I feel good on Bluesky, but it’s not a safe space

This week, all of my favorite tech newsletters wrote about Bluesky, and since I hope to be your favorite tech newsletter, I’m following suit. The popularity of the social network exploded after the American presidential election, exceeding 20 million users (note: this remains very modest compared to the audience of Twitter/X, itself small compared to Facebook or TikTok). A rare thing online these days, its atmosphere is optimistic. What if we had a chance to build something new?

Bluesky presents itself as one of the alternatives to Twitter/X, in the same way as Mastodon or Threads, owned by Instagram/Meta. These three platforms offer a similar experience, posting short text messages in a news feed, with important nuances. Mastodon is an open source and decentralized project, whose technical architecture makes it compatible with other social networks using the same protocol (ActivityPub). Threads, for its part, is part of the philosophy of its owner Meta: its news feed is managed in an algorithmic manner, and very clearly devalues ​​information content or content addressing subjects considered political. It is also testing its progressive integration into Fediverse using ActivityPub, an astonishing decision (not always appreciated) given the ultra-dominant position of Meta on the social web over the last twenty years.

Bluesky falls between these two approaches. It was born at the initiative of Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, as an experiment with a decentralized social network. The entrepreneur has since left the project, which is no longer legally or financially linked to Twitter since its purchase by Elon Musk. Bluesky developed its own protocol, AT protocol, and raised funds from private investors. His last turn of the table, in October, was led by a fund specializing in Bitcoin and crypto projectsfor $15 million. In a statement announcing the news, however, Bluesky promised that its experience would never be “ hyper-financialized“, for example through the use of tokens or NFTs.

Despite this classic path for a Silicon Valley startup, it is Bluesky that currently seems to inspire the most hope among people disillusioned with Twitter. Threads is, in theory, a bigger social network, with 275 million monthly active users. But this growth is driven by its integration with Instagram. Bluesky, for its part, attracts ex-Twitter/X addicts: journalists, political analysts, funny web people, etc. According to the Similarweb firmthe number of active users on Threads in the United States was 1.5 times higher than Bluesky just for the day of Friday, November 15, a fairly small difference (Instagram denied these figures, but did not given a correction).

This editorial is taken from the Rule 30 newsletter by Lucie Ronfaut from Wednesday November 20, 2024. To receive future issues, you can subscribe:

As for Mastodon, it is less complex to use than is claimed, but has mainly welcomed well-defined niches and a few very vocal complainers, unable to accept that their expectations of technologies are not those of everyone. Most Internet users are not looking for technical specificity or a particular architecture. We want to find our communities.

This is not a safe space

However, the sudden success of Bluesky appeals to me. Not because people come there looking for a “ safe space » ! I have already written several times that I am wary of the concept of “ filter bubble“: it is natural, including in physical life, to surround yourself with friendly people who share at least a minimum of your ideas (“ if you like the Bluesky vibe, thank a trans person« , we read in this article from Vox). We can want to occupy all media spaces, even if it means fighting, and we can also want peace. On the other hand, I wonder about the very definition of a “ safe space“, and the difficulty of agreeing on the latter. What are the technical, human, financial and content conditions for us to feel safe online? Bluesky may be a social network with a decentralized architecture, but it is its moderation team that manages reports or decides to put a filter “ adult content » on a photo of a woman in a bra. Users also have powerful self-moderation toolsbut which can be diverted.

Above all, Bluesky is growing quickly. And if Bluesky becomes a central point of the web, it risks encountering exactly the same problems as all other horizontal platforms, based on hypergrowth, virality and the constant attention of Internet users. The need for money, the discreetly abandoned promises, the impossible debates on moderation, the inability to control a space that has become too big, even with our (volunteer) help. It’s a story that’s been seen and seen again. I watch my follower count climb, a legacy of my years of frenetic Twitter posting, and I feel a little hypocritical for hoping for something different when it all seems so familiar. I feel good on Bluesky. But do I feel in control?