The standard narrative in every “Why
you should move back to X” or “The Problem with Bluesky” article is that Musk
bought Twitter, the userbase moved right, and the users who were unhappy with
that fled to Bluesky. This is, at best, only
partially correct. To understand why people left Twitter, just look at
Facebook. If you haven’t logged in for a
while, go check your main feed. There
will be one post by someone you follow, then about half a dozen clickbait ads
and promoted posts before another post by a friend. It’s unusable. The only part of Facebook that I, or anyone I
know, uses, is Groups, which functions like Facebook did before it became whatever
mess of a thing it is now. Not only did they start throwing massive amounts of
spam into your feed, they stopped showing you posts from pages you chose to
follow (unless those pages paid facebook).
When Musk bought Twitter, he didn’t
just halt moderation on racist content. By his own admission, anyone who linked
to other sites was downranked in the algorithm, meaning you’d see less of them even
if they were someone you follow. Several times, the algorithm would be changed
so that half of all the posts you’d see were from Musk himself. People who buy blue checks get their comments
at the top of any comment thread, so if you saw a post you thought was interesting,
and wanted to see the discussion it engendered, you’d have to sift through
dozens of blue check responses, half of which were spam for T-shirts, Onlyfans,
or Crypto, and the other half were predominately one word insults or
emojis. The problem wasn’t simply that
there were tons of racist edgelord trolls, but that they were being shoved into
every interaction. It was an awful user
experience, and people left.
Nearly every defense of staying on
X, or why Bluesky is an echo chamber, explicitly states the premise that the reason
to be on these sites is to do politics. The
claim is you’d do more good arguing on X than leaving, or that being on a site
where people all agree with you is useless.
This fundamentally misunderstands why most people are on social media at
all. The vast majority of people who use
social media follow people they know, either from real life or from elsewhere
on the web. They follow artists,
musicians, comedians. They’re on social
media to chat with people they find funny, or interesting. While people often talk about politics, the
goal is not always political persuasion. It’s keeping their friends informed,
it’s organizing for a demonstration, it’s explaining an esoteric subject,
sometimes it’s just venting frustration.
The idea that the main function of being on social media is to influence
the national debate is, honestly, delusional.
As a general rule, if a corporation
makes a claim that something simply must be so, and that claim just so happens
to be in the corporation’s financial interest, you should not give it the benefit
of the doubt. The idea that a privately
run web service can be, let alone actually is, the public square, is one of those
claims. It’s an excuse to cut back on
moderation, it’s an advertisement to investors, it allows journalists to replace
actual reporting with descriptions of twitter beefs, it allows influencers to convince
donors that they are doing significant political activism. Another common complaint about being on
Bluesky or blocking right-wingers is, how will you understand what they think
if you don’t see their posts? This
question only makes sense if social media is your sole means of contact with
the world. The idea that X, or even
social media in total, is the best way to understand the world and participate
in politics is just marketing by these companies, often repeated by people who
benefit from treating the claim as true.
It’s a belief that often makes the entire experience of being on social
media worse.
Imagine an actual public square has
just opened, a physical space nearby. People
start showing up, milling around. You see a relative, some friends, an old
coworker, and you go say hi and chat. People start noticing authors, musicians,
and actors that they like, and stop by to see what they’re saying. People start
forming into groups based on interest, the film buffs are hanging out over
there, a bunch of people are sharing their gardening tips down that way, tons
of different mini communities, their members flitting from group to group. Some people have set up stands showcasing
their art for sale, or their crochet patterns, or their custom jewelry. Some big brands have set up booths, passing
out coupons and flyers for their new products. (Most people ignore them or only
stop by to see if there’s some discount before they go shopping.) This is how most people use social
media. This is what most people want
from social media. This is what Facebook
and Twitter were at the beginning. Most people are there to be social. A small number are there to do business (mostly
brands and celebrities). There are also some there to do politics, maybe
fundraising for Green Peace, or registering people for the Libertarians, or organizing
a march on City Hall.
At some point, the conventional
wisdom among the tech bros, press, and politicians changed. Two beliefs became prevalent:
1.
The main purpose of social media is not to be social, but to do politics.
2. Doing politics primarily means expressing
your beliefs as loudly as possible in as many places as possible.
The former,
while widely believed and treated as if it were true, is nonsense. It is a self-serving lie for the tech bros,
and dovetails well with the second belief.
The best way to win at politics is to spend as much time as possible on
my platform. In addition to being
factually wrong, these beliefs have a direct negative impact on the majority of
the sites’ users who are there to be social. Picture the DnD nerds hanging out
in our imaginary public square.
DnD Guy 1: “I usually play a magic user, but I’m going to be a thief in the
next campaign.”
Rando 1: “The real thief is in the White House!”
DnD Guy 2: “Huh. Anyway,
yeah, you’ll have a lot of fun. That
class gets tons of bonus actions.”
Rando 2: “The only action we should worry about is a general
strike!”
This type of behavior has become endemic on Facebook and X,
and it is annoying as hell to anyone on social media trying to be social.
The immediate impetus for writing this was the latest crashout
from Mark Cuban about Bluesky being an echo chamber that will fail because they
aren’t nice enough to Mark Cuban. He
asked how the site could survive with only one demographic (ostensibly, that
one demographic is everyone left of center, so nearly half the country?). The problem is that Cuban is on Bluesky to do
politics, not to be social. He is there
primarily to convince people to support his political positions. He believes, like many of his class, that the
purpose of social media is for him and those like him to steer public
discourse. People are blocking him in
large numbers because they find him annoying and banal. Most of the big conservative/centrist
accounts that get blocked and lambasted are the same. They believe the purpose of a social media
site is to do politics, and they believe that doing politics means repeating
your position over and over. Most of the criticisms of Bluesky start with the
assumption that the goal is to be X, but liberal or without Musk. The goal, for most users, is to be Twitter or
Facebook when they were actually fun. To have a social media site where you
share your hobbies, see cool art, chat with interesting folk from around the
world. Mark Cuban could have a great
time on Bluesky if he mostly posted about the Mavericks, shared photos of his
pets, or talked to people just for the joy of having a conversation.
Bluesky’s strong
block feature and community moderation tools, along with the primary feed for
most users being a simple chronological list of all posts by people you follow,
makes it extremely easy to avoid the people who are there primarily to do politics
at you, which makes those people very mad. Does this limit the total possible
growth for Bluesky? Probably. The people who only use social media to do
politics at the expense of the people trying to be social are finding it tough
to dig their roots in. Maybe (hopefully)
they’ll realize this isn’t the place for that.
