Summary
Journalists are increasingly abandoning X (formerly Twitter) for Bluesky, citing higher engagement and less toxicity. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of X, changes like deprioritizing external links and rising hate speech have alienated many, especially marginalized groups.
Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey, offers a more welcoming environment, especially for journalists and activists, with 20x the engagement in some cases.
Reporters note better traffic, reduced harassment, and a focus on diverse stories.
Organizations like The Guardian and fundraising groups also report greater success on Bluesky compared to X.
That’s the thing about how this is all working though. I’m semi technically literate and I barely can understand most of what you just wrote. So chances are, I might be able to attempt some of the things you said and might be able to do something but realistically, I probably won’t.
The reason why Bluesky is not a good thing is that it is too complex for the average user to understand. All a new non-technical user understands is ‘it works, it works fast, I get to connect to lots of people’ and most importantly ‘I don’t need to figure anything out and I can just get to use it’.
You’re average user which is about 90% of the user base will never go through all the trouble of understanding what you just wrote or in even attempting to go through any of those steps. They are a captive audience and the developers and corporate wolves in the sidelines all understand this. They just need to herd the sheep into a large enough pen, lock them up, shut out any dissenters and start monetizing the new audience that will stay captive for a few years until it all degrades and falls apart like previous platforms.
That’s not a valid argument, your ability or inability to program this on your own, is not a realistic measure. Something being open source doesn’t make everybody a programmer, but it does give everybody a chance to look at the code. Which means chances of shenanigans are way smaller.
I understand your skepticism about BlueSky being privately held. And maybe it would be preferable if Mastodon had the success BlueSky enjoys now. But at least if BlueSky fails and becomes as bad as Xitter, Mastodon may get another chance.