Bluesky and the Future » Enrique Dans

Bluesky’s strong growth following the North American elections has made its transformation official.

It’s interesting to think that Elon Musk’s big bet in acquiring Twitter has, ultimately, turned out to be very good because of the profitability achieved in terms of impact, but it could have been very bad if it ends up with an X. Networks similar to Gab or TruthSocial, real echo chambers for the extreme right in which they only hear themselves.

However, the positive feelings that many people claim to have in Bluesky may be relatively short-lived, as is the case with everything touched by the popularity stick. Despite its alleged decentralization and the company’s claims of not repeating the mistakes of previous social networks, the reality is that there is no possibility of escape when people of certain political and dialectical tendencies decide to open a profile on a network.

For now, Bluesky is happy just because it refuses to embrace the nefarious evils of the social network: It doesn’t spy on its users like Threads does, it doesn’t punish them with advertising, it doesn’t try to put up What they want to see through their eyes, nor does it make arbitrary decisions to guarantee certain development. Can this situation continue? Whatever a company’s intentions, things fall apart not because previous social media managers are terrible people, but because they typically become ambitious to the point that they make their business unsustainable.

Does it make any sense that Bluesky is managing to steal users from an X that Musk broke up and a meta threads that was already broken? Yes, as long as it retains its unique characteristics and freshness, making all those users see the grass greener on the other side of the fence. But that freshness, as all of us who have experienced this process time and again know, is very difficult to maintain. We will have to see when Bluesky’s managers start facing problems of coexistence and toxicity, content moderation or simply users who come here just to try to demonstrate that they too can behave like in X. If they can, how can they behave?

No, it is not easy, and Bluesky managers have my full understanding and support in whatever is required, as many very difficult battles await them. But for now, what we have to do is enjoy what is, give it all the meaning we can, and consider how we will position ourselves when the difficult decisions come. Let us not doubt it.