The Win Was Never Bluesky. It Was the Protocol. The better question is whether we can stop rebuilding the same landlord model with a different logo on the door. Right now, our social graphs are corporate hostage... jasonbutterfield.ca/the-win-was-never-bluesky-it-…
The Win Was Never Bluesky. It Was the Protocol.
jasonbutterfield.caJun 6, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Is Bluesky dying?
An attempt to untangle a few different arguments around the future of Bluesky – if it has one
Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky's team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization, which I consider worth reading.
For Bluesky to thrive, it needs sex workers and Black Twitter | TechCrunch
If Bluesky wants to be a genuine rival to Twitter, it needs to protect sex workers and its Black community.
Bluesky trust and safety is too important to be left to Bluesky
Bluesky is open about almost everything, except setting and enforcing their community guidelines. They have an opportunity to lead the Internet forward, but they need to start now.
Stop Begging. Start Building
As a reminder, I’m on the board at Bluesky, which means you should consider me extremely biased, even as this article isn’t really about Bluesky. The writer Jerusalem Demsas wants you to stay on Tw…
Benefits of an open network
While Bluesky looks like other social apps, it’s actually quite different. It’s an open network.
To be honest, I think this is more the ruling class in America manifesting that bluesky fails, rather than bluesky actually failing because they know they can't control it just by buying it out.
Mary Gillis
"But, two years since its launch, the site has around just 10% of X’s estimated global users." This is presented as a failure. At 2yo, having 10% of the users of its biggest rival, which is 20yo, is a failure. No tech is allowed to just be a success, it has to be a blockbuster or it doesn't count.
Bluesky is not a social network or a product or a service, it is fundamentally a promise - a promise that you can decide — with others in your social geography — where you want to be in the digital world, and you don’t have to lose all of the bits that represent you in the process.
Aaron Ross Powell
Is Bluesky dying? Is it the community's fault? Should people here refrain from criticizing journalists who think J. K. Rowling might have a point? The thing is, it doesn't matter. Because the answer isn't to make Bluesky change. It's to take advantage of Bluesky's tech to build something else.
When @bsky.app pulls this kind of crap often, whilst also expecting the community to do the heavy-lifting in actually convincing people to try out the AT Protocol... it's really difficult to feel hopeful about the future of Bluesky and its constituents. I imagine many agree with this stance.
Rude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂
Bluesky’s statement deriding Threads users as “guinea pigs” is not representative of Blacksky Algorithms, the atproto ecosystem or the open social web more broadly. Communities form around communication networks. And communities should never be trolled for whatever tool helps them find each other.
This is a really insightful thread that points out some of the fundamental issues with the Bluesky community vs Bluesky as a decentralized protocol. This thread is also why I think it's a really smart move for Bluesky to appeal to fandoms... (cont.)
B. Prendergast
One of the Atmosphere’s big bets is that the next 100m users will be won by making decentralised tech + data sovereignty more compelling. I’m less than convinced. We may be solving problems only builders care about, while overlooking problems that actually make ordinary people choose a network.
There's a pernicious belief, widely believed, that if a platform isn't on its way to becoming the biggest platform then it's on its way to failing. That belief is silly. So let's stop talking about Bluesky as if that belief is true.
We Needn't Have a One True Platform
www.aaronrosspowell.comX is still better than Bluesky at combating misinformation
Grace
Clearing up a misconception I’m seeing floating around: OpenAI didn’t “misconfigure” Artifactory to allow agents to make arbitrary network requests. The agents exploited a zero day vulnerability in Artifactory to be able to do this.
Bluesky should go back to invites, continue aggressive bot bans, create a Craigslist-style marketplace (since you’re more likely to buy/get services from a educated or good person on here than any other social network), and market this place like a walled garden protected from enshittification.
