Here at LeafPlaza we are building a European and sovereign space within the AT Protocol. That means, you get to interact with Bluesky, but your data is yours and protected with European-owned infrastructure. You can find more about our project in our profile or our website.

Within days of launching, Attie became the second most blocked account on the entire network, behind J.D. Vance. That tells you something. Vance is not exactly popular in Europe. Let's take a look together and see if Attie can do better.

What even is Attie?

Attie is Bluesky's AI-powered feed builder, with Anthropic's Claude behind. Interesting pitch: talk to it, build your feed. E.g. "show me tech post from EU devs, no crypto bros" and boom, feed ready.

It uses ATP credentials, which means it works across any ATP app, not just Bluesky. So it supports any existing or future ATP app. Neat. The bad news start right here: Attie reads your activity across the whole ATProto ecosystem to personalize your feed, not just your Bluesky posts. The gods of the GDPR are not pleased.

The vision is clear: Bluesky wants Attie to eventually let users "vibe-code" their own social apps, no engineering required. Neat again, at least in theory. Let us give you a though for later. How do they plan to monetize this?

Let's start unpacking.

Where is the transparency?

Let's state an important fact first: blocking Attie is futile. The reason is the ATP design: Attie takes the public data from the firehose like any other AT client. Here is the trick, though: nobody really knows what happens to your data. Is Attie GDPR-compliant? Could you request your data to be removed? Who knows?

There is some EU precedent: Ireland's Data Protection Commission recently launched a full GDPR investigation into Grok, Elon Musk's AI assistant, over similar concerns about personal data handling. True, we are not talking about deepfakes here. On the other hand, we do not really know what could Attie or Anthropic do with our data. Bluesky states they do not train AI on user data, but where is the evidence? Also, this has a lot to do with inference. What's stored? Where's stored? For how long? Who can access it? We have no answers.

You do not own the logic

When AI builds a feed for you, it might be tailored to you. However, the algorithm is a black box.

Data privacy is the obvious concern. But there's a subtler problem worth naming: you don't own the logic. You describe what you want, Claude interprets it, and something gets surfaced. That's convenient, but it's the opposite of what made ATProto interesting: feeds as shareable and mixable objects you control.

If Attie becomes dominant, smaller apps stop being builders and become plain consumers. The power centralizes on Bluesky and Anthropic, even if the protocol remains open. Your timeline is one company's model and values.

Just Like Android, again

Here at LeafPlaza we are mobile development guys, or at least we were in the past. The moment Attie showed up, one of our founders exclaimed "it is Android over again".

Android is technically open-source. However, the actual value (store, maps, email) is proprietary. This is by design. Just like Bluesky seems to be doing now, Google build an ecosystem open at the base, closed at the value. Anybody can fork Android, but nobody can fork the ecosystem. Bluesky has the ATProto open to everybody, but Attie is closed and theirs. Accumulating things around Attie will move the openness from the ceiling to the floor.

EU strategic tech autonomy

For European founders and developers, this also matters a lot. Digital sovereignty is not only about US Big Tech. It is also about AI models embedded in infrastructure. An American AI company deciding what surfaces in your feeds is the kind of dependency we are fighting against.

On the other hand, this is not about a flaw in the ATP. Yes, Bluesky has it easy because they are at the center of the ATP. However, any other open protocol can be kidnapped and forced to become the next Android. It is even easier with infinite pockets and unlimited AI access. Certainly, we have always the option to fork the protocol, or limit the access, or use a different protocol. However, that's not the point of open protocols.

Where we stand

Attie does not sound completely wrong. Natural language feed building lowers the barrier for people who want control without a computer sciences degree. It is worth something.

The problem is the whole opacity around data handling. That is not a minor concern. The sovereignty question is the key topic. It also sets a dangerous precedent. Find a great open protocol, bolt a proprietary AI layer with high value, profit. AI gave many companies an edge on scalability too. This needs scrutiny and serious thoughts. No open algorithm is safe. Its open nature is the biggest weakness against this approach.

The other big problem is Attie's monetization model. We do not know it. However, we know in the past our data was the cash cow. Things are a bit different now: while we do not necessarily expect Attie selling your data (but you should not be surprised if it happens), we see how your data could be used to make Attie better. Or Claude. Certainly, Anthropic is against the lethal use of their AI. However, they are not against the military applications of their AI. Also, a different CEO might have a different idea. Monetization can come from different places, all thanks to the improvements made thanks to your data.

LeafPlaza will keep an eye on this space. We will have more to say once Bluesky publishes what they actually plan to do with your data. For us, the biggest learning here is that we have even more reasons to keep building EU sovereign infrastructure. If things go south, we might have to offer an Attie-free area for Europe. We do not know how effective this could be, but we can definitely confirm it won't be possible without sovereign infrastructure.

Until then: do not panic, do not block Attie (it's pointless), stay skeptical.

LeafPlaza is building on ATProto with a different philosophy: your data is yours, European and sovereign. Please consider a subscription to support us in our quest to build more European sovereign infrastructure.