Sometimes I get ideas. These ideas sound great in my head, but when they’re brought to fruition, I can see every crack and flaw that my original design missed. More often than not, they’re surmountable with some elbow grease and a little ingenuity. But with my Mastodon-to-Bluesky crossposter, I was fully fantasizing about my chances of success.
I wasn’t really enthused about Bluesky at the start of this project. To my mind, it was just early-stage Twitter with promises of federation. Early-stage Twitter led to late-stage Twitter, so my brain had a hard time mapping a path to long-term success. Experiencing Bluesky firsthand didn’t change my mind.
Once my crossposter started functioning, I remained true to my model of Mastodon being the “source of truth” for posts rather than Bluesky. Content flowed from the ActivityPub-based Fediverse into the ATProtocol world of Bluesky reliably, albeit with caveats regarding post length and media attachments. I felt rather pleased with myself. It took a lot of effort to achieve this. But like the scientists at Jurassic Park, I was so busy considering whether I could that I forgot to ponder whether I should. Because once the posts started moving into Bluesky, so did I.
Although I only posted to Mastodon, I did read Bluesky skeets from others and occasionally interact with them. This was mistake one. Bluesky is not moderated nearly as well as Mastodon is, and the users there have significantly different goals. On Mastodon, the goal is to contribute meaningful content and connect with people in a respectful way. But on Bluesky, people tended to simply reskeet memes and other people’s content. Rather than contribute something new, they kept reheating the same tired stuff in the microwave over and over again.
Oh, and about that “connect with other people in a respectful way” bit? We’ll get to that in due time. But let’s take a look at my second mistake: aggregating Bluesky users into feeds. Because the only thing worse than microwaved fish is a mountain of the stuff.
I created a couple of lists to track the creators of and contributors to some of my favorite shows. One of them is a sci-fi franchise. The other is a collection of overlapping, related comedy shows. The end results were absolute failures. People from the sci-fi franchise rarely posted anything at all, although at least one member contributed a LOT… of political bile.
Next!
I thought the comedians would certainly be a happier, more vocal bunch, and I was right on half of that. They certainly posted a lot. They posted a lot of angry, un-funny political stuff. (See a theme developing?) When I attempted to join a comment thread with one of them regarding “block, don’t engage” strategies on social media, they ironically blocked me. So I guess that’s their idea of a joke. Everyone’s a comedian it seems — except comedians.
Worse still, I saw the uglier side of many people who helped create stuff I loved, which in turn made their endeavors less lovable and enjoyable. I received the exact opposite of what I wanted. Instead of hearing about their work and passions, I learned about their flaws and short fuses. I suppose that an argument could be made that celebrities are people like anyone else, and as such entitled to be messy in public, just like anyone else. But what kind of an aspirational ethos is that?
After my social media “fender bender” on Bluesky, I realized something was overdue: an assessment of how Bluesky was shaping me. I can definitively say the experience amped up my anxiety and anger responses, and stole focus away from Mastodon. The lists were an absolute bust. The “custom algorithm” feature wasn’t terribly useful. And the majority of original content consisted of people’s replies to each other.
There’s not a lot of upside to that, so I decided to quit.
My primary Bluesky account will remain active until Friday, at which point I’ll delete it. All my secondary accounts are already gone. I’m letting my invitation codes go down with the ship, too. If someone’s bound and determined to use Bluesky, they can get one from any number of other sources. I just don’t want to be a link in that chain.
Soon, Bluesky will release its public web view for those without accounts. At that time, every scraper in the world will be able to access anyone’s skeets. The genie will be truly out of the bottle. And as always, those who don’t wish to be seen must opt out, as they have already been opted into this feature.
What happens after that remains to be seen, but I believe I’ve seen this all before.