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So I've done my best recently to avoid being subjected to personalized social media feed. So my lurking on mastodon without account saw that something happened over at Bluesky and people were leaving to go to the fediverse instead. It turns out it is classical Culture War stuff. Bluesky is apparently imploding because of "Waffles".
So this is not a "boo outgroup" post, my observation is that bluesky is resisting its best of becoming an "ideological monoculture", failing at that though. It is as uninteresting because of the monoculture for me as getting an actual account mastodon instance or truth.social and gab due to the ideological alignment of majority of their users.
It seems that it is hard to make large scale "microblogging" platform that caters to heterodox political culture and I'm a little curious if there is any insight for why it is hard to make one?
Is there something in this 5000 word essay you find interesting? I sped through it, but tech->fascism->tech->fascism doesn't provide much insight. The 30 additional mentions of fascism don't make up for it either.
The best time for Bluesky to put its foot down and set the tone was a few months after the platform received the influx last Summer. Enough time for the new users to create networks, get situated, but with enough anti-X relevancy that they can soften the reaction. Make a great big point of it, do the waffle bit, and get the 'we only moderate content on our site' policy riots over with.
Bluesky has been an ideological monoculture for as long as I've paid attention to it. Whenever I endeavor a visit, the main feed advertises this culture as the heart, blood, and soul of the site. There's a smaller, but significant slice of the main feed that is cool friggen' astronomy photos from reddit, but mostly it's Twitter resistance posting and its professional pundit version from anti-Elon diaspora. I believe the CEO when she says she doesn't like it, but the non-activist left-liberal tech networks -- which I assume she likes -- exist in quiet corners.
Does Bluesky ever plan to make money, or is it Jack Dorsey's pet project and it never needs to? There is close to zero demand for a truly decentralized social network, and this preference is no more apparent than in the stereotypical Bluesky user.
I'd argue that the heterodox platform is called X. On the platform you can find unrepentant racists of all stripes, from the deranged ramblings of black nationalist Hoteps to teenage frogposters in Malaysia. You can find content from US representatives like AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene, or you can hear from award winning economists, rocket scientists, CEOs, and lawyers.
The platform may not cater to heterodox political culture, but that's because few people demand or prefer one. The Motte encourages a heterodox political culture, but it can't conjure one.
I just use it as a reference to the controversy that is in the beginning of it and from someone who is really angry about waffles. It is actually the lack of insight that is the main point of using it.
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