Journalists flock to Bluesky as X becomes increasingly 'toxic'
Journalists are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky than on the platform they used to know as Twitter.
While I would love people to come over to mastodon (or mastodon adjacent) I personally think this is a step in the right direction. Having more fediverse adjacent platforms makes it easier for people to communicate in a much less platform specific conglomeration.
Mastodon is broken as fuck for me. I don't know if it's my instance, or the country I'm in, or what. The app mostly just spins and hangs. It's been like this for a year. I've never been able to see who other people are following, which is something I like to do to discover new content. I've never been able to view videos that people post. I joined in 2020 and I'm probably just going to delete my account.
Before that, try joining mas.to and using Tusky. I've never had an issue.
As much as I don’t believe bsky will be any different, and won’t join it myself, the momentum is there. Took a little longer than it should have but the tipping point is here and we should all relish in the bird’s passing.
I think bluesky and twitter will become politically divided and become their respective echo chamber rather than Twitter going out of fashion.
Overall the discourse quality will go down at both places.
A lot of people exist on twitter because their favorite celebrity or news cite or company exists on there. The problem is that the lefties and LGBTQ folk create a ton of twitters content and are also a huge majority of those celebrities.
So while I think twitter will become a sort of right wing cesspool, BlueSky will be much different. Especially since BS has the ability to essentially build your own echo chamber on purpose. Which I actually think is fine because some of the echo chambers I’d compare to the instances on here that try to keep people safe and civil like beehaw. But the moment bluesky keeps getting celebs and organizations to make the swap, it’s all over for twitter. There is a critical mass there that will migrate regardless and honestly the echo chamber design means right wing folk would also do well on the platform if they know what they’re doing.
Thought may happen but it will still be an improvement.
The big problem with Twitter / X is everything ends up being about politics.
Want to talk about a video game, you can't because some dipstick mega supporter is going to accuse it of being woke.
Want to talk about a programming language, nope apparently that is woke too.
Want to share a funny cat picture, nah, can't do that apparently a man having a cat is gay and woke.
It's exhausting dealing with these idiots.
The bird died years ago. Now we wait for the death of a letter.
I'm glad to see Twitter/X collapsing if only to add to Musk's problems, but at the same time just changing the corporate logo over the outhouse doesn't make it smell any better. It's a better place, but I'm sure it's temporary, the same people/bots/trolls will just migrate right along with the rest of them.
This seems fine, so long as the journos remember how to pull up stakes once a platform decays. I hope they learn a lesson about the importance of owning your own audience, follower lists, etc.
/glances at substack
I hope that too. It would be nice.
The difference being that Bluesky has very robust block lists which you can subscribe to to remove these accounts for you.
Not sure if this is an age thing but at a certain point I just stopped wanting “forever fixes”. Nothing is forever. You’re just patching in the hopes that the nex hole is easier to patch now that you have all the shit you need to do patches.
It’s not the same though.
Yet.
How many more times am I going to see this same title before X implodes?
Same for Reddit, still very much alive apparently.
(I'm not going back, I'm happy here)
Yeah, and it's doing really well since it's IPO, basically tripling since IPO and it even rose nearly 6% today. As much as Lemmy wishes it would die, it's just not happening.
I'm still here because I'm stubborn, but Reddit is absolutely a thing.
The same is true for X, though things are looking a bit worse for X than for Reddit right now since a lot of people are leaving. But it'll likely stabilize with the new administration, and I guess we'll see whether it's able to get back to growing.
To call hate speech and harassment "toxicity" downplays both issues.
I rather have a little toxicity than a bunch of overzealous moderators lording over the discourse.
If by "a little toxicity" you mean a little bit of aggressiveness, sarcasm, etc., I agree with you. It depends a lot on the community though - in some, allowing it will be counter-productive.
If however you mean harassment and hate speech, as the author of the text, I strongly disagree. If the mod doesn't curb down those things, they might not be "lording" over the discourse, but other users are - because
Another detail is that you don't need to control the discourse to curb down harassment, since it's only behavioural and not discursive in nature.
So IMO when it comes to those two things the problem is not overzealous mods, but dumb ones not doing due diligence, who are a bit too eager to falsely accuse their own users to be voicing hate speech or harassing each other when it is not the case.
[Sorry for the wall of text.]
Wtf is "hate speech"?
A: whatever those in control decide it is, used as a means of suppressing dissent.
Just think about that for a bit. What if I controlled Bluesky and decided your description of "toxicity" was hate speech?
