Another wave of Twitter users are jettisoning the social media website in favor of alternatives. Some are landing in the Fediverse (Mastodon and other ActivityPub-enabled software). Others are going to BlueSky.

Some are just outright abandoning social media entirely, disillusioned by the entire concept.

As someone working on design specifications to propose end-to-end encryption for the Fediverse, you might assume I’d make a specific recommendation here.

And you would be right: BlueSky is the winner.

Alright everyone, pack it up and go home.

…

…

You’re still here?

Okay, yes, there’s a little bit of nuance to that remark.

Pick Your Poison

What does social media mean to you?

If you’re just looking for a way to connect with your existing friends, and maybe meet some of their friends, and share neat things with each other, you’ll probably find the Fediverse a comfortable space to just exist.

But if you’re interested in clout, popularity, reach… maybe because you’re an extrovert, or maybe because your small business model literally depends on such factors… you’re probably going to find BlueSky easier than the Fediverse, due to BlueSky being extremely familiar to Twitter users (both technologically and culturally).

If you crave a central platform–a community watering hole where all the popular kids hang out–you want BlueSky.

If you want Twitter, just without the Nazis that took over the space when Elon Musk bought it, you want BlueSky.

Conversely, if you want to try something different, where there is no centralization (even if it is “temporary” in BlueSky’s case), corporate control, or advertiser-friendly moderation practices, consider joining the Fediverse.

Why Does Winning Matter?

If BlueSky “wins”, a deluge of new users will follow.

This means that BlueSky will become the new social commons of the Internet–a space previously occupied by Twitter, but before by Facebook and MySpace–and they’ll bring all their problems with them.

Can BlueSky scale to hundreds of millions of users?

Can BlueSky’s business model succeed if tested as such a scale without adequate ramp up time?

Can they maintain a positive community and successfully moderate away the Nazis that currently infest Twitter without incurring the wrath of American politicians?

The BlueSky team has interesting times ahead of them, if they do win.

If the Fediverse were to win, we would need the most popular software (Mastodon) to heavily focus on moderation tools yesterday. The tools need not only exist, the software updates need to propagate the network and instance admins learn to use them before the tidal wave of new users and their Twitter habits arrive.

I don’t think the Fediverse is in a position to “win”.

But, in my humble opinion, the best thing for the Fediverse right now isn’t to “win”.

I think it’s in Fedi’s best interest to let BlueSky tank the waves of popular appeal. We’ll continue to exist, doing our own thing.

What About Twitter?

Well, Twitter shouldn’t win. It’s become the Nazi bar.

Twitter is the website where you can call me slurs and wish death on me, and nothing will happen to you, but if you say the word “cisgender” your post is flagged for “Hateful Content”.

Twitter is Dead

I’ve long since been a critic of Twitter. In 2020, I wrote about how they only checked the length of your Gender field client-side, and tolerated up to a megabyte of data to be stored if you ignored that.

When they first pitched Birdwatch (now “Community Notes”), I called it fundamentally flawed. I stand by that, but for a brief moment, it was actually kind of funny.

The death of Twitter began when they banned a bunch of journalists (and one furry blogger) while calling it “free speech”.

The most recent moves (forced arbitration in a Texas court that always sides with the corporation, allowing your Twitter posts to be trained by their AI, etc.) weren’t the death of Twitter, they’re just stages of decomposition in rigor mortis.

Elon Musk calls Twitter (now “X”, named after his relationship with his wife) the “everything app”.

If you try to be everything to everyone, you will become nothing. And X will become exactly that.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this was deliberate self-sabotage. After all, the money to buy Twitter came from Saudi Arabia. Therefore, if it’s also true that Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring, then Twitter’s downfall could be intentional as a form of retribution.

BlueSky and Decentralization

BlueSky is currently centralized, in the same way that Twitter always has been.

BlueSky was meant to be a protocol first, not a platform. They have always had the intent of eventually becoming decentralized, even if they built a central pillar from their inception.

If that actually happens, then the folks that adapt to BlueSky will be boiling-frogged into being more comfortable with decentralization.

Should that happen, the Fediverse will be less uncomfortable to many people who were hesitant to join. After all, the decision paralysis of “what instance do I choose?” will vanish.

Looking Forward

The best possible outcome for the Internet is for BlueSky to become a competitor with X (the smoldering husk that used to be Twitter) with roughly equal market share.

This means the Fediverse will thrive, the people that remain on X will get what they deserve (each other), and BlueSky will get all of the benefits of a mass market appeal. It also means that BlueSky will have to experiment with moderation tooling to cope with the influx of new users, which the Fediverse developers can learn from to improve the experience for everyone here. Win-win all around.

So I invite Fediverse users to cheer, “BlueSky wins,” with me… and then we will resume posting on Fedi instead.

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Header art: Background by Jim, foreground by CMYKat (edited by me).