In the last couple of months, Bluesky, one of the many post-Twitter attempts to reshape the landscape of social networks, is living its best moment. Powered by Twitter’s blunders and by the continuous alienation provided by his power-hungry owner, Bluesky doubled its user base from around 10 millions users to the current 24 millions. Six million of which, only in November.

I have been a passive lurker on Bluesky since its beginning, more or less, and lived its various periods of excitement and enthusiasm. But this more recent one felt different, way more vibrant and happy because it (momentarily) broke into the attentions of more mainstream users. Therefore, it is time to annotate some of my thoughts.

Why Bluesky? Why now?

Every time there is some crazy event on Twitter (that is, every week), all the competitor benefits from that. But why is the buzz focused on Bluesky? What about Threads? What about Mastodon?

Let’s start with the first one.

Bluesky vs. Threads

In terms of user count, Threads is clearly the winner, both in terms of total numbers of users (275 millions) and in terms of growth (+15 millions in the last month). And yet, it doesn’t look hot like Bluesky.

Why? Ernie Smith of Tedium wrote a great brief article about this exact question. I can summarize the spirit with this quote:

The network should serve the users, not the other way around. It is shocking that it has taken this long for someone (Bluesky) to figure it out.

Threads, in fact, follows the old model: a closed opaque algorithm feeding you with random content according to the wishes of the network itself. Bluesky, on the other hand, has no “default” algorithm. You can choose your own algorithm (called Feeds) and go with it. You know exactly what you get and you can enjoy marvelous things like my favorite one: a feed that only shows you pictures of moss.

Overall, Bluesky feels much, much better than Threads. It is way closer to the spirit of the deceased Twitter and closer to the spirit of the Web. And feelings, as you know, are what ultimately matters.

Bluesky vs. Mastodon

Mastodon and Bluesky share the same principle of creating a decentralized social network even if, as we will see, only the first one did that for real. At least so far.

However, as you can see, it is very hard to talk about Mastodon and do not speak about technical stuff. And, as I said, technical stuff (sadly?) doesn’t matter.

In every migration wave, Bluesky got the great majority of “hotness” for a mix of reasons. First, it was technically ready: the app is like the Twitter’s one, and it has all the basic features one expects. Second, it has a clear user journey: you download the app and make an account. End of story. You don’t have to ask, “what is an instance?” even once.

Third: the vibes are happier. Maybe this will change with the increased user base, but in the meantime it is Mastodon the one with the obnoxious users. My experience is that Mastodon users are likely to be polemic and scold you. I had to mute a quite many people in order to not drowned in negativity. Do you want an example? Go look how they freaked out about the recent Bluesky growth and how the condescendence they gave to the people who preferred Bluesky to Mastodon. Another one? Check out the image below.

Yet, I don’t think there is a reason to choose between the two. Mastodon and ActivityPub still have a great value even if they remain small, or they grow slower.

After all, they are open networks. Use a bridge or a multi-poster and you are good to go.

What I like about Bluesky

On the top of my mind, three things: the user base is nice (for now), the platform doesn’t manipulate me, and they do not downrank links in the algorithm (a terrible thing to do for any citizen of the web). (Note: the last two are good values shared by Mastodon too).

From a technical standpoint, Bluesky looks better designed than ActivityPub. Not because Bluesky people are more intelligent, but because they have similar but different goals. Bluesky protocol (the AT Protocol) is designed for a Twitter-like social network. ActivityPub is designed to connect with a shared protocol with a plethora of different services, such as Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Wordpress blogs, Ghost blogs, and more.

Bluesky design seems to avoid what I called the “feudal issue of Mastodon,” that is the fact that unless you spawn your own server, you are at the mercy of the server owner. They decide, not you. You can decide to leave the server, but you have to change handle and you cannot bring with you your history.

On the other hand, there is no way, for what I know, to spawn your own Bluesky server. So, at the moment, Bluesky true decentralization is only theoretical. And that’s the issue.

My issues with Bluesky

Cory Doctorow explains the main and basically only issue I have with Bluesky: at the moment, Bluesky “open and federated protocol” status stands only on the goodwill of Bluesky-the-company. Because Bluesky is still not completely distributed, there is no guarantee that someone will step in and enshittify it all. Full decentralization is what Doctorow describes as Ulysses pact: something that will force the owners to behave correctly against their will because, otherwise, people can just leave losing nothing.

I trust the current Bluesky board. After all, Lantian “Jay” Graber, current Bluesky’s CEO, has a past as an activist in Digital Rights and I am sure she is in total good faith when she says that Bluesky is and will always be a public open network. Unfortunately, years and years of decaying networks, services, digital locks, and rent-seeking corporations have eroded my ability to trust good intentions and be optimistic about good words.

In any case, this is getting too technical. You can have much more information by reading these two articles:

• How decentralized is Bluesky really?. A critique of the decentralization status of Bluesky by someone who worked with ActivityPub.
• Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization. A reply to the above article by someone who work at the Bluesky protocol.

You cannot get a better picture than this.

(If you really care, my humble opinion is that competition in the decentralization space is very good. It is the first time in a while that two “web companies” fight on who is more open and decentralized. I like it.)

So what?

I am enjoying this moment. I don’t know if it will continue or it will stop, and most importantly, I don’t know if the service will degrade in the future. If social networks were important to me (for my business, for my work, and such), I would tread it carefully.

But because I don’t, and social media are ultimately a waste of time, at least let me waste time in a place that doesn’t manipulate me or enrage me.

So, for now, I’ll bestow it the highest honor I can give to a social network: add its icon to this blog social bar.

Photo by Kumiko SHIMIZU on Unsplash