The definition as taken to the courts in the USA is:
"Hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin."
It has more rigorous legal definitions in many other jurisdictions where hate speech is explicitly illegal.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html
Canada for example.
You characterizing toxicity and hate speech as being related isn't a position taken even remotely seriously by anyone who actually write laws on the subject, and many have been written across the world.
Broadly speaking, hate speech isn't "being mean" in any legal definition... But that is what right-wing talking heads like to strawman it as.
"Hate speech" is defined and outlawed by countries around the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
Threatening people based on their religion, race or other attributes is not dissent.
"Journalists flock to yet another proprietary, commercial platform as the last becomes increasingly 'toxic' for reasons unknown."
Oh shut up with that.
You act like there's some kind of alternative which there isn't. Mastodon, which I'm sure you were going to mention, absolutely does not count because it's a nightmare to use and they haven't bothered to fix any of its problems.
So there is no viable alternative.
Also because it's so awful to use, no one does use it, and so no one's on the platform. After all, journalists need to go where the viewers are.
There is zero point being smug about your open source platform, if no one uses your open source platform.
I mean, what’s the alternative? Mastodon culturally could not get its shit together enough to be a viable alternative.
Shit, they can do a lemmy or kbin instance, it would fit their format anyways. Post link from their domain, and it gets shared across the network.
No elon... literally all that matters
Until he also buys Bluesky.
Ten years later
"Journalists flock from Bluesky...
Flock to wherever the critical mass of the herd is moving, in this case the very guy that caused their troubles in the first place.
Those are the very people supposed that are supposed to inform us and warn us of upcoming threat as well as mobilize the general population to defend against them.
But again they lead the population to the slaugtherhouse.
The death of journalism in the beginning of the 00s is certainly the first thread unravelling our civilizations in favour of the hype con-mens and their billionaires backers and other monarchs trying to swallow humanity whole.
All this effort, yet we don't even resist...
People thought the first Trump presidency was a politically divided time, but maybe we're now entering an even more divided time, given that social media is now fragmenting along political lines, more prominently than it did before.
When a Maga billionaire buys a large social media platform... that will cause the divide. And it is.
Hahaha, they're just now noticing? Rich.
And how will Bkuesky be any different? It won't.
You're measuring Bluesky with a different measuring stick than they are.
You're measuring it with the "This is decentralized, and therefore not connected to corporate interests, and never can be" stick.
These journalists WORK FOR the corporate interests you left twitter (or maybe never had an account) over. They are measuring the stick by "These current users are just MAGA users in a cult".
As long as Bluesky doesn't start shifting right wing MAGA, it IS different for their purposes. It's just their purposes are not YOUR purposes, and therefore they can still say that it's different, and not have that be a lie. Doesn't mean it'll satisfy you any.
Wow, that's pessimistic
Maybe, but not unrealistic. Bluesky has already begun their shift toward enshittification, changing their default sorting algorithm to one that favors the quantity of engagement over the quality. Usually when you see a platform making moves that are meant to drive user activity without adding anything substantially positive to the user experience, it's a sign that they're about to start monetizing the platform.
Bluesky has far more robust tools for blocking bad actors. You can subscribe to auto updating block lists which take these people off your feed.
Maybe the goal is to get Musk to buy Bluesky and start all over again 🤷
journalists flocking to a site built on the backs of trans people and they'll still refuse to hire/interview trans people when talking about trans issues.
I’m not serially online enough to understand what you mean, can you expand on this?
trans people are the reason why there's robust safety and moderation tools on bsky but journalists, more often than not, refuse to hire or bring on trans people to discuss trans issues.
This is interesting. Why build on the backs? Did trans people contribute to it a lot, or are we talking about the early user base?
According to CNN, X is the most ideologically balanced of the social media platforms (party affiliation stats are at 1:25).
I'm not saying that this makes X good, I'm saying it makes it interesting. Most social media sites lean left of center or very hard to the right, yet X seems to have found a balance. Or maybe it's in transition into being a far right platform, idk, but at least as of this moment, it's pretty balanced. Users are down, but it seems the current userbase is more balanced than it was.
That has little to do with whether X is "toxic," but I do think it's an interesting statistic to discuss.
