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.comAug 12, 2026 at 10:20 PM
We Needn't Have a One True Platform - Aaron Ross Powell
On Bluesky, user numbers, and the silliness of endless growth.
Is Bluesky dying?
An attempt to untangle a few different arguments around the future of Bluesky – if it has one
Is Bluesky dying?
An attempt to untangle a few different arguments around the future of Bluesky – if it has one
About
Bluesky and the ATmosphere give large organisations a unique opportunity: enjoy troll-free conversations and convene engaged communities on both Bluesky and your own site, all while respecting your users' privacy.
If you've signed up for Bluesky, you've signed up for offloadable moderation.
By now a lot of people have been lured to Bluesky with a mistaken impression of what they're in for. Foundationally, the reason Bluesky was launched in the first place was out of a desire to do less moderation, and so Bluesky's approach to moderation is all about creating excuses for offloading responsibility. This approach has predictable consequences.
Guide to Bluesky: Getting Started and Best Practices
With over 20 million users and growing, Bluesky offers transparency, control, and a breath of fresh air in the social media world. Are you ready to escape the toxicity and censorship of other platforms? Sign up now! #Bluesky 🚀🌐
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.
i think, end of the day, the real problem with Bluesky is that most of its users are here *because* they want to be in a bubble. and they can tell themselves that it’s just about not being around Nazis it supporting Musk, and that’s part of it, but also there’s a palpable desire to be ensconced.
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.
Current platforms are trying to be the only place you hangout. In the real world, we call that a trap. Bluesky is a distribution engine — we send people to off platform experiences. Go read that blog on @beehiiv.com or watch the livestream on @stream.place.
"As a Bluesky user, you own your data and have greater control over the algorithms that serve you content. Also, the platform is extremely publisher friendly and aims to ... be a quality partner to high-quality news sources." Love to hear it, @sf.gazetteer.co sf.gazetteer.co/reflections-on-a-year-of-gaze…
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.
Everyone on here is arguing about X and Bluesky again. But no one ever talks about the two major issues with this platform, one cultural and one technical. And until both are solved, people are going to keep arguing about whether its relevant or not! garbageday.email/p/safe-and-cozy-in-your-dooms…
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