RITAMCGRATH
ESCAPING THE OUTRAGE MACHINE – IS BLUESKY
BECOMING
A THING? Thought Sparks
Introduction
As my Thought Sparks guest Steven Brill points out, absence of accountability for content posted on social media sites, plus algorithms that favor content likely to attract eyeballs have led to an often-toxic mix of misinformation, negative speech and feelings of anger or disgust beating out more wholesome content in many corners of the Internet. Can social media site Bluesky offer an alternative?
By now, social media as we know it is a far cry from what we expected in the early, innocent days of the web. The platforms are a hotbed of disinformation. There is no longer one source of truth. Most people get their “news” from sources that don’t adhere to standards of journalism and may be pushing an agenda.
Social comparisons on sites like Instagram make teenagers, especially, feel anxious and depressed. We’re spending time on screens and not with each other, sparking an acceleration in a trend that was already underway, of social isolation.
Social media’s issues –where
do we even start?
Protocols vs. Platforms
I was intrigued, therefore, to learn about the social media site Bluesky, originally funded from within Twitter by one of its co-founders Jack Dorsey (who has since stepped back from his involvement with the platform). As one observer notes, “Bluesky’s Jay Graber (the CEO) recognized, smartly, that having Bluesky set up as a public benefit corporation separate from Twitter enabled it to do some important things. This included pivoting to building out a service that could take people fleeing Twitter, while also setting it up to be (hopefully) more sustainable long term. It allowed Bluesky to neatly detach from Twitter right after Elon took over and canceled the contract that Twitter previously had with the Bluesky team.”
So is Bluesky the next Twitter?
In the wake of the US election, sign-ups at Bluesky have (no pun intended) skyrocketed. Traffic was up 500% in the wake of the recent election alone. More than 115,000 users deleted their accounts on X (Twitter). According to Bluesky CEO Jay Graver in an interview with NPR, the site has been growing by a million users a day, day after day.
So, my social media team and I couldn’t help but explore Bluesky a bit and see what it’s like. You’ll find my profile here. There’s not too much there yet, but hey, when I first joined Twitter (at SXSW in 2009, no less) it was also small, charming and fresh. I can’t believe that was 15 full years ago.
We’re giving it a try
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