twitter.”
“We’re actually trying to change, fundamentally, how social media works.”
The Bluesky executive did not argue that AI has no place on social platforms. Bluesky itself uses the technology to help filter harmful images, while Wang described AI as a nuanced technology rather than something that is automatically good or bad.
However, she said the speed and scale of its rollout have left many people feeling powerless.
“It’s super important to talk about how scary AI is. We’re introducing a completely new technology that is capable beyond things we can understand – and there’s no education or retraining. There’s nothing out there.
“People feel very helpless, powerless, hurt, and like that they don’t matter anymore.”
Wang added: “We’re getting even further into a world where we’re just trusting a few billionaires, and there’s no verification of where that data is coming from.”
