Comment by hypfer
2 days ago
From what I heard, bluesky (unsurprisingly) has the exact same toxicity problems as twitter.
There was I think this piece of writing in 2024 (just googled it, don't quote me on that) https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-thr...
iirc there were newer instances too, but why bother reading on that, when you can just look at how the system is built.
Twitter and Twitter-ish systems are just fundamentally anti-human. The same can be said about most of social media, actually, but Twitter is high up on the worst offender list, and Bluesky just cloned it. Again.
I found this[0] to be an interesting perspective:
"Bluesky Isn't a Bubble. It's a Containment Dome.
Pray that Bluesky doesn't die entirely — we need it so the worst liberal posts are kept in a place where the broader public won't ever see them."
[0] https://www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-isnt-a-bubble-its-a-cont...
Ha, nice one.
And same is true for the fediverse.
It should've been like that with Twitter too, but Twitter unfortunately became the clubhouse of the journalist class, and they kinda did control the media. So they made everyone believe that whatever social ingroup infighting skirmish bs is happening would be relevant to the people at large.
Elon saw that, thought "hey I want that" and bought it - not changing anything about it other than giving the microphone to even worse people.
While everyone thinks they can call themself "journalist" (no matter the merit, ethics or similar), at the very least, all of their infighting led to a certain baseline of quality back then. So there was that.
Oh well. Many such cases. Someone not interested in changing the system but changing who is on top I mean.
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Welp, that Josh Barro guy you linked seems equally unpleasant looking at his website's front page.
Yep, if there's a recommendation algorithm and a "this is my megaphone" style posting, it just inevitably becomes an echo chamber of narcissism.
Even Mastodon which has no algorithm trends towards the obnoxious when you start going into various corners.
As much as I hate Facebook now, the OG Facebook which was strictly a feed of "this is what my friends and family are posting" and nothing else... was ideal. Not public. Just private in an inner group.
the much maligned Google+ honestly had a good model too.
Don't forget FriendFeed!
FWIW, I've found it to be far less toxic as a lurker. Most people act sane and fairly nice.
Bluesky at least has really robust blocking features. Using them really reduces the toxicity that bubbles into your feed.
I think guys like Singal don't really like Bluesky because their engagement model just doesn't work as well there as it does on twitter. That faintly snarky, passive-aggressive, often concern-trollish, kind of rage-baiting for attention, both negative and positive, kind of tone.
I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to work as well, exactly. Maybe it's the block features. Maybe it's the feeds. Maybe its the user demographics that resulted from the self-selected twitter exodus.
I think it's a combination of all those factors - but keep in mind, one reason you see some of these people write polemics against Bluesky is because they just don't know how to get attention there.
Most users would probably rather block than respond to the bait - that practice got baked into the early bluesky culture. So the only ones left to take the bait are the unhinged, death-threatening, types.