is this possible for a social media platform to plan its own death? I’ve been thinking about that while enjoying Bluesky’s “bubbly, trashy energy,” as my WIRED colleague Kate Knibbs described the (still) invite-only Twitter alternative a few months ago. The shitposting, the sincerity, the bad takes of newbies trying to get the vibe. (Friendly advice: don’t come here to say bad things about the public library.) I wasn’t there at the birth of Twitter, but I’m told Bluesky feels a bit like supplanting the noisy early days of the platform it was intended to use .
Bluesky users have become ardent defenders of this beautiful chaos — especially this week, when millions signed up for Meta’s new Twitter clone, Threads — but they’re also purveyors of tough love. My feed is filled with grumbling about bugs, discussions about what constitutes a banish death threat, and requests for answers from the platform’s CEO about why the terms of service read like you’re giving up your life rights. The grumbling, I think, shows that people care about you. And so far, Bluesky’s leaders have largely listened. The decline of Twitter has left us all stranded on a deserted island. Now we are building a ship together to disembark. Some of the volunteers may seem a bit high, but it’s a good time on the beach and she’s looking more seaworthy by the day.
Funny, then, that this fast-growing social media app isn’t really supposed to exist. In 2019, when then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first tweeted the name Bluesky, the idea was not to build a platform that would compete with Twitter, but a decentralized protocol that would take over Twitter, among others. That would create a system of “federated” servers or platforms, run by different organizations with different rules and policies that could nevertheless work together. Users on Twitter can talk to people on other services compatible with Bluesky and, if necessary, move their digital identity elsewhere.
There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical. The idea that Twitter would voluntarily relinquish its power to monitor (and monetize) its users seemed laughable. To me, then a cynical crypto reporter, “decentralized” suggested a weird Bitcoin thing. (Dorsey was especially excited about digital currencies at the time.) During the 2020 election season and the associated calls to regulate social media, it sounded more like a convenient way to shrug off tough moderation decisions.
Then came Musk and the new Twitter. The stakes have changed. For starters, the destabilizing acquisition brought up that when we’re sowing our seeds into new digital territory, it’s important to keep the garden gate open. It also cut the Bluesky project apart from Twitter, so the leaders started working on their own social app to let people use the federated network known as the AT protocol. Suddenly they were building what was essentially Twitter 2.0, all the while building the protocol that would, in theory, keep Twitter 2.0 from suffering the same fate as the original.
A word for that fate – used, I’ve noticed, by some Bluesky developers – is “enshittification.” Writer Cory Doctorow coined the term last year to describe how for-profit digital platforms, such as social networks or online marketplaces, end up suffocating themselves. First, often equal to investors’ money, a platform treats its users nicely. It helps you build a following and integrate yourself into a network. Once the user base is comfortably established, the platform changes the rules, aiming to maximize profits. The difference between technical monopolists and, for example, railway barons, explains Doctorow, is how quickly they can turn the knobs. Post-Musk Twitter offers examples: Suddenly you lose your ability to reach your audience without paying a fee, as for Twitter Blue, or you can’t see what you want because of a jumble of ads. There’s no story. Users are abused in more malicious ways as the platform pursues more profit, until a breaking point is reached and it becomes unusable. The platform kills itself.
