Bluesky vs X – the social media war is here

SORRY to say, but if you haven't heard of Bluesky by now, you've probably been sitting in a black hole under a white rock for the past week. To put it simply, it's the new X (Twitter), but a bit more populated by left-leaning individuals – the new kind of Twitter where you probably won't be called a libtard if you believe the government should set a minimum wage.

The irony is that it was initiated as an internal Twitter project by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who later became the company's chief executive again. If you're watching a movie and it has a tech billionaire character somewhere in the desert on a tantric retreat, that's the eccentric Dorsey they're making fun of.

Dorsey founded it in 2019 with users by invitation only, but since last February, it's been open to everyone – and has expanded to 20 million users in this short time. Just in the week after Donald Trump was re-elected president, 1 million users migrated from X to Bluesky.

The chief executive is Jay Gruber, and true to his unpredictable nature, Dorsey has since resigned from the board. Gruber says it's now growing at the dizzying speed of 10 000 new users every 10 to 15 minutes.

It's fast, but the total is still just a splash compared to X's 353 million, Instagram's 2.1 billion, and TikTok's billion. It will be interesting to see what happens when Bluesky reaches a meaningful market capitalisation and whether its value will even be calculated because Dorsey has become more of a socialist as he's gotten older. He said the big mistake with Twitter/X from the beginning was allowing advertisements by companies and the government, which enabled such institutions to control the platform.

He said the ideal social network is one financed by a foundation where the protocol (the basic network master plan) is not owned by the foundation but by the community – it must be an open-source protocol. This means the original base code is freely available and not a secret, and any programmer can use, distribute or change it. Dorsey also promised that the platform will not be financed by selling its members' information.

This is the kind of model that makes geeky network libertarians giddy with excitement. So far, it doesn't look like the platform will carry advertisements.

How has X been doing lately? X was never the social network that stood out at the profit line. Over time, it became clear that these mini-blog networks are not the ideal vehicles for advertisements or even investors, due to the constant controversial nature of the content and the abrasiveness of much of the interaction.

X's subscribers have dropped from a peak of 368 million monthly active users in 2022, around the time Musk bought it, to around 335 million monthly active users now.

Much more significant is that the company, which he bought for $44 billion in October 2022, is now worth only $9.4 billion. Also, his promise of freedom of speech must be met with scepticism. Any ordinary user will testify that the diversity of opinion on X has drastically decreased, and the appearance of Musk's face on almost every screen has drastically increased.

And nothing came of his promises about eliminating bots and fake profiles. I created a new profile where I occasionally read posts, followed a few accounts and posted nothing myself. This profile is now followed by 172 users, and only one is not a fake profile or bot.

People who were laughing at Musk three weeks ago had to ultimately temper their mockery when they realised that he did not pay $44 billion for a social media company, but for unrestricted access to the most powerful man in the world and his institutions.

Perhaps he IS a kind of genius. A dark genius.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.