[image: image.png] opening thoughts: Bluesky Proves Stagnant Monopolies Are Strangling the Internet One tiny company has the bloated Facebook empire scrambling to respond. Ryan Cooper One bright spot in the bleak year of 2024 was the rise of Bluesky. As someone who relied greatly on Twitter for news and my career—OK, I may have been somewhat addicted—before Elon Musk bought it and turned it into a snake pit of neo-Nazi filth, it was nice to see a Twitter-like replacement rise to relative prominence. I joined in April 2023 <bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com> as about the 47,000th user. Today, Bluesky has about 26 million users <bsky.jazco.dev/stats>, and seems to be growing healthily. It actually has some notable improvements on Twitter, like the “starter pack” function where users can put together a group of accounts that one can follow at once (here’s the starter pack for *Prospect* writers <bsky.app/starter-pack/did:plc:5ckgrxzxfa5wf3lxepnh45s2/3layqwooucf23>, incidentally), or the “nuclear block” where if one participant in a conversation blocks the other, the entire conversation is zapped. This greatly cuts down on Twitter’s culture of aggressive pile-ons and abuse.Unlike any other big platform, Bluesky does not censor posts with outgoing links. Indeed, it does not have any proprietary “for you” algorithm, instead defaulting to a traditional reverse-chronological feed, and allowing users to pick from algorithms that can be developed by others. This has major implications for publishers: Despite its modest size, *The Guardian* reports <pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/bluesky-x-traffic-guardian-boston-globe-news/> that Bluesky traffic has already outstripped that from Twitter, and here at the *Prospect* Bluesky traffic now regularly matches Twitter and is many times that of Facebook.This ability to share outside the platform is proving so popular that Facebook’s Twitter clone, Threads, has belatedly altered its algorithm <www.makeuseof.com/threads-fixes-algorithm-to-combat-bluesky/> to include more posts from accounts you follow in an attempt to compete. And this disruption is being done on a shoestring budget—Bluesky has just 20 employees <www.uniladtech.com/social-media/bluesky-employees-620588-20241122> and about $23 million <techcrunch.com/2024/10/24/bluesky-raises-15m-series-a-plans-to-launch-subscriptions/> in funding, as compared to Meta’s 70,000+ workers <finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-quest-efficiency-sparks-wave-182741841.html> and $156 billion <www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platforms/revenue> in annual revenue.It’s strong evidence that there is a large unmet demand for internet systems outside of the control of Big Tech monopolists. I don’t know if there can be a similar option for every walled garden on the internet—it’s hard to dislodge a giant—but there’s no question that there’s a lot of pent-up demand. — – Listen online at www.wnhnfm.org/live. Listen anytime to the podcast at www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238 <www.podomatic.com/podcasts/staff74238> podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179 tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie- <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Arnesen-p1711842/ <tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Attitude-with-Arnie-Arnesen-p1711842/> Attitude with Arnie Arnesen,Ryan Cooper, The American Prospect, Bluesky,Anders Croy, Florida Watch, DeSantis,Special Session, feud, Legislature, immigration, Commissioner of Agriculture, lame duck, Professor Joshua Shanes, College of Charleston, antisemitism, zionism, Jews, Israel *KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN’T RISE TO THE TOP* – Anonymous
