A new project called Acorn has launched a way for organizations and creators to build and run their own online communities, offering an alternative to centralized social media platforms like Instagram, X, and Threads. Acorn uses the same underlying technology that powers the decentralized social media app Bluesky — the AT Protocol — allowing communities to build their own homepages, create starter packs for new members, and customize feeds and moderation tools.
Acorn comes from Blacksky, a company that has been building its own decentralized social media toolkit around the AT Protocol. Blacksky's initial focus was on providing a safer online space for members of the Black Twitter community, which involved forking Bluesky, building custom moderation services, and creating its own implementation of the AT Protocol. With Acorn, Blacksky is making these same tools available to other communities that want to build their own spaces on the open social web.
What Acorn includes
At launch, Acorn provides a set of tools for communities to:
- Onboard new members
- Customize feeds
- Configure and run moderation services
- Track community growth through analytics
Communities can create "Starter Packs" — lists of suggested follows for newcomers, similar to Bluesky's feature. Acorn also includes reputation systems that use custom badges and awards to recognize and manage members, along with tools for policing bots and trolls.
Moderation is a key feature. Communities can define their own moderation policies, then access custom tools to manage reporting flows and actions like taking down or banning accounts, or removing posts. Community creators can build feeds focused on specific topics and create different tabs for announcements, events, or resources.
Built-in analytics help creators track member growth, feed activity, and engagement patterns to understand overall community health.
Pricing and deployment
Communities can deploy Acorn's tools on their own domain. Pricing is customized to each community's needs. Some communities may want to use all the tools, which can include running their own PDS (Personal Data Server), a part of the AT Protocol's infrastructure. Others may want just a customized version of Blacksky's community client. The average customer price is roughly $100 to $150 per month. Longer-term, Acorn will move to a tiered SaaS model that scales with community size and the level of tooling required.
Who is using it
Acorn is already being used by the AT Protocol-based communities Latinsky and Medsky, and by a filmmaker community called The Invite. It is in active discussions with other media companies and nonprofits. Those interested can join the waitlist from Acorn's website.
Why now
Acorn's launch comes at a time when social media services face heavier regulation in global markets, with some