Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Pokes Fun At Mark Zuckerberg With Latin Phrase T-Shirt (techcrunch.com) 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber walked on stage at SXSW 2025 for her keynote discussion, she wore a large black T-shirt with her hair pulled back into a bun. At first glance, it might appear as though she's following the same playbook that so many women in tech leadership have played before: downplaying her femininity to be taken seriously. The truth is way more interesting than that. What might look like your average black T-shirt is a subtle, yet clear swipe at Mark Zuckerberg, a CEO who represents everything that Bluesky is trying to work against as an open source social network.
The Meta founder and CEO has directly compared himself to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. His own shirt declared Aut Zuck aut nihil, which is a play on the Latin phrase aut Caesar aut nihil: "Either Caesar or nothing." Graber's shirt -- which directly copies the style of a shirt that Zuckerberg wore onstage recently -- says Mundus sine caesaribus. Or, "a world without Caesars." With the way Bluesky is designed, Graber is certainly putting her money where her mouth (or shirt) is. As a decentralized social network built upon an open source framework, Bluesky differs from legacy platforms like Facebook in that users have a direct, transparent window into how the platform is being built. "If a billionaire came in and bought Bluesky, or took it over, or if I decided tomorrow to change things in a way that people really didn't like, then they could fork off and go on to another application," Graber explained at SXSW. "There's already applications in the network that give you another way to view the network, or you could build a new one as well. And so that openness guarantees that there's always the ability to move to a new alternative."
The Meta founder and CEO has directly compared himself to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. His own shirt declared Aut Zuck aut nihil, which is a play on the Latin phrase aut Caesar aut nihil: "Either Caesar or nothing." Graber's shirt -- which directly copies the style of a shirt that Zuckerberg wore onstage recently -- says Mundus sine caesaribus. Or, "a world without Caesars." With the way Bluesky is designed, Graber is certainly putting her money where her mouth (or shirt) is. As a decentralized social network built upon an open source framework, Bluesky differs from legacy platforms like Facebook in that users have a direct, transparent window into how the platform is being built. "If a billionaire came in and bought Bluesky, or took it over, or if I decided tomorrow to change things in a way that people really didn't like, then they could fork off and go on to another application," Graber explained at SXSW. "There's already applications in the network that give you another way to view the network, or you could build a new one as well. And so that openness guarantees that there's always the ability to move to a new alternative."
Move Fast and Break Democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
More power to her. It's nice to see a clash of values in this space. Giving people the option to use a more open network is a good thing.
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The sad part is - Facebook could have remained huge, and sustainable. Part of the reason it got so big is that it did things that neither Twitter or MySpace did, namely the "seeing things in good timing" and the event- and calendar-driven coordination for parties and gatherings and public events. But instead, it's enshittified incredibly fast. [wired.com]
Sure, its origins were weird. Basically, an incredibly mediocre, unattractive guy born with a silver spoon up his ass wanted to get laid, so he four of his douchebro
Poor zuck (Score:2)
That midlife crisis is really hitting him hard.
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What is it with these ultra-fragile multi-billionaire tech bros and their need to be considered elite game players? Being an incredibly successful businessman just isn't enough, I guess.
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Infinite free-riders (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the open-protocol model is it's almost impossible to make money.
If you show ads, charge subscriptions, etc, customers will take their business elsewhere. But if you aren't making money, how do you pay people to do content moderation? How can you afford to comply with the DSA, DMA, GDPR, and various CSAM laws?
Maybe Bluesky has found a solution. We'll see.
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The problem with the open-protocol model is it's almost impossible to make money.
If you show ads, charge subscriptions, etc, customers will take their business elsewhere. But if you aren't making money, how do you pay people to do content moderation? How can you afford to comply with the DSA, DMA, GDPR, and various CSAM laws?
Maybe Bluesky has found a solution. We'll see.
Maybe Bluesky should sell those t-shirts. They wouldn't make a pile of money, but they'd probably find a decent number of buyers before someone else ripped off the design.
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And yet, people make money with email. Many email providers have ads, including the most popular: Gmail and Outlook. Many others use paid subscriptions and profitable. And they all have to comply with local regulations. There is no real content moderation because it is direct messaging, but there are spam filters.
Email is a very open protocol, too open actually. Along the years, development made the barrier to entry a little higher to combat spam, but it is still accessible.
I care what's between her legs why? (Score:1, Redundant)
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Okay. nothing we didn't already know except that Bluesky is doubling down on the censorship. But this is a woman in tech story! It has to go up. What can we do? Maybe talk about her fashion choices and hairstyle?
To be fair, if a male SXSW keynote speaker wore a T-shirt with a Latin phrase poking fun at Zuckerberg, it would probably show up here too. It might not be "here's what a woman wore" as "someone denounced Zuckerberg in a clever way."
Then again, Slashdot hasn't yet run a story on my cool T-shirt that says "Guck Foogle." It's either because I'm a man, because I'm not that important, or because it's not particularly witty.
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It's kind of sad you don't seem to realize that you care. Much more than any well adjusted person does. You appear to have some ... opinions. Hope you can join us in the land of the adults some day.
Re: Insane Asylum Bluesky's CEO Pokes Fun. (Score:2)
A world without Caesars ... (Score:4, Insightful)