Join me on Bluesky
To me, it feels the most like OG Twitter - a place to read others' opinions and information - uncluttered by the bots, spam, and trolls that are ruining the other platform.
Since I wrote this post over on Alte Frau - New Life about remaining on Twitter/X despite the controversy, I've been continuing to look for alternatives.
And the main place I have landed is Bluesky.
To me, it feels the most like OG Twitter - a place to read others' opinions and information - uncluttered by the bots, spam, and trolls that are ruining the other platform.
Twitter was always going to be a hard act to follow. I've been on there since 2008. And it was the one place I went when big things were happening. To see what people "on the ground" were saying.
Through presidential elections, wars, and natural disasters, you could find real-time updates from journalists and academics right alongside eyewitnesses to give more context to what you could find filtered through traditional mass media.
Increasingly it seems that reliable information is getting drowned out by troll accounts and bots. And the algorithm prioritizes the particularly warped views of its owner.
Back to the blue
It's no accident that Bluesky mimics the Twitter experience so closely. It originated as a project within Twitter that former CEO Jack Dorsey spun off as an independent company after the Musk takeover. (As of May 2024, however, Dorsey is no longer involved with the company.)
A few things are different. For one, individual posts are not called 'tweets,' but 'skeets.'
(Yes, really.)
More importantly, you can customize your feed to see what you would like to see. It isn't subject to some opaque algorithm that repeatedly pushes content at you regardless of what you tell it you want to see.
This is a key concept driving the proposed 'decentralization' of social media.
You can create custom feeds about certain topics and easily shift between them from your landing page. And, you can add feeds created by others, like this one that is comprised of gift links to articles that are behind publication paywalls.
You can customize who is able to reply to your posts, as well, by allowing replies from everyone, only your followers, or only people you've mentioned.
Thread Reply Controls Set who can reply to your posts. Options include nobody, mentioned users, followed users, and members of lists that you’ve created.
— Bluesky Safety (@safety.bsky.app) 2023-12-26T19:53:12.390Z
Bluesky also lets users create their own 'Starter Packs' groups of recommended people and feeds to follow to introduce people they know to the platform.
Invite your community! Create a starter pack today to easily onboard your friends. You can add recommended users and custom feeds. Find starter packs in a tab on your profile.
— Bluesky (@bsky.app) 2024-08-13T17:59:39.027Z
It's not all sunshine and 'skeets,' however.
Bluesky doesn't have nearly the reach of Twitter. Although some news sites and companies, like the New York Times (which, by the way, I no longer subscribe to) and Bloomberg are on there, many others are not.
One of the main reasons I gave for keeping my account open on X was to follow the government agencies and nonprofits that still use it as a primary information channel. The Berlin transit association recently shut down their X account after 13 years.
"So far, the BVG has provided information on traffic disruptions, police operations and line interruptions on several channels on the platform, but also on the company itself and the "Because we love you" campaign," according to a report in the daily newspaper Tagesspiegel.
"After 13 years, our time on X ends today," says the @BVG_Bus channel. "Dear passengers, this is our final stop," writes the BVG on @BVG_Kampagne.
When asked, a BVG spokesperson said: "We are leaving the social media platform X due to the increasing presence of hate, agitation, populism and uncontrolled hate speech - without appropriate moderation of the content by the platform itself." These developments contradict the BVG's values as an open and liberal company.
Although the agency will still have a presence on Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram, they will only provide real-time traffic and service updates on their proprietary app and their website.
The Berlin S-Bahn continues to maintain a presence on X, but recently started an account on Threads, also. No 'bsky' account yet.
My local bezirksamt (like a borough government office) is still on X, but also on Instagram.
I created a Threads account for my newsletter and to follow the Berlin creators that I know on there and on Instagram. But I don't have the bandwidth for five different online platforms. So, I am holding off on Mastodon - for now.
I am hoping more people and groups that I follow will move off of X, so I can finally make X a real ex, after all.
Read More About It
Here are some articles about alternatives to the big X, written by people who know a lot more about social media than I do.
Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'What’s the Difference Between Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads?' by Rory Mir and Ross Schulman.
ZDNet: 'I tried replacing Twitter with Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon: What I Found' by David Gerwitz.
TechCrunch: 'Standard protocol: In a post-Twitter world, Mastodon and Bluesky need to get on the same page' by Paul Sawers.