Who is Bluesky PBLLC anyway?
If someone would like to know everything about you, wouldn't you, at least, want to know who he is? Turns out that for a social media company, Bluesky is pretty defensive of its own privacy.
This article is a reconstruction of a FediMeister thread, first published 14 May, 2023 on Mastodon. It is no longer available at its original location due to the instance having been shut down a month later.
The thread was part 4 of 4 in the About Bluesky series. It was written while looking through the material as it got published by Bluesky. Some information herein may be inaccurate or outdated.
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [1 / 7]
If someone (👋🏻 @OutOnTheMoors@beige.party ) wants to do a “follow-the-money” thing on #Bluesky, I’d contribute the following puzzle pieces (sorry, my expertise is in #tech, not #journalism, #law or accounting).
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [2 / 7]
Bluesky doesn’t publish any contact information on their website [1] and all of their domains are registered by proxy, so the WHOIS database is a dead end for getting an address as well. By law, a physical mail address is required for every company to receive legal proceedings. Deliberately hiding it, raises questions.
The website does provide some pointers, though, that can be used to track the company down:
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [3 / 7]
- Legal structure is PBLLC (Public Benefit Limited Liability Company)
- Formed in late 2021 [1]/blog/2-7-2022-overview
- All job offers are fully remote [1]/join (the email address does not suggest the existence of a HR department).
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [4 / 7]
The difference between a PBLLC and a conventional LLC is that the PBLLC can state a Public Benefit it wants to further and is allowed to spend money on that. A LLC may only spend money in the interest of its shareholders (every penny spend must have the intent of producing a Return Of Investment). In order to prevent squandering and embezzlement, a PBLLC has certain reporting duties to it’s members that money spend on the Public Benefit really went into furthering that goal.
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [5 / 7]
There are currently 5 US states that allow for forming a PBLLC: Delaware Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Utah. But only Delaware allows for keeping the Annual Benefit Report to be kept confidential. So given the general secrecy around Bluesky, that’s the most likely where they are incorporated. Search the Delaware commercial registry [4] for “Bluesky PBLLC” yields exactly one result (beware of the captcha):
6282898
10/4/2021
BLUESKY, PBLLC
Patrick
@raccoon@home.social
🧵 [6 / 7]
The registration date (4th OCT 2021) is consistent with Bluesky’s blogpost [1]/blog/2-7-2022-overview . If this is really them, they used an agent to register and this [5] is the address of “their offices” (it’s a bit crowded).
For me, the trail ends there. I’m not a US citizen and I’m not going to gamble $20 on obtaining legal documents, I’m not qualified to evaluate. If someone wants to, I’d be interested to hear the results.
