Here’s the thing.

I don’t like Bluesky. I think it’s just a corporate plant in the decentralized ecosystem to get people hooked on yet another underdeveloped platform for the sake of controlling how we communicate.

But there is something to be said about how corporate entities focus on ease of use over just about everything else for the sake of getting people to use it.

I think many people in open source naively depend on the altruism of people to choose their product over a corporate option because of Bad Corporate Reasons and ignore a mediocre experience, poor leadership and difficult installation and maintenance.

The rising popularity of Bluesky is showing, again, ease of use is a priority in the carnival of social media.

Most people don’t want to go through a twelve step process to install a wheelbarrow of dependencies in the hopes it won’t crash at the first update.

Hell, I’m a dev going on 20 years now and I don’t feel like doing that shit.

One thing I will say about Trump is that he has made the fear of a weaponized state real for white people.

A fear that Black and Brown folks have been intimately familiar with for centuries.

I’m chuckling at white people trying to scare me with ideas of secret police, law enforcement beatings and injustice in the court system.

You’re just telling me you don’t know any Black people and refuse to listen to the millions that have been sharing their experiences for decades.

This has already been happening for awhile now.

You’re just afraid it’s going to happen to you.

As for me, I’m going to do what I always do: keep working.

The election results are irrelevant for me because my goal is to create systems in service of sustainable communities that exist outside of political and corporate interests.

I’m interested in building tools that enable us to build and sustain networks that are for our betterment.

That is still my focus, no matter what nonsensical shit happens in a rapidly declining empire. Because we need tools for what comes after.

Everything is funded by donations because I refuse corporate money.

My Patreon is in my bio and I have an ongoing fundraiser for my projects.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-new-way-to-social-media

I definitely don’t have all the answers, but I’m going to be relentless until I find them.

And I honestly believe we are closer than we think.

If you’re wondering what to do right now, give. Help people around you because a lot of folks are hurting.

Look up #mutualaid and help where you can. There’s a ton of work that still needs to be done and we can start by meeting people’s needs today.

The fedi raised millions for Harris.

Imagine if we put that same effort into satisfying immediate needs right now.

That would be a massive step forward and a good way to start building our collective capacity outside of politics.

We can do that right now.

Scream, cry, and throw things. Feel what you gotta feel.

But after, the work continues.

One of the main reasons I do what I do is because I envision a world where our communities are so well organized and connected that it doesn’t matter what politicians do because we have us.

I’ve worked under this premise for years and it has led me to a purpose that has sustained me through all of the hate and dehumanization people have constantly thrown at me in my years on the fedi.

I gave up on the state being a catalyst for progressive societal change a long time ago. Yesterday was just another confirmation that the US is dedicated to its own destruction and decline and is determined to bring us all down with it.

Our job is to refuse to die with the empire. Our shared goal is to disconnect from it and let it kill itself.

I’ve said for a long time the greatest threat to the US is white Americans and they proved that yet again by coming out in force for a charlatan that repeats the lies they want to hear.

Personally, I don’t feel much about it because my existence has always been an uphill struggle. Hell, if you’ve been following me for awhile, you know how contentious the environment has been on the fedi and my fight to push this place past its racist inclinations.

I get how people feel pretty down at the moment. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

But as a person that has been fighting for a long time, don’t dwell in the despair. Don’t let the doom consume you. This is just a moment in time and it will pass.

And it’s a great opportunity to decouple your idea of progress from the state that has proven time and time again it does not give a fuck about your wellbeing.

Now is the time for ideas. Now is the time to create.

We are far from helpless.

It’s not hard for me to be optimistic about the fedi because my view of it is not defined by bigots who want to maintain their fantasies of monoculture and mediocre creators who want to emulate their favorite tech megalomaniacs.

And I’m old enough to know that when a need on the interwebs reveals itself, the internet always adapts.

This is a contentious time but in these moments great progress can and usually does happen.

The US has always been this hateful and disgusting.

The advent of social media has just made it impossible to hide anymore.

Blocklists and allowlist only became ‘bad’ when Black and Brown folks started sharing ours to make our spaces a bit harder to antagonize and harass.

Digital community curation is as old as the web itself.

The negativity against it is an expression of the bizarre entitlement white people, and their tokens, have about online spaces and their need to be included in places not for them.

Honestly?

Bluesky is just easier. Thats why people are going there over Masto.

We could do a deep dive into feature comparisons and all that, but the bottom line is that most people do not care about features if they are not easy to use.

Mastodon has made little to no progress in terms of ease of use. It’s an app built for other developers, not everyday people.

Until that is addressed, we are going to continue to see people choose Threads/Bluesky over Masto despite the oblivious problems around safety, privacy and moderation.