Libs of BlueSky
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
If I remember correctly, 2A and one of the Tard's started two of them.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
I don't remember the details, only the dustup and many of them left here.
And how much things changed.
Uh oh! Remember the French Revolution? It’s starting again. Yesterday, Inc. Magazine ran a thoughtful op-ed titled, “I Give Bluesky Six Months Before It Implodes.” The author, a tech founder who started one of the early social media networks (Intrepid Media), later clobbered by Facebook and Twitter, said BlueSky is collapsing under the unbearable weight of its woke brand.
The author takes several paragraphs to disclose the development that spurred his gloomy scribblings about BlueSky’s limited prospects. What finally did it was Friday’s article on TechCrunch, headlined “Bluesky at a crossroads as users petition to ban Jesse Singal over anti-trans views, harassment.”
In other words, Big Trouble in Little Portland.
BlueSky was the progressive immune response to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. It was initially seeded with the most delicate woke snowflakes, all seeking a safe, fully moderated social media environment free from any criticism of their deplorable sexual habits or the logical fallacies inherent in their worldviews. Indeed, they sought solace with their co-adventurers in progressivism, mutually applauding their brave life choices and bilaterally appreciating their constant virtue signaling in a deafening woke echo chamber.
It went okay for a while. But its user rolls really exploded after Trump’s election, when apoplectic liberals spluttered that, instead of leaving the U.S. as they’d promised, they would symbolically depart by removing the inextinguishable radiance of their progressive presences from Twitter and setting up shop with the early progressive pioneers on BlueSky. Buh bye, suckers!
The problems started right away. Unfortunately, departing progressives made a little too much of a song about it on their way out Twitter’s digital doors. The vacuum created by their sudden departure sucked with it a bunch of conservative trolls and trouble-makers, curious about the opportunity to develop a whole new, unblemished wilderness of wokeness (many lakeside parcels remain available!).
BlueSky’s long-timers (i.e., roughly two years), who until now had been happily and peacefully enjoying their carefully curated, conservative-free community, were appalled and outraged by the newcomers. They demanded BlueSky’s management do something to stop these intolerant interlopers. And like it was hit by a Russian Poseidon nuclear tsunami missile, the exploding conflict washed over the fledgling platform in an all-hands discussion over free speech versus muscular moderation.
It became obvious that, over the two years since its formation, presumably adjusting to market forces, BlueSky had quietly de-emphasized outright banning people and strengthened its individual tools for blocking undesired folks. In other words, one user can block another and never again have to see the blocked user’s posts, or vice-versa. It is the digital equivalent of ghosting a relative who voted for Trump.
BlueSky has heavily invested in its blocking technology. For example, BlueSky lets users upload files containing long lists of accounts to block people en masse, and users can block entire categories of accounts in their account settings. This has led to BlueSky users enthusiastically swapping ‘block lists’ and tips for fine-tuning their personal feed settings to ensure no conservative ideas penetrate their bubbles of peaceful, progressive fantasy.
But sadly, as the Inc. article’s author noted, what with the new, post-election conservative invasion, blocking is no longer good enough for BlueSky’s progressives. Blocking is insufficiently punitive.
That is why BlueSky’s managers are now grappling with their first Change.org petition, with over 25,000 signatures, signed by ‘celebrities’ like Lizzo, demanding that BlueSky perma-ban an anti-trans influencer, by flat deleting his account and blacklisting him to make sure he can never re-join under any other name or email address.
But there’s a problem for BlueSky’s managers, as the Inc. article pointed out. Social media platforms aren’t social clubs. They are social media businesses. The industry noticed that Elon Musk grabbed an opportunity, when he realized that free speech is the best social media business model, the one that attracts the most customers.
BlueSky is now caught between the razor-sharp horns of a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, it wants to grow, but wholesale banning customers for wrongthink is a poor growth model. On the other hand, its most passionate, most loyal, original user base demands wholesale bans.
What to do? There is no good answer. Or at least, there is no obvious answer. That is why the author — who once tried and failed to get his own social media platform off the ground— gave BlueSky six months, tops.
Socialism always destroys itself. The French Revolution lasted just long enough for General Napoleon to overthrow the revolutionary government and become France’s dictator. BlueSky is like a miniature digital Portland, and the winds of revolution are blowing.
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Supreme Court justice dances her way through woke Broadway musical; progressives flee to BlueSky and discover restless indigenous people; Trump surprise press conference tees up Golden Age; more.
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