I have started to try out the new social media platform Bluesky and I was impressed. I don’t know about you but X, formerly known as Twitter, has become rather toxic. And if that’s your cup of tea, then enjoy to your heart’s content. But I am tired of it. There are many good reasons to switch. In this post, I presented the facts on Bluesky vs. Twitter from my experience for you to decide.
The first thing you’ll notice when exploring this platform is that it’s ad free, but I bet in time that will change. Everyone needs to make some money after all.
They won’t use your data to train some AI and you have more control over your data since it’s decentralized.
BlueSky operates on the AT Protocol, which supports a decentralized ecosystem. This means users own their data. As a result, this allows you to interact across platforms, which is important to avoid the dominance of a single company controlling the network.
Another thing you’ll notice is that Bluesky emphasizes users giving more control over what you will see. It lets you control how the “feed algorithm” work, giving you the content you want to see and not what is fed by some corporate controlled algorithm.
The biggest difference to me was the moderation was less controversial. Face it, X or Twitter morphed from your typical social media platform to a more right-wing political platform pushing wild conspiracy theories and allowing the likes of Alex Jones among others who were banned on Twitter to reemerge to flood you with garbage. Yes, you can block them. However, on X that doesn’t make you invisible to those you block.
Bluesky development is more open to the public vs. Twitter, so those who follow it will notice they will tell the public what their goals are. You don’t see this much on X or Twitter these days. I know what their goals are and that’s why I am dropping off more and more from X.
Being new, this social media platform is smaller and so there’s going to be less noise. I am sure it will change and you’ll have to watch whom you follow. Trust me those you are avoiding will pop up there. We’ve blocked some already.
They are experimenting with the platform and are trying out new things. But to me BlueSky looks like Twitter of old with the ads or the noise of the bots and trolls. That’s refreshing to me. I like to engage on some things, but I don’t want to get into to many online fights with users who aren’t real people anyway or are just designed to mine whatever they can from your posts.
Bluesky is the new online neighbor who’s growing fast. It only opened up the public recently and is already at 22 to 24 million. Since the election it has grown by 500% in the USA and 350% in the UK according to a fascinating article in ZdNet. Twitter or X users were at 611 million but have fallen to 586 million recently and this could be much larger since many users, I included, still have accounts on X and didn’t bother shutting them down.
There’s a reason why I never opened an account on Paler, the right-wing social media platform the right-wing pushed as a replacement to Twitter. And Truth Social, well I was never going there and my blood pressure thanks me! Paler tanked since Elon Musk bought Twitter and made it the new Parler that made Parler redundant.
I would try out Bluesky I think you would find it refreshing vs. Twitter as it now is. And remember this was started by the same guy who started Twitter, Jack Dorsey, it’s well executed and just works well.
