A few months ago, I decided to try the social media site Bluesky. I set up an account but discovered it wasn't very useful to me as there weren't that many people I knew over there, and the people I did know mostly didn't post very often.
The social media service has been growing a lot lately, apparently as people flee X.com/Twitter out of disappointment over the election or exhaustion over Elon Musk's changes, so I decided to log in and try again.
I found that now there are enough people at Bluesky to make it seem worthwhile to spend some time there. Specifically, many of the folks I know from RAW fandom are over at Bluesky now. Not everyone has made the switch, but I see a lot of familiar names. I'm not leaving X.com/Twitter, at least right away, as I still find it useful, but I see no reason why I can't check out Bluesky.
I don't really want to spend a huge amount of time on social media, but I've given up on Mastodon, which seems unfriendly and a waste of time. I tend to think of Mastodon these days as "asocial media." So the time I spent at Mastodon can be transferred to Bluesky.
If you aren't familiar with it, Bluesky is a rather unimaginative clone of the old Twitter, with a decidedly left wing slant. It will be interesting to see if it keeps this flavor as it becomes more popular. As of now, conservatives are scarce and libertarians are underrepresented, though there are some. Moderate Democrats apparently get a lot of abuse.
If you want to try it, and you read this blog, it should not be too hard to "find the others." I am @jacksontom.bsky.social. Look for my "Illuminating" Bluesky list, then follow some of the people on the list, and look at their followers and who they are following. Or find Adam Gorightly, @agorightly.bsky.social, and look at his followers and who he is following, or RAW Semantics, @rawsemantics.bsky.social. Definitely follow the Robert Anton Wilson account at @rawilson23.bsky.social.
7 comments:
Hi Tom - thanks for this. Currently it (Bluesky) seems to me the least bad option - if one must use social media at all. I don't mean that in any political *leaning* sense. After all, Jack whatshisname (the owner), a billionaire who reportedly supported RFKj(oke)r and Tulsi Gibberish, doesn't strike me as left/liberal in his expressed views/fundings. And the platform itself apparently has 15+ million users, presumably with a mixture of beliefs/backgrounds (I'm not aware they've been polled or measured for political or demographic attributes, although a more liberal leaning than say Truth Social, overall statistically, might seem a safe bet!).
I prefer it to Xitter merely because it doesn't have the "trends" or "what's happening" or "you might like" BS in its interface (constantly "in your face"). In those elements (and reportedly in the Xitter main algorithms) Elon Musk gives full rein to his inner spoilt brat and his megalomaniac ambitions - and one can't escape it, not even if you go onto Musk's account and mute him. That was my main reason for no longer using Xitter.
My analogy would be using a library with constant interruptions by a loud obnoxious child. He could be apolitical, liberal, Marxist, whatever, but I'd still leave!
There's a handy Google Chrome extension called Sky Follower Bridge that's easy to use and finds lots of your Twitter followers who've moved to Bluesky (if they're still there)
Jack Dorsey founded both Twitter and Bluesky. He's no longer associated with either. I'd say he's a little l libertarian. Remember those? Allegedly RAW was one but I'm starting to suspect he settled for the left as he aged. Certainly seems to me that once you subtract all the right wing nut jobs from his fan base, you're left with a bunch of leftists who will spend the next 4 years crying about politics. RIP the excluded middle.
@Anonymous: Yeah, okay whatever - I don't keep up! Last time I checked (admittedly not recently) Dorsey was on Bluesky's board. I see he's now gone. Don't get me started on political labels, although "excluded middle" seems an interesting one when applied to politics.
Twitter has gotten so good now that it's unshackled, imo! What is the Bluesky content moderation like? It's still too heavy-handed at Twitter, unfortunately. Although for my preferences, any level of it is too much. What was that sarcastic comment RAW made about speech regulation and SCOTUS Justice Hugo Black?
Arguably both platforms seem too heavy-handed in some aspects of "moderation". I think that if one regards content moderation as synonymous with, or equivalent to, censorship, then you can easily consider the current version of X/Twitter one of the biggest censors of our time. Not just the many documented occasions when Musk has suppressed what he dislikes politically and personally, but the less obvious (but also documented in several cases) algorithmic interferences - which should also count as "moderation", imo. On the US constitutional thing (RAW's point), I saw a couple of good pieces that bring the 'free speech' issue into the algorithm age - one titled 'Social media algorithms are not protected speech' (at The Hill); the other, 'Content Moderation Is Not Synonymous With Censorship' (at Public Knowledge).
Probably a bit late to reply to a comment made here nearly a fortnight ago, but my new RAW semantics blog post ('Libertarian..? Scandinavian..? Excluded middle..!!') is basically a reply of sorts to it.
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