peacefare.net

To tweet or not, that is the question

I am now beginning to post on Bluesky, the latest competitor of X/Twitter. I have profiles on Threads and Post, but I haven’t used them. Those two competitors never took off.

I don’t know if Bluesky will either. But the election results stimulated an exodus of interesting people from Twitter. They are mostly Democrats and never-Trump Republicans. I haven’t run into any Trumpkins there.

Why leave Twitter?

The arguments for leaving Twitter are strong. Its owner and operator is a billionaire Trump enthusiast and financier. The platform has been favoring pro-Trump views and slighting anti-Trump posts. Its revenue and usage is down sharply since he sliced staff, raised fees, and all but eliminated moderation,. Except for his political opponents of course. The number of American users is down. Trolling is up. For many people, the atmosphere has become toxic.

Bluesky is providing a far more friendly environment. Its algorithm is not slighting Democrats or promoting conflict. Discussion there can be vigorous, but not not nearly as poisonous as on Twitter. It is free and does not intend to allow advertising.

Why not leave Twitter?

That said, I am not planning to leave Twitter soon. There are several reasons.

First of course is the accumulation of more than 7000 followers for @DanielSerwer. That is an important entry point for www.peacefare.net. It will be a long time before I can gain even a fraction of that on Bluesky.

Second, many of my followers are not Americans. Few non-Americans have joined Bluesky, which is the product of the polarized political environment in the United States. It has more than 20 million users, which is extraordinary. But still a good deal less than Twitter/X’s 60 million Americans. Twitter/X has more than 350 million non-American users. I’ll gladly welcome non-Americans to Bluesky. But I suppose if they want to understand our politics, Twitter/X is more representative.

Third, I regret the loss of a common space, even one tainted with toxicity. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argues on Twitter/X that it is better to stay to debate issues than self-isolate in a friendlier environment. Trolls deserve a chance to show they can be sensible. And to tell the truth, they haven’t much plagued me. I’ve blocked very few people all these years (I joined Twitter in 2010).

Yes, Tweet, but Bluesky as well.

So on balance I prefer to do both Twitter/X and Bluesky, at least for now. Twitter in its heyday was an extraordinary way to talk with the world. I wish it had remained that way. Or that some public-spirited billionaire would put Musk out of his misery and buy it. S/he could then fix the algorithm and moderate the content.

But that isn’t happening. So I’ll migrate to Bluesky gradually, keeping my presence and activity on Twitter/X as well. It’s a burden, but not an unbearable one.