I’m happy to announce that I’m leaving X/Twitter and have instead signed up for Bluesky (@greenstarsproject). I’ll explain later why Bluesky is a good alternative to X and also to Meta apps such as Instagram. I thought I was slow to make this switch but it’s actually still early days – even Barack Obama signed up just the day before me! That begs the question – what are we waiting for?

Shutting down your X/Twitter account is an easy and effective action* to protest Elon Musk’s behavior, both in and out of government. If you do have a large following (or even a small following, like me) on X, then ask them to switch with you. I plan to leave up a last Tweet on X, announcing my move to Bluesky, for a little while before I close my account.

Switching might seem like a sacrifice but isn’t it better to be on the right side of history? Actually, having finished my research now, I don’t think it’ll be a sacrifice at all, in the long run. Bluesky offers many benefits, especially for people like me who don’t enjoy social media in its current forms. Also, the sooner you switch, the easier it will be to build up a presence/following on Bluesky.

*This should go without saying: don’t vandalize other people’s Tesla cars – this only turns people against each other.  But by all means sell your Tesla stock if you own any. I may do a future post on investment funds that exclude Tesla, and other contentious stocks such as Meta. You can already find some info on this topic if you do some research online.

Before getting around to Bluesky, I’ll do a condensed look at how Twitter/X has changed over the last five years.

The social impact of X/Twitter

Even back in 2021 (pre-Musk) research published in one of the most prestigious science journals (PNAS) demonstrated a right bias in Twitter. The paper, Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter, was written by members of Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability Team at Twitter, who also held positions at Cambridge, University College London, and UC Berkeley. Here is their key finding:

First, we studied tweets by elected legislators from major political parties in seven countries. Our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend: In six out of seven countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left.

It’s all about the algorithm

Here’s a quote from the same paper, explaining how Twitter changed in 2016, introducing an algorithm:

When first established as a service, Twitter used to present individuals with content from accounts they followed, arranged in a reverse chronological feed. In 2016, Twitter introduced machine learning algorithms to render tweets on this feed called Home timeline based on a personalized relevance model.

But the funny thing is that even though Twitter was favoring right-wing posts by 2021, it was still disliked by Republicans. It wasn’t until after Musk took over in 2022 that they began to like it, according to a poll from Pew Research. Here are the results from that poll, showing how things shifted from 2021 to 2023:

What does this tell us? The scientifically-established “higher algorithmic amplification” of right-wing views was not enough for Republicans in 2021. It needed to be amplified more, drowning out the moderates and left-leaning folk, before things looked “normal” to the right.

Musk takes over Twitter (and changes the name to X)

I had forgotten how many levels of chaos there were to Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022. I don’t think he cared how much he messed up the company as his goal was simply to buy one of the world’s biggest megaphones and then broadcast his opinion. The likelihood of an internal transparency/accountability team publishing another scientific study on algorithmic amplification at X, while Musk is in charge, is almost zero.

On Oct. 28, Musk officially consummates the acquisition, takes over Twitter and promptly fires key executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and policy director Vijaya Gadde. – NBC.

Vijaya Gadde’s role included handling issues such as harassment, misinformation, and harmful speech, and other decisions made by Twitter. In 2019 she convinced then-CEO Jack Dorsey not to sell political advertisements during the 2020 United States presidential election – Wikipedia.

All of this is mirrored by what’s going on across American government institutions right now, right down to the Fork in the Road letters.

Sure enough, Musk made good use of the megaphone that he paid billions for. A recent trending graphic shows the top 25 accounts on X, based on post views. They are colored red/blue based on whether views are right/left (politically) and the size of the bubble is proportional to the number of views – the huge red bubble is Elon Musk.

Musk promotes the far-right in Germany

You probably remember Musk’s strange salute after being called to lead DOGE. Meanwhile, the EU has been investigating X for over a year now, for illegally promoting far-right views on the platform.

X has been under investigation since December 2023 under the EU’s content law – known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) – over how it tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation. The company has been accused of manipulating the platform’s systems to give far-right posts and politicians greater visibility over other political groups.

Musk has angered many on the continent with attacks on its leaders as well as expressions of support for Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. – The Guardian

Why switch to Bluesky?

Here’s a video showing Bluesky CEO Jay Graber discussing the future of social media. It’s a long video so I’ve fast forwarded to parts that are most relevant to people wondering how useful Bluesky might be to them, or much they can trust the company.

