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.
No the site just owes a bunch of money to the crypto bros at Blockchain Capital.
Doesn’t matter if Dorsey isn’t there and if it’s a PBC, if the investors want a return on their investment (and they do) enshittification is coming.
It’s open source and designed to literally not be reliant on the company running it. Start a community appview and plc and you can bring your entire account history with you
These are aspirational goals and not at all actively true now. They are technically possible, but not actually viable as a social media network.
Its design was based on a drop in for twitter, and will always require a megacorp sized entity for it to operate, due to a “god’s eye view of all data” model requiring huge, faste data lifts to exist at all.
Best case is some opensource org like internet archive/wikipedia willing to spend 6-7 figures/month(raw costs +engineering talent) on running the service, but so far none have.
It’s not actually decentralized or federated, but keep telling yourself that.
