Bluesky CEO Jay Graber took a clear swipe at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg when she took the stage at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin this week wearing a shirt that copied an infamous one hed worn last year at a Meta product reveal event.Grabers shirt read Mundus sine Caesaribus, or A world without Caesars in Latin. It was the same design as Zuckerbergs shirt from last year that read, Aut Zuck aut nihil, which is a play on the phrase, Aut Caesar aut nihil: Either Caesar or nothing.Grabers not-so-subtle message seemed to be that decentralized platforms, like the one shes building with Bluesky, prioritize users over the platforms bottom-line interests.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 didnt like, then they could fork off and go on to another application, Graber said while onstage. Theres 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 theres always the ability to move to a new alternative.Seeking freedom from billionaire controlBluesky, which is built on the open-source AT Protocol, really took off after the November presidential election, when X owner Elon Musk gained a large stake in President Trumps campaign and subsequent administration. Users like the fact that Blueskys open social media ecosystem ultimately means that no one person controls it. So far, its amassed more than 33 million total users.To be sure, its still a long way from reaching the user numbers that Zuckerbergs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp enjoy. Meta said in its full-year 2024 earnings report that it has 3.35 billion daily active users across its whole family of apps.Still, Graber is optimistic in Blueskys model. We want to give people real choicenot just a new platform, but a new paradigm, she said.