Bluesky is in trouble

The fascists are coming

I left Twitter in August, 2023, because I wanted nothing to do with the racist, antisemitic megalomaniac who bought it.

I turned to Threads, even though I was kind of uncertain if Mark Zuckerberg was actually human. (As long as he wasn’t a full blown fascist, right?) It wasn’t until election night that I realized he was no better than Nazi saluting Elon Musk when it came to manipulating the electorate to swing the election to Donald Trump.

So I needed a new social media home. I’ve been at Bluesky since November, part of the massive post-election influx there. I like it so far. More news, more analysis of current events, less garbage in my feed. And a real sense of kinship.

But for how long?

If there is one lesson these fascists learned from Hitler, it’s how to control the message. Musk turned Twitter into a right wing firehose of racist, antisemitic, pro- Trump garbage. Zuckerberg used his massive reach to throttle news so most people never saw real analysis of policy on Threads, Facebook and Instagram. And they kept the truth from millions of voters, enough to inch Trump back into the White House

That’s how powerful controlling the message can be.

And that’s why Bluesky is in trouble. It is not controlled by Musk or Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or China or Putin. Not yet, anyway.

But does anybody believe it won’t be at some point? Does anyone think they won’t try to pressure it or control it or eliminate it?

Those who believe it can’t happen given the way it is designed probably didn’t believe that Musk could take control of the Treasury payment system and unilaterally eliminate government programs at will.

The oligarchs have sent us scrambling for the past two years to find a way to meet and disseminate and discuss current events. Now that enough of us have landed at Bluesky, how long before they decide it is a legitimate threat?

Do we have another Plan B?