Bluesky's growing pains, which were expected

I am not surprised that the social media app Bluesky is going through some growing pains. A number of smaller alternative platforms to what was once known as Twitter had been in development for a bit, but never had much traction. Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter changed that. A lot of migration from Twitter happened, as you recall, in the aftermath of Musk's purchase of the platform. Bluesky was invitation only at that juncture. Mastodon saw an increase in users practically overnight in late 2022 and into 2023. That platform definitely faced its own growing pains. Scaling up turns out to be really difficult. You need more server space, more moderators, and so on in order to keep the platform from going off the rails. 

One good thing about both Mastodon and Bluesky is that by the time I joined each platform, they had their own built-in culture and norms. That set expectations immediately and I think that has made my experience on each platform much better. Both have their plusses and minuses, but the fact that those of us who just want to socialize with people sharing similar interests without being bombarded with endless algorithms designed to twist us into outrage can find a home in either platform easily. I can bookmark posts on Mastodon but not on Bluesky. I can repost others' posts (called skeets) on Bluesky but not on Mastodon (where posts are toots). But what I really love is the ability to shut out interaction with people who are genuinely toxic. We can't completely rid ourselves of people who hold awful viewpoints or who are just by disposition toxic. But we can set things up to minimize exposure and interaction. Bluesky's starter pack feature is a good way to find people you would want to follow quickly - especially useful if you are rebuilding your network of contacts from scratch after leaving Twitter/X. The ability to create and follow moderation lists is also a nifty feature, which I have used to minimize my exposure to the usual trolls and scammers I prefer to avoid.

The reality is that since Bluesky in particular has gained a lot of traction in the last several weeks since the US election, when a lot of Twitter/X users migrated to Bluesky, the trolls and scammers at Twitter who fed off of any outrage they fomented have tried to follow the rest of us to Bluesky. Thankfully, it appears that the way Bluesky was rolled out appears to handle this attempted onslaught and seems to be holding up quite nicely. I know of Jesse Singal's existence, but I don't have to see what anti-trans hot takes he spews, nor do I have to see reposts of whatever outrage he serves up on any given day. He and others like him won't stop, of course. But they lose enough oxygen (to use a well-worn metaphor) to make the effort less attractive, and ideally most will go back to their playground on Twitter/X or Truth Social, where they belong. By the way, this is a good time to remind folks that learning about different and opposing viewpoints is healthy. Interacting with people who will not do so in good faith is not healthy. I choose health.

Like Mastodon, the mass exodus from Twitter to Bluesky has put a strain on servers. So at times posts and images can be a bit slow to load. The Bluesky team has also had to hire quite a number of moderators to go through all the complaints because, well, there are now a lot of users and at least a subset are not there for benign reasons. Nothing's perfect, but I like the Bluesky setup and will continue to use it to the extent I want any social media presence at all.