Bluesky made a surprising announcement yesterday that Techdirt editor Mike Masnick has joined their board of directors. As an early adopter, Mike’s been a long-time part of the Bluesky community, and his Protocols, Not Platforms article served as a key inspiration in that network’s formation.

Mike has been an early supporter of Bluesky’s mission to create a global, open social network, as full of possibility as the early web. In the past, we’ve gone to Mike for inspiration and advice already, and formalizing that relationship is the natural next step. His deep understanding of our approach — iterating towards widespread adoption while enabling trust & safety in a decentralized system — makes him an invaluable addition to our board.

Official Bluesky announcement

The inclusion of Mike as a board member is an interesting choice. As a tech journalist and editor who has covered the beat for over 27 years, he brings a lot of insight into how the tech industry works, along with how the industry, consumers, and policy all intersect. In an organizational role, he’s likely to be the one advising the team on necessary steps to take as Bluesky continues to refine its features and protocol. Although his connection to the company has never been official, both parties agree that this feels right.

“Bluesky is the service that is coming closest to making the vision I articulated in my paper a reality,” Mike writes in his personal announcement, “when the opportunity arose to join the board it seemed…to make sense to make that relationship more formal, allowing me to better help Bluesky make this vision a reality.”

Masnick has also gone on to explain that, in the shift to this pivotal role, he intends to reflect total transparency in his relationship to Bluesky PBC, and will go to great lengths to avoid a conflict of interests between his different roles and responsibilities.

“One of the key things that has fascinated me about Bluesky is that they have made it clear from the beginning that they recognize how a future version of the company could, itself, be a threat to the vision the current team has,” Mike Masnick concludes, “They are designing the system to be technically resistant to such a threat — which is why building an open protocol is so important.”