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.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    164 days ago

    “He’s said he’s sorry, and he’s not going to do it again. You’ll see. He’s changed.”

    • Natanael
      link
      fedilink
      184 days ago

      This time he bailed early though. He’s got no control of the site

      • Snot Flickerman
        link
        fedilink
        English
        234 days ago

        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.

          • Snot Flickerman
            link
            fedilink
            English
            34 days ago

            Nice, thanks for the link. I knew almost all of this stuff but never had a place where it was all tied together and organized neatly. Now I do. Cheers.

        • Natanael
          link
          fedilink
          24 days ago

          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

          • Snot Flickerman
            link
            fedilink
            English
            64 days ago

            It’s not actually decentralized or federated, but keep telling yourself that.

            • Natanael
              link
              fedilink
              14 days ago

              Tell that to the people running their own PDS servers and the people running whitewind and all the other services built on the protocol

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            4
            edit-2
            4 days ago

            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.

            • Natanael
              link
              fedilink
              14 days ago

              There’s already others running other relays. The appview is the most difficult, but in theory indexes on top of the data could be shared too which would reduce the need for each appview to have everything saved in advance

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                1
                edit-2
                4 days ago

                The relays are test level only. They are at the stage where people are dipping their toys in the water to see if it’s actually a resilient protocol.

                There are no viable alternatives right now, and there may never be.