When Jack Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, everyone knew what he was going to do next. The project Bluesky — a decentralised alternative to Twitter — was kicked off in 2019, while he was the CEO of the social media company. However, with the rising controversies around Twitter, the world soon forgot about Bluesky.
Months later, the decentralised application is once again in the news. Bluesky adapted the age-old strategy of ‘invite-only’ membership on its platform, which is now being sold on Reddit, with a price tag of $400!
So, What’s Driving the Madness?
The craze behind Bluesky can be likened to the Clubhouse phenomenon when it was the invite-only platform where big celebrities were having discussions in the “Clubhouse room” and with people having access to the platform created FOMO (Fear of Missing out) for others.
The users on Bluesky want to experience that, with many relating it to the early days of Twitter.
Besides, the content moderation has gone haywire and all sorts of things are happening on the platform. It allows users to moderate if they want to see pornography, or violent and political hate-groups on their feed. The availability of porn on the platform has sparked an all-new conversation whether Bluesky will be the one platform that can provide a safe harbour for the sex workers who are facing threats from the Twitter acquisition of Elon Musk.
With the closure of the classified ads site Backpage in 2018 and Tumblr’s ban on porn, the online sex work community found a new home on Twitter. In fact, it’s one of the fastest-growing subcultures on the platform, with sex workers flocking to the site in droves. Today, adult content makes up a staggering 13% of all content posted on Twitter. This statistic underscores the platform’s growing importance as a hub for sex workers, who rely on it as a key tool for their businesses and as a means of connecting with their community.
Bluesky, with Strong 50,000 Members
Bluesky, almost similar to Twitter, is touted to be one of the first ones to become a decentralised protocol for a multiplicity of federated servers with a variety of different moderation practices. Despite being decentralised, the platform is currently hosted on only one server under the control of the Bluesky team.
The platform plans to change the game with its own AT Protocol – a departure from the more commonly used ActivityPub. But that’s not all – Bluesky is all about giving users control over their own experience. By allowing them to opt into content filters and choose from a marketplace of algorithms instead of being stuck with a single master algorithm, Bluesky claims to put the power back in the hands of the people. Users can choose to see a specific feed or mix it up with a multi-algorithm feed.
The platform, which is still available on an invite-only basis, has more than 50,000 members as per the website’s data but TechCrunch claims that the decentralised social network already has over 375,000 worldwide installed on iOS as of April 26, 2023, and has been ranking highly on Apple and Google’s app stores’ top charts by downloads.
Why decentralization for social media is not good!
Decentralization surely does offer a better alternative in many areas, however, not all things need to be decentralized in the first place. While decentralisation may have seen some success with the government providing safe services to its citizens, when it comes to social media, a platform without central control/moderation, it can become chaos very easily.
For instance, Aveta shared with TechCrunch about how she invited more than 500 ‘Black users on Bluesky as the platform lacked Black users. She claimed that Mastodon, another decentralised social media network, lacked Black users, which started the problem of racism on the platform.
As a result, she made it her mission to invite as many Black users as possible, on Bluesky. She claimed that the Black communities drive the culture of social platforms like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. “It’s so crazy that despite how much time has passed, exposing how Black people have so much power and influence, especially in tech communities, especially in social media, that people want to disregard that,” Aveta said.
However, this human behaviour is common when it comes to social media and in future, it’s likely to grow. Before Bluesky opens to the public, there will already be different pockets of people having a stronghold on the platform. Be it the spammers, criminals or hate groups, they will have a significant audience on the platform.
And since the platform is decentralised, there will be little to no moderation which can provide a safe harbour to the uncivil elements, something which Jack Dorsey is already doing with his decentralised payment app– Block.
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