Not even a few months in, and social media is already having a big year.
TikTok said goodbye to its U.S. users, before rising again 12 hours later. Instagram forced us all to follow the President and Vice President (allegedly). Meta’s content moderation went from bad to worse. X is… well, still X.
The question now for anyone addicted to the scroll is, where do we go from here? The word ‘censorship’ is on everyone’s lips, as trust in our biggest social media platforms continues to dissolve.
During TikTok’s short vacation from our screens, several platforms tried to fill the gap (RedNote, Lemon8, Clapper, to name a few). But none have really risen to the be-all, end-all solution to that collective concern: who can be trusted with our screens?
Enter, stage right: AT Protocol. Now wait, before I lose you—it has a techy name but what it stands for could be the future of social media. Still here? Great, let’s talk about it.
What is AT Protocol?
The boring definition? AT Protocol is an open-source protocol that creates a decentralized system, so users can easily move their social media accounts (and data) between platforms, can interact with other AT Protocol-based platforms, and have more control over their user experience.
Meaning, if your new favorite social media platform gets shut down, no need to start over; your data that made your feed so addictive is still intact and can come with you to your next app addiction. Or if you don’t like how your feed content is being curated, no problem. You can choose how your content is moderated, by subscribing to different moderation algorithms created by your fellow users.
The other key feature is transparency. Open-source means that you can see how an app using AT Protocol is built and what is being developed. The takeaway: harder to hide a sneaky follow to the Commander in Chief (to be clear, that didn’t actually happen, but you get my point).
The best example of AT Protocol is Bluesky, of which CNBC has a great explainer about its rise to fame. There are, of course, concerns. AT Protocol is far from perfect and can have the same pitfalls of misinformation and hate speech that centralized platforms have.
So how is this all different from your current social media options? Most are controlled by a single entity—our Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world—who can change their policies without any buy-in from their users, or without any transparency into why. Control from the top, compliance at the bottom.
On the other hand, AT Protocol gives users a better view into how their app of choice works and doesn’t dictate your experience as much as X or Meta does.
Why does it matter in 2025?
With distrust of larger social media apps at an all-time high and those apps’ transparency into policy changes at an all-time low, AT Protocol is poised to see a huge growth in adoption and development in 2025.
Just look at what happened in 2023. When Twitter became X and distrust grew, it was the AT Protocol-built option Bluesky that became the most likely successor and a second home for our tweets. We’ve also seen the growth of the fediverse in the last year, which uses a different open-source protocol called ActivityPub, and new projects continue to bubble up like Skyseed.
Now in 2025, with TikTok facing a similar fate, open-source options are already gaining renewed attention. Rumors of new apps are already floating around, from Mark Cuban’s open-call for an AT Protocol alternative to TikTok to a new movement called Free Our Feeds.
Free Our Feeds suggests an even bigger step: decentralize how apps are developed from day one. It wants to move away from “venture-backed” platforms and intends to crowdsource its funding, to free its social media “from the whims of any one company or group of billionaires.” It’s a step that Mastedon is also exploring, taking its decentralized approach and applying it to its leadership structure.
This is part of a larger, growing sentiment, that our digital town squares have been controlled by the rich and powerful for too long.
AT Protocol offers a way for the average person to have more control over their apps, and with TikTok’s future still uncertain, it’s the perfect time for new apps using this protocol to be born. Combine that with our current political climate, I predict that AT Protocol and its apps have a much better chance of being adopted by more users than previous years.
2025 is going to be a big year for social media, and AT Protocol is going to be an important part of that future. Let’s see what it has in store for us.
