X alternatives - undecided on Bluesky vs Threads

A lot of users are leaving Twitter - not sorry - X, and even though I am not (yet) one of them, I'm going to try and interact on Bluesky and Threads more, while still keeping my X account.

The reason for many users fleeing X is mostly because for them it has turned into an extreme right-wing cesspool of idiots, led by Obergruppenführer Elon Musk.

To be honest, I don't see that much extremist posts in my feed, probably because I am quite the fanatic in curating my Follow list, but also because I have an eclectic mix of left and right, and mostly center view users in that feed, so it seems the algorithm can't quite make sense of it all.

In my opinion you don't need to agree with everything to like each other. To some extend of course, which is exactly what is now making users leave X. Personal attacks and promoting violence is never ok. Trying to influence riots via your platform is even worse.

I don't really see those extremist posts in my feed, but I do read the news and comments, and occasionally some of them get through - is it the algorithm or just a coincidence, who knows. The biggest issue with X as a platform for me the past few years has been the decline in personal engagement. After almost a year without really posting anything on X, I don't see much engagement like in the old days (remember Tweetups?). I mostly use X when I need support from a company that has an online presence. It used to be the best way to get quick support, but now those companies are also leaving. And a lot of press is turning their back on X, trying to find a footing in Bluesky or Threads (or Mastodon, might deserve a separate post). And advertisers. Musk apparently thinks he can decide who must advertise on his platform or not. Sure, whatever.

Ok, so far the intro. Let's compare Bluesky with Threads. First off, I have an account on Threads since the start, but shortly after it got into troubles with the EU and they disabled access to those users. I forgot about Threads but with the recent X-odus, logged back in to the service. For Bluesky, the initial users were invite-only, and I was somewhere in that second to two-thirds batch of users that got invited and could invite others. I think I joined both services in July/August 2023.

Once my account was active on Bluesky I started engaging quite a bit on the service. It had some quirks and bugs, but felt like Twitter 0.5. Quite nice, quite limited and entertaining. Easy to follow feeds of interest. But after some time I got irked by the overly left vibes and correctness. I'm center left-ish, I think, but I certainly have right wing views as well. And as a Gen-X, I don't feel like I should be careful in what I post in the minimal case I may offend anyone. That is your problem, not mine. People are so easily offended these days. So, I stopped using it. Maybe it was because there weren't many people on the platform, but it just didn't feel for me, even though I really like the concept of Bluesky.

Fast forward 10-ish months, August 2024. Lots of hoopla about Nazi-X, and both Bluesky and Threads are back in view. Again.

I'm trying Bluesky again, and this time it feels to have a bit more open, more diverse crowd. Let's say in the week that I'm using it now, no-one has taken offence by my posts. I'll wait and see, in the meantime the team has been constantly adding new features to the service. And due to the openness, 3rd party developers have too. I like deck.blue and Graysky.app a lot, go check them out.

Intermezzo. This X vs other socials really reminds me about WhatsApp and its competitors - mostly Telegram and Signal, but without the right-wing nazis. Whenever there is something that users don't like in WhatsApp - usually some sort of announcement about accounts and privacy - they start using Telegram or Signal only to find out after a few days or weeks that there's no-one they know on those platforms. And they return back to WhatsApp. I'm a big fan of Signal, but I gave up convincing others that it's really the best option (maybe Threema is better, but c'mon, absolutely no-one knows about that).

So, Threads. Which is really not much more than the cute but inbred child of Instagram and Facebook. Every celeb, athlete, or politician that has an Instagram account most likely also has a Threads account, so there is no lack of "content". Apparently there are 200 million users on Threads. Which, well, makes engagement a bit difficult. If you're lucky your post will get caught by the algorithm and pump likes or retweets. But your next post may only get crickets in return. I still haven't figured out the best way to interact on that platform. It feels a bit more loosey-goosey than Bluesky. More (random) quantity, and it feels a bit less on quality. And certainly less journalism and politics - although that may change with so many journos leaving X for Threads. (There is a fairly hidden setting in Instagram about proposed political content that is by default set to limited, which may impact visibility of these posts)

But - the photo and multimedia features on Threads are absolutely brilliant. No wonder there are a lot of photographers on there. The single biggest draw-back of Threads is that it is owned by Meta. But privacy is overrated anyway, isn't it? Threads collects almost everything it can get its creepy hands on, without really making clear for what purpose.

Threads also quietly plays with federation, as long as you're not in the EU that is. Meta is under scrutiny from the EU so things may change for the better or worse in the near future.

Neither service is up to par with X, but Threads seems to be in the lead for ~~best~~ most popular X alternative for the moment. It is a lot easier to get on to Threads and you'll find most of the major news outlets and all those famous people you follow on Instagram. Bluesky is a community that is built from scratch, and growth is tediously slow. It is also more complex to use than Threads. If you know Facebook and Instagram you can use Threads. Bluesky has so many options for users that it can be overwhelming.

I tend to prefer Bluesky more, but keep going back and forth between it and Threads. Mostly because those I already know from Instagram are there, on Bluesky it is mostly new faces, and it feels more like an effort to build a new community of virtual "friends". And I really, really like the photo option in Threads. Maybe even better than Instagram. Hey Bluesky, you're really lacking in that respect.

Decisions, decisions. I guess I'll stick to ~~both~~ all three for now.