As X shuts down Communities, Acorn embarks on an alternative that puts creators in control

A new project called Acorn has introduced a way for organizations and creators to build their own online communities as an alternative to mainstream social media platforms like Instagram, X, and Threads. It uses the same core technology that powers the Bluesky social media app, allowing communities to build their own homepages, create onboarding packages for new members, and customize feeds and rating tools.

The Acorn platform comes from Blacksky, a company that developed its own decentralized social media toolkit for the AT Protocol. The AT protocol was developed by the Bluesky team and is used by other open source applications, such as Flashes, Spark, Skylight, Surf, Streamplace, Leaflet, and more.

So far, Blacksky has focused on building tools to provide a safe online environment for members of the Black Twitter community to migrate to — an effort so far that has included forking Bluesky, building custom moderation tools, creating its own AT Protocol implementation, and other technical features.

Through Acorn, Blacksky provides access to these same tools to other communities looking to build their own spaces on the open social web.

This could allow organizations and creators to create communities that they control, rather than handing that control over to the tech giants, leaving them at the mercy of unreadable algorithms and ever-changing policies. For example, X recently announced that it is shutting down its Communities feature, leaving users clamoring to move their groups elsewhere.

At launch, Acorn includes a set of tools to help communities onboard new members, customize their feeds, configure and launch moderation services, and track community growth with statistics, among other things.

As with Bluesky, where users can create “Startup Packs” with a list of suggested leads for newcomers looking to expand their network, Acorn allows communities to create their own startup packs. It also offers reputation systems that help communities recognize and manage members, using things like custom badges and rewards, as well as tools to police bots and trolls.

Communities can also define the moderation policies that are most important to them, and access custom tools to control the reporting flow and other actions, such as demoting or banning accounts, or deleting posts.

Community creators can create their own feeds that focus on topics that are important to their members, and they can create separate tabs for important things, such as announcements, events, or resources, for example.

As a community grows, built-in analytics help creators track member growth, feed activity, and engagement patterns, to understand their community’s overall health.

Communities can use Acorn tools on their own domain, and pricing is customized to their needs. Some communities want to use all tools, which may even include using a PDS (Personal Data Server), which is part of the AT Protocol infrastructure. Others may want a customized version of the Blacksky community client build for their needs.

The average customer price is about $100 to $150 per month, but in the long term, Acorn will move to a SaaS (software-as-a-service) model with tiers that will scale with the size of the community and the level of tools needed.

Already, Acorn is used by the AT Protocol-based communities Latinsky and Medsky, as well as a filmmaker community called Mema. It is in active discussions with other media companies and non-profits. Those interested in using its software can join a waiting list from its website.

Acorn’s toolkit also comes at a time when social media services are heavily regulated in global markets, with some even banning services from children. At the same time, many people have started to distrust the platforms created by the tech giants, who end up focusing on generating profits for their big advertising businesses first, and serving end users second.

In addition, the wave of automatic bans across Facebook and Instagram deleted the accounts of some users on social networks and Facebook groups, leaving them with no recourse and no way to reach someone to file a complaint. Although the affected users are a small percentage of Meta’s billion user base, these people are more likely to consider another platform when and if they choose to return to social media, making them good potential customers for services like Acorn to target.