Howdy, cowpokes. Because of recent events, Bluesky seems to finally be taking off — and there’s no reason why you can’t join in! Follow me here!
However, if you are leaving Twitter because you’re tired of corporate media, and you’re willing to spend 20 minutes figuring out Bluesky, I urge you to take another 20 minutes to figure out Mastodon. Right before the election, Bluesky raised a ton of funding thanks to a crypto company called Blockchain Capital. Bluesky may be friendly to leftists now, but the Blockchain Capital officers are certainly happy Trump won.
On Mastodon, your posts are yours and yours alone. If you don’t like where your posts are hosted, you can move them at any time. (I explain that in the article.)
There’s also ways to be active on all three services, including Threads, which I’ll explain further down.
Bluesky Basics
Your main feed is chronological. That’s it. You’ll see posts by people who followed, their reposts, their replies. Like classic Twitter. There are some other features that are different than Twitter.
- Feeds — Bluesky calls these “algorithms” and they technically are. If you follow a feed, it will be a stream of posts that are configured based on how the creator set it up — usually specific users and some keywords. However, they can be a bit limited. Between the influx of Brazilian users when their Supreme Court ruled against Trump, and the influx of Swifties after the election…well, there are a lot of posts containing the word “Americana” that aren’t necessarily relevant. But feeds are good way to filter posts that are of interest to you! Here are some to follow:
- Y’allternative 2.0
- Music Criticism — A feed I made of music journalists and sites, not limited to Americana
- What’s Popular With Friends — If enough of your mutuals interact with a post, it will be on this feed. A good way to find new accounts you might like
- Mutuals — If Bluesky really does grow, the chronological feed is going to be…a lot. So this could be a good way to filter zero in on your friends’ posts.
- Starter Packs — This is a newer feature where anyone can assemble a group of recommended users and feeds on a given topic. You can click a button that allows you to follow all those accounts at once. Some recommendations:
- Americana/Country Music Starter Pack — Just using this for journalists, some artists, and feeds for now.
- Rolling Stone Writers
- Lists — Not as useful with the advent of Starter Packs and Feeds, but it’s what it sounds like — you can group a bunch of users together in a list. For example, I made a list of users from a Discord I’m on so we could find each other. However, there are also block lists of known alt-right accounts. You can follow these block lists to keep your feed (and yourself) out of sight and out of mind. Click “Subscribe” and “Block Users”
- Domain names — Everyone begins with @name.bsky.social. If you want to be nifty, you can create your own domain. The Swifties are already doing this. This doesn’t matter so much now, but eventually Bluesky will set it up so that people can create their own groups by domain, and presumably a feed just for people in your group. Mastodon already does this, so I don’t want to her any complaints that it’s confusing. The reason why won’t surprise you. I explain in Hedge Your Bets
If you’d like to be on the Americana feed or starter pack, send me a DM!
What’s Wrong With Threads?
If Twitter was the town square, then Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are the bars everyone’s filtered to after the festival ends. Because of its integration with Instagram, Threads seemingly has a built-in audience of people who, shall we say, are content consumers rather than creators. (Hate that word.) However, like Facebook and Instagram, the goal of Threads’ algorithm is to keep you on Threads. Threads actively suppresses posts with outbound links and seems to suppress posts made via a social media scheduler. If you’re a journalist or musician, that’s a big fucking problem!!!
Meanwhile, Bluesky has committed to sharing outbound links. Likewise, Mastodon does not have an algorithm and your outbound links will be shared, albeit with a smaller audience.
Moreover, there is no way to access a chronological timeline on Threads. Even the “Following” tab is not a true chronological timeline. If you’re hoping a post goes beyond your mutuals, the only way that seems to happen is if the algorithm happens to latch on to a specific word or phrase. Rainbow Rodeo gained over 1000 followers this weekend because I mentioned Chappell Roan’s new song. If even 500 of them were real people (because Threads already has bots), they’re not engaging with my subsequent posts because, again, anything made with a scheduler is de-ranked.
If you’re a musician, that means the best way to get people’s attention on there is to a) already be famous or b) constantly chase whatever keywords are trending. Nobody wants to do that.
And, in terms of just posting whatever comes to mind, that means your posts can fly across Threads with absolutely no context. On Twitter, if I shitpost about the election, someone who knows me and gets my vibe retweeted it, then it may get retweeted from there. On Threads, everyone assumes you are being 1000% earnest and that’s annoying as fuck. Moreover, it’s not necessarily safe.
Hedge Your Bets
Threads and Bluesky are still very new, and Mastodon is still figuring out how to draw in users. If Threads is the fake Irish bar that thinks Blue Moon beers are edgy, and Bluesky is the hipster dive bar that serves drinks in found objects, then Mastodon is the quiet cafe where you can have a conversation. You can find and build an audience on any of them, but we are only given so much time on this mortal coil so it’s worth checking them all out to decide which is most enjoyable for you as a user.
The OpenVibes App allows you to combine your Bluesky, Mastodon and, eventually, Threads posts into one feed. You can also currently access your Bluesky feeds as separate tabs there. Importantly, you can crosspost to all three using the app, which Threads does not seem to read as a social media scheduler.
As I said, eventually all three of these networks will interface with each other. Mastodon and Threads operate on something called ActivityPub, while Bluesky is re-inventing the wheel with its proprietary ATProtocol. Basically, Bluesky is like using iMessage while Mastodon and Threads are like using text messaging. They’ll talk to each other but won’t always play nice.
At some point in 2025, Threads and Mastodon will fully integrate. (For now, Mastodon users can only see Threads accounts that have opted in to sharing there, and Threads users can’t see Mastodon posts at all.) But what’s the point?
Remember those domain names I mentioned before? The Fediverse is particularly juicy to Zuck because if individuals set up their own communities and moderation rules, Facebook will no longer be responsible for content moderation, which they’ve long since abdicated doing anyway. This is also what’s attractive about ATProtocol and presumably why Blockchain Capital is interested in Bluesky: all of these networks can be used by any kind of user — including the ones we hate — and the hosts can simply wash their hands of it and leave it to the users to self-moderate.
So come to Bluesky, but please also consider making a Mastodon account. You’re probably already using a social media scheduler, so just add Mastodon on to whatever service you use. There’s a possibility Bluesky will not live up to our expectations when it comes to corporate involvement, and Mastodon avoids a lot of that.