If Big Tech social platforms are junk food and the Fediverse is a healthy home-cooked meal, then what is Bluesky?
Last week I published an article that proposed a new way to explain the Fediverse to people not familiar with it using… food analogies:
I’m cutting to the chase and revealing my theory up front: I actually think Bluesky is just like the "Impossible Burger" – a plant-based burger patty engineered to taste like a real meat-based burger.
The Impossible Burger on paper: – great for the environment and "delicious" – trendy, as it enjoyed incredible media hype when it was first unveiled – appealing because it replicates a taste many are already familiar with. In reality the Impossible Burger is another highly processed food product that is not healthy if consumed on a daily basis.
Similarly, Bluesky is being hailed as revolutionary, the next generation of social media with custom feeds and stackable moderation. It’s being touted as decentralized, where people can control their data and identities and move them elsewhere should a hostile owner take over. Bluesky is currently enjoying incredible media hype, with coverage in mainstream media outlets the world over and media organizations moving to it en masse. In reality Bluesky is a network with centralized architecture that makes moving impossibly difficult. And centralization aside, Bluesky still has the same addictive features of X and other text-based social platforms.
Bluesky is a social network created in 2019, spawned from Twitter (now X) in 2021. It is based on the AT Protocol with a composable user experience, stackable moderation and custom algorithmic feeds. Its big promise: decentralization, or: the ability to fully own one’s data and move to a different server, if a user so chooses. Let’s emphasize the word “promise” because as we’ll see later, this is a mirage.
