Threads Drives 73.6% More Engagement Than X

Competition makes life better, is my point of view. I started using electronic communication around 1985 when I got a 300 baud modem and I was dialing into BBS [1] with a TRS-80 Color Computer with a 32-column wide screen.

My expectation since then was that every few years there was going to be a new scene, at any given time I'd be involved in a few scenes, sometimes old scenes were going to fall away.

This cycle seemed to be interrupted around the time Facebook (and Twitter) came around. Some of it might be that normies aren't so inclined to be multi-scene. Some of it is that Zuckerberg knew what happened to MySpace and ever since he's been terrified that it will happen to Facebook. He know it's a matter of time, which is why he is "all in" on VR.

I've heard a lot about journalists, professors and other lefty "expert" types who feel stuck on X because that is where their audience is, they've been driven to Bluesky in waves and Bluesky has been giving them a lot of visibility with the algorithmic feed [2]

I think the basic problem is that these people think they have to commit to one platform, I think the real answer is

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

and that people should cultivate audiences across many platforms. I think people who were making the most in social in 2011 were thinking this way (it was the age you could get funding for something like id.me)

I think Bluesky is the best thing going. The best think about it is that they are not suppressing outside links (yet) so it fits the POSSE lifestyle. Actually I like the Threads approach to moderation that is even harsher about suppressing emotionally negative viral content but I don't like the anti-link policy. I'd be on that too, but for some reason they won't let me make an Instagram account and I don't know why.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

[2] People think it's doesn't have one, but it does. Until two weeks ago I really loved my "Discover" feed because it was 75% less toxic (I looked at a N=100 sample) than my "Following" feed. In the past two weeks it has been overwhelmed with politics, particularly it seems to be including a sub-stream of posts from authors who also show up in a "suggested users" you can follow. It's trying hard to help these people get an audience and get their posts read in the immediate term so they feel like they can switch.

I sure hope they quit showing me politics in my "Discover" feed because there is only so much I can take thoug.

bluesky isn't ideal either with it's lacking attitude towards free speech, not that twitter is perfect. Unfortunate that every tech platform is marred by some flavor of crazy these days.