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Bluesky's active user base has never not been shrinking, no matter what they were focusing on.

https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

The surest thing in tech for the past couple of years is that bluesky has fewer users than it did last month. It's entire life is due to lib slactivism. It started under the conceit of being a p2p public service, took VC, and its founder bailed and badmouthed it. It's entire existence is ideological, which is why its boosters sound like evangelists.

This is just media promotion, hopefully to bump up user numbers for a week or two, but really so the people who work at the VC firms that put money into this dog have something to show to their bosses.

1 comments

> It's entire life is due to lib slactivism

I'd disagree with that, I'd say its entire life is due to the shittifying of Twitter. People, like myself, sought to recreate the experience of what Twitter used to be like and (after trying and not being satisfied with Mastodon) it's the next best thing. The problem is that a social network of this kind relies on having a large enough population to feel "live" and Bluesky has never got there.

There have been glimmers of hope... during the NBA finals and the World Cup Bluesky felt like a genuine destination for live sports. But it might be too little too late.

I agree (in a way), but I don't think that people who went to Bluesky were trying to recreate twitter, they were trying to silence twitter. The past they are pining for was a past when people they didn't like weren't allowed to speak, and they were hoping (in a non-userlike, political way) that bluesky would threaten twitter, and force it to behave in the way that they preferred or to shut down. Then they would all be able to go back to the ideologically-pruned twitter of their dreams, or twitter would go bankrupt (the bankruptcy narratives were endless) and everyone would move to bluesky.

They were hoping that twitter would go the way of Digg. It's very similar to the fantasy that they had about Reddit after the API shutdown. Slacktivism.

The fact that twitter is as active as ever is why they slink back. I'd bet 90% of actives on bluesky also have twitter accounts that are more active. Twitter didn't care when they walked away; in fact it was a relief. A great many of them were extreme trolls and reply guys who spent the rest of their time mass-reporting people for disagreeing with them.

And for the few people who thought of this as the p2p answer to twitter (an obsession among programming p2p nerds - including me - for a long time) it has to be a disappointment that the company obviously has no intention of relinquishing control of a thing.

I feel like some folks who don’t use Bluesky, evidently yourself included, have this very distinct notion of what a Bluesky user is. All I can tell you is it doesn’t match at all with the experience I have on the service.

You are projecting a lot on this imaginary Bluesky user. You’ve crafted an entire narrative in your head about how egotistical they were and how crushed they are at Twitter still being around. I don’t really know how to respond to creative fiction.

My friend on Bluesky openly said he wanted Twitter gone and he’s been hoping it would die. He’s also a big fan of reporting people on the app.

I’m not put off by his desires but I’m mildly surprised you’re denying him and others existence. Ironically, it feeds into the GP’s “silence” narrative

Anyone can pick a single example of an extreme user. I could pick a virulent antisemite, racist X user and say it represents X as a whole, would you agree with that? I suspect not.

> People, like myself, sought to recreate the experience of what Twitter used to be like

Have you tried X recently? My feed right now is:

- A neat tech bag

- Discussion about AI going rogue

- How fee markets on Hyperliquid work

- Someone who was ill from a viral infection talk about his recovery

- Someone from Team17 talking about the game Worms

It's very much what Twitter used to be like

I haven’t. Bluesky gives me enough of the old Twitter content to satisfy me so I don’t really see a reason to, especially when my dislike for Elon Musk’s politics is strong enough to dissuade me from giving money to him when I can avoid it.