So it seems a heck of a lot of high-profile folks are suddenly deciding to leave Elon Musk's Nazi platform.
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So it seems a heck of a lot of high-profile folks are suddenly deciding to leave Elon Musk's Nazi platform. Again. But hey don't worry, they really mean it this time! And Twitter 2.0, Bluesky, is so very special (the cryptobros said so!) and while its appeal is that it emulates Twitter 1.0, it is totally immune to the fate of Twitter 1.0. Right? And remember: that Mastodon stuff is confusing, and its lack of ads and algorithms make everyone seem more on an equal footing, with celebrity profiles treated as just another account. And who wants that, huh?
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@MediaActivist yeah, absolutely depressing, you have no idea
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Seriously, though: Many of us told you so. Many of us told you when we joined Mastodon shortly after its launch, and we told you again as we quit Twitter after Elon Musk bought it. You went back then, so why would we believe you now? Because this time you're wholeheartedly endorsing Twitter 2.0: crypto-Bluesky? The cycle will just continue, and celebrity culture and ego will be our fucking ruin.
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We never needed to waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. We had Mastodon. We had something right in front of us, all along, and too many of us decided to look away at the other options, either pretending we couldn't see this, or pretending we didn't understand this. But fundamentally, truly decentralised and de-commercialised social media will always be eclipsed by commercial interests until we - all of us - are prepared to make better choices based on better principles rather than herd mentality. I for one am not going back. Not to Twitter 1.0...or Twitter 2.0. That shit ain't it.
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@MediaActivist This. I keep fucking explaining this shit to people, that bluesky isn't billionaire-proof like folks are saying it is.
It's already got crypto funding, being a "public benefit corporation" doesnt make it not a corporation (shit look at anthropic). It's not immune to investor demands to enshittify in the name of profits.
It's not even really decentralized at this point, as much as they try to convince folks it is.
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Us "mere mortals," meanwhile, love this shit: I had over 3,000 followers on pre-Elon Musk Twitter, and by that point there was, well, no point: the ads and algorithms had long since pushed my tweets aside in favour of whatever normies had trending, and - in the absence of any decent code of conduct - the space was becoming unbearably bot-ridden at best and toxic at worst.
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I guess my point here is, it's not a "platform" when no one can hear you. I have half that number of followers here on Mastodon and yet I'm heard but - more important than that - I listen. I take in posts by people wiser than myself, and/or at least with different backgrounds and experiences to myself, who I learn so very much from. Mastodon (more specifically, Todon) makes that possible for me. It brings out the best.
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A reminder of the phrase: "perfect is the enemy of good." To cite Mastodon as a genuine alternative to Twitter and Bluesky is not to say that Mastodon is perfect. That should go without saying. Everything can be scrutinised and critiqued and improved on. But that's not the purpose or point of these posts - the point is, you can't improve something built on bad intentions and compromised foundations like Bluesky is. Let's bring those places down while building these places up.
