February 21st, 2025 Posted in Computer, Ethical/Eco
Bluesky – social media without corporate nonsense
I’d pretty much given up on social media in 2024. I deleted my Facebook years ago after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Meta profiting off political fuckery around elections. Same for Instagram as it’s full of spammers and wasn’t doing me any good seeing constant highlight reels. Mothballed all my Twitter/X accounts as I wasn’t visible due to not posting twice a day or getting in arguments with bots. Finally deleted them when Elon fully shit the bed in late 2024. We support corporate dickheads when we use their platforms.
I’m on Mastodon but just don’t really feel at home there, with constant nitpicking from dull people and difficulty finding things I’m interested in. It never got mainstream traction because of the perceived confusion around how federated systems work, even though you can just pick a server and sign up.
So I was happy to just not bother with social media much. Then I saw that Bluesky had gone public after some years of being invite only, and gave it a go.
A much nicer experience
I was stunned how pleasant the experience was with no ads, no timeline manipulation, no Alex Jones videos playing when I just wanted to watch a kitten fall off a sofa, and zero tolerance for bigots starting fights. I can post links to my sites or other interesting stuff without penalty, and don’t get hidden for not spending my life eNGaGInG to profit advertisers. This is how I want social media to be!
My business is sustainable web design and I was losing hope that anyone actually cared from what I saw on Insta etc – but then found a whole community of similar minded folks on Bluesky which is very affirming. I discovered lots of anti-corporate, pro-democracy folks are there too as they don’t focus on using Big Tech social media.
Technical reasons I like Bluesky
I can block whatever words I want, and whatever idiots I want. It just works. Bluesky runs fine on the website so I don’t need an invasive app .The web app doesn’t destroy my battery life because it’s not running 800 tracking scripts like other websites.
It’s got an open API so we can use whatever apps we want to view our feed, and bring our posts onto our websites. Just like Twitter did before they closed it all off to try and rinse more money out of everyone.
The future
It’s currently at 32m users and growing fast as people wake up to Meta and X really not having our best interests at heart and being run by fascist bootlickers. An Instagram type front end for Bluesky is coming next week called ‘Flashes’ that could mean even more people can leave Meta’s horrible Instagram platform.
Summary
Bluesky has brought a much needed change to social media and I’m loving it so far. I really hope they don’t fuck it up with advertising, crypto or other enshittification.