If you’re wondering about the T-shirt that she wore for the interview, here’s the story on that:

Zuckerberg’s shirt declared, Aut Zuck aut nihil, which means “Zuck or nothing.” Zuckerberg is referencing the Latin phrase Aut Caesar aut nihil, drawing a direct parallel between the controversial Roman dictator and himself. Graber’s shirt says Mundus sine Caesaribus, or, “a world without Caesars.” – TechCrunch

If you watch the video, you’ll see how Bluesky is an open network, designed to be highly customizable, providing many benefits to users and also protection from it becoming a tool for a mega-rich maniac such as Zuck or Musk.

Ethical features of Bluesky

Here are some features of Bluesky that make it inherently more ethical and trustworthy than X/Twitter or the social media apps from Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).

Bluesky is registered as a benefit corporation.

A benefit corporation is a legal structure that allows businesses to pursue both profit and a defined public benefit, such as environmental sustainability or social impact, with increased transparency and accountability. You may be familiar with this concept from Patagonia, which is also a benefit corporation:

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, has written “Benefit corporation legislation creates the legal framework to enable companies like Patagonia to stay mission-driven through succession, capital raises, and even changes in ownership, by institutionalizing the values, culture, processes, and high standards put in place by founding entrepreneurs. – Wikipedia.

Bluesky is, by design, aligned with user interests

Apps such as X and those provided by Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) become successful by keeping users locked into their platform, creating something close to a monopoly. Bluesky was originally under development at Twitter and then, in response to Musk’s hostile takeover in 2022, was spun off as a more ethical alternative.

Bluesky is an open network (open communications protocol) that’s specifically designed so that we can access the same Bluesky network through many apps (and the code is also open-source). What’s an open protocol? Think of it like the internet (HTTP) or phone networks that can be used by many different parties. In other words, if the main Bluesky app becomes annoying (e.g., a horrible algorithm, no control, too many ads) then users can move to a different application and keep their Bluesky identity and data.

This creates an alignment between Bluesky and its users – Bluesky is disincentivized to make a bad user experience. (Compare that to X or Meta, which actually provide a horribly restrictive user experience). This also acts as a kind of poison pill against a billionaire takeover, or at least a deterrent against it.

I think that society starts to reflect the structure of its dominant form of communication. And so you need a communications infrastructure that is democratic and gives people a choice, lets people intervene and change it to suit their own needs and preferences. – Jay Graber, speaking at SXSW in March 2025.

Users can create their own experience

One of the two default settings on Bluesky is to see only posts from people you follow. Then, if you go to discovery mode, you can use various filters, etc., to create your own experience.

In the video above, Jay Graber lists the ways to customize your experience on Bluesky as: custom feeds, composable moderation, self-hosting, and alternative apps. An example of a custom feed is to select quiet posters, which will show only posts from people you follow who post infrequently. Or you can completely limit your feed to, for example, only science posts and cat pictures. Forms of moderation include filtering out political posts or AI-generated images.

Because Bluesky is open protocol, anyone can build an app that plugs in to its network. This allows users to have different experiences that are independent of the main Bluesky app but that include all of their Bluesky contacts.

An example of alternative apps, given by Jay in the video above is Flashes, which lays out your photos artwork in a grid pattern (Flashes is not yet available on Android but Pinksky does something similar). So, for an example, an artist with little interest in a Twitter-like experience can use an independent app, such as Flashes or Pinksky, with their Bluesky network of people. Things are just getting started so you can be sure that there will be many more to follow, challenging and hopefully replacing the monopolies created by Zuck and Musk.

Bluesky already gives you the tools to weed out all the stuff that can make social media obnoxious. Because of this, and because X and the Meta apps are going to become even more obnoxious pretty darn soon, I think that Bluesky is the best bet for the future of social media. 

It’s not X/Twitter or Meta!

Well, this is the number one reason why Bluesky is the ethical choice. Almost any social network is better than X/Twitter or the Meta apps. I’m going to cover Meta in a future post because we sometimes forget just how awful some of these companies have become.

It’s becoming unconscionable to support X/Twitter or the Meta apps any more. Alternatives must be found and it turns out that Bluesky has the potential to replace several of them, all at once.

See you on Bluesky!