Nothin’ but Bluesky

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online where they can hang out instead.

Of all the Twitter-like social platforms to emerge as safe havens for the hordes—Mastodon, T2, Post, Notes—the one with the most buzz is Bluesky. It’s popular because ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is one of the people behind it, but also because it’s still in beta and sign-ups are invitation-only. Scarcity breeds demand. The cool people and internet insiders are already on Bluesky, and they are reporting that the new social network looks an awful lot like Twitter. Also, it’s actually … fun.

This week, we look at Bluesky’s rise and discuss its growing pains. We also ask if any of these fledgeling social networks can ever hope to captivate us the way Twitter has.

Show Notes:

Here’s Kate on why Bluesky is fun. The platform also has a nudes problem. Vittoria Elliott catalogs the current surge in hate speech and propaganda on Twitter. Relatedly, read about how Reddit has dealt with moderation of hate speech and misinformation.

Recommendations:

Kate recommends Middlemarch, the novel by George Eliot. Lauren recommends Baby J, John Mulaney’s latest Netflix special. Mike recommends the album Under the Pink by Tori Amos.

Kate Knibbs can be found on Twitter @Knibbs and does not have any Bluesky invites. Neither does Lauren Goode, who is @LaurenGoode on Twitter. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:00.6	Mike.
0:01.2	Lauren, are you on Blue Sky?
0:03.0	Are you one of the cool people who got an invite?
0:05.2	Of course I am.
0:21.4	I mean, of course I am a person who is on Blue Sky. I'm not saying, of course, I'm cool because that would be a mistruth. But you are. You have powerful friends and you're connected. Yeah, I have to say all these years of just goofing off on Twitter have paid off handsomely because now the other day I was able to just tweet,
0:23.2	anyone have a blue sky invite,
0:38.8	and someone from Blue Sky gave me an invite and now I'm on it. I don't have any invites to give, unfortunately. Otherwise, I'd hook you up, Mike. But yeah, I'm on it. I'm hanging out there now. Okay, so tell me, is it exactly like Twitter? Is it just a Molotov cocktail of shitposts and misogyny?
0:50.6	From a UI perspective, it looks and feels a lot like Twitter. So it gives you a warm feeling if you were a Twitter addict like me when you log on to Blue Sky.
0:56.2	I haven't spent enough time on there yet to say whether or not it's exactly like Twitter and I don't have I'm not following as many people.
0:58.2	I heard there's some content moderation
1:00.2	issues which we should probably talk
1:02.2	about. I am eager to do so.
1:04.6	Let's do it.
1:16.9	Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Colori. I'm a senior editor at Wired.
1:20.5	And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired, and you can find me on Blue Sky.
1:26.1	We are also joined this week by Wired Senior Writer Kate Nibbs. Kate, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me
1:27.7	again. Yay, Kate's back. Always great to have you. In the months since Elon Musk took over
1:35.1	Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other
1:39.6	places online where they can hang out. Because of this, a whole bunch of Twitter-like social platforms have popped up, and now we
1:46.1	have a slew of contenders.
1:47.9	There's T2, there's Mastodon, there's Post, we know a Twitter clone is coming from Instagram
	...

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