matthewb.eth
@matthewb
bluesky is gaining mindshare because they found PMF with users who want to be surrounded by people who (mostly) agree with them. it’s political affiliation, not vision.
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rafa
@rafa
Although my initial reaction is the same, I don’t think this is actually “it” — a few things I see happening: 1. Twitter algo was no longer adopting to user preferences for connections and conversation. It optimized for engagement, which wasn’t the reason a portion of people were there. 2. Bluesky is left-wing coded, but more so, it’s “cozy convo with friends / peers” coded afaik. 3. Bluesky successfully became the de facto place where academics went to while fleeing rage bait. Mostly seems like they got out of the cold start problem through network effects with non-crypto community. FC bet on crypto, they bet on “not rage bait by default, left friendly”
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matthewb.eth
@matthewb
yeah, definitely think there’s some nuance to it. I don’t think we can entirely flatten it to left/right culture war politics, but I also think we need to be honest with ourselves: nobody joining bluesky knows that it’s decentralized or that it’s built on an open protocol. they understand it in negation to current platforms. 1) if it’s the twitter algo prioritizing ragebait, then why would someone leave IG/Threads? particularly the latter is all about ragebait posts that provoke strong reactions. 2) I don’t really agree, I explicitly see people posting that they’re leaving IG/FB because “meta added AI to its apps” and “I hate Elon” (or Zuck). never seen anyone say anything about the vibe. 3) that’s an interesting angle, but academics are 90-99% leftists minus engineering faculty so that sort of reinforces my point. also not really sure academics are the ones who set the trends w/r/t social networks, but open to being proven wrong there.
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