Certainly an interesting statistic but one thing to keep in mind is that Elon Musk has control over the algorithm and he uses it to boost right wing causes. So even if the Twitter has an equal number of users from both sides one side is getting an unfair advantage. Sources: https://cybernews.com/news/x-algorithm-changed-musk-boost-right-wing/ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/x-has-disproportionately-pushed-right-wing-content-since-elon-musk-took-over-reports https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298669/musk-trump-endorsement-x-boosting-republican-posts-july-algorithm-change
Perhaps it's because he's boosting right wing causes that the numbers have balanced.
Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing, merely that it's interesting. I would like a platform that's properly diverse, and this is one interesting metric. However, given that total userbase has dropped, I wonder if it's more attrition than anything that caused the balance. In any case, it'll be interesting to see where it ends up, and hopefully it's not just another Truth Social...
So, it mostly doesn't mirror US demographics then, as the US, as a whole, skews away from the GOP.
Yes, I get it, "but the ballots"... ballot cast are not a 1:1 for the party lean of the US as a whole.
So, it mostly doesn’t mirror US demographics then, as the US, as a whole, skews away from the GOP.
They also skew away from the Democratic Party. Look at approval ratings for Biden and Trump if you don't believe me, both were absolutely terrible, and Congress is arguably worse. I think most people hate both parties, but the system is rigged to support a two-party system.
If we look at issues, I think most people lean a bit more progressive on social issues and pretty moderate on fiscal issues. Even in my very red state, there are tons of pride flags out during pride month, and our conservative governor was openly supportive of trans issues (esp. kids). But neither party seems to do much to actually progress social issues, so I think people just end up getting pissed off. Democrats push on climate change and Republicans push tax cuts, when we really just want to legalize marijuana and let people marry whoever they want.
Have a link to the actual article and not some rando with a video without context?
I don't think there's an article, at least I couldn't find one. I tried to find the original source, but internet searches suck these days (or maybe I've lost my touch).
Here's a YT video that talks about it, but it's also quite biased. The two anchors here are conservative and "libertarian" (I think Robbie Suave is more conservative than he claims). And here's Sky News YT video about it (right-wing UK media IIRC).
I wish I had more to go on, and I'd really like to see the original story, but there you go.
I think this whole concept speaks to how differently we all use social networks. For some, it’s a passive news source. For others, it’s entertainment. For others, it’s a place to be social.
Ideological balance is the least important feature for me in picking a social network. I’m there to joke around and talk to interesting people. In real life, my friends and I don’t go “You know what bar we should go to? That new ideologically balanced one down on 2nd St.” (and then my horny friend says we should go to the bar where he met a hot girl once and we end up at TikTok1, AGAIN).
1 That’s a joke. I’m 40 and my friends pick bars based on proximity, beer selection, and how long they have the baby sitter for.
I'm more interested in ideological balance, because I'm looking for social media to curate news sources for me. If all I'm getting is conservative or progressive articles, it's not doing its job.
I had a pretty good setup on Reddit with just the right subs to get a good ideological balance (despite Reddit being pretty left leaning), but I bailed when they pulled the API BS and I'm staying away due to their data harvesting. Lemmy is much worse than Reddit as far as bias goes, but it's better than nothing I suppose. I've had to actually go back and follow news sources to rebalance my media consumption, which is a pain because there's so much BS on news sites.
I don't want to be social, and if I want entertainment, I'll play video games or watch a movie/TV show. I just want to stay informed and hear other peoples' takes on current events, ideally from a diverse set of perspectives. And yet, my main options are left wing or right wing sources, both of whom will misrepresent stuff and nobody will correct them.
I'm probably not going back to Twitter/X because I hate the format, but I am happy to see that at least someone thinks it's somewhat balanced. I'm working on my own Reddit/Lemmy alternative with the express goal to make it easier to get a balanced feed, so hopefully some day I'll be able to eat my cake and have it too.
I'll never understand liberals need to distance themselves from those who disagree with their opinions while simultaneously asking for their vote. You really need to engage and find common ground with those you disagree with to win their vote.
Dunno about liberals, but I don't like hanging out at nazi bars.
People have been trying that for years without apparent success. Let's try shunning the antisocial people instead. We didn't defeat the nazis by being nice and friendly to them
Besides, journalists being on twitter is one large reason anyone cares about twitter. Getting people to care about a platform not owned by the first lady might be a good idea
The problem with having reasonable and respectful discourse with people you disagree with, is that you first have to find people willing to have reasonable and respectful discourse. In real life I've met plenty. On Twitter, there are none. They're mostly just in getting a rise out of libs and lefties. We've already been finding that disengaging with them and moving to a platform they don't have influence over has made them a lot more impotent.
