Well they certainly have experienced a public relations bonanza over the past week. However:

BlueSky: 13 Million users

X.com: 500 Million users

The article is about enjoying the one more than the other.

The author plainly doesn't like ol' Musky, but there isn't really a winner vs loser distinction made in the article. To the extent there is, it gives the winner label to other services, not Bluesky.

Sadly it’s really hard to distinguish users and bots (on both platforms) - or even impossible. Maybe in the future there is just a social network populated with bots…

I would challenge you to surface metrics that better measure the utility of a vibrant online discussion platform. For example, how many users does HN have?

Bluesky: 21.6 Million users

and counting.

https://bcounter.nat.vg/

You’re out by about 8mn on Bluesky

More interesting would be active users especially those who follow each mutually and engage with each other

I would add, especially in the case of Twitter, active users that aren't bots, OF advertisers, scammers, and the like. A LOT of Twitter feels like machines talking to each other.

It almost seems like NYT is favoring one of these platforms over the other.

It's a column with a byline, making it reasonable to take it as the opinion of the author.

Of course they can take a stance by choosing what to publish, but that probably isn't what is going on here.

An opinion piece, expressing an opinion? WELL I NEVER.

The reaction from journalists and others who are unhappy with the election, to desperately try and create an echo chamber for the political left, is misguided. People should be able to exchange their views freely and hear from those that they disagree with. Twitter/X offers that, and it is better today than in the past due to features like community notes and significantly lower censorship. Bluesky comes with a default opt-out censorship that makes it unserious out of the box.

The thing is, some of us are sick of hearing from an endless stream of stupid arseholes, and welcome the easy ability to filter them out. I gather this is rather annoying to the stupid arseholes (they show up, whining, from time to time, before the blocklists catch up), but, y’know, who cares?

I was on Twitter for 17 years (admittedly, I didn’t use the account for the last two years of that), and the stupid arsehole problem just got worse, and worse, and worse… Until a little over two years ago, when the stupid arsehole-in-chief abruptly made it _dramatically_ worse. I reckon I have done my time, at this point. I do not _wish_ to hear from an endless parade of idiots. Sorry. Done with that.

There are generally two ways this argument works: “all opinions are equally valid”, or “Not all opinions are equally valid, but listening to the same invalid opinions, over and over, for decades, is in some way morally improving”. Sorry, but both of these are bullshit. Like, there is not much originality. About 50% of it is “haha, trans people are bad, what a funny joke”, just like it has been for the entirety of this _century_.

You know many many people stopped posting or reading Twitter because it became a hostile place and the growth on bots and spammers didn’t help either?

We didn’t all go to Bluesky because we want a political echo chamber… we went there because our communities of interest went there, we want to be able to discuss our interests without others turning it cesspit of polarisation

Meh. How many Nazis and trolls do you want to hear from today? People can go where they want.

can we stop with the bluesky spam already?