Bluesky: Pretender to Twitter’s throne, or the future of social media?

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If there’s one thing we can all probably agree on, it’s that the world doesn’t really need another big social media platform to emerge right now.

So, naturally, that’s exactly what we’re getting.

It’s called Bluesky, and it’s being backed by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter.

But how does it work, and who is it targeting?

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Allyn Robins, a senior consultant at technology policy think tank Brainbox, tells Newsable it appears to draw considerably on Dorsey’s prior workplace.

“It’s pitch is basically: it’s Twitter, again, but with a twist. You do all the Twitter stuff that people love to do, you post tweets … you reply to people, you get in pointless arguments.

“But this time it’s not just a central social media platform. It’s what they call a decentralised protocol.

“Right now, that makes no difference. But eventually, in the future, they promise you will be able to set up your own servers for people to post on – you’ll be able to build your own apps on top of the framework that they have built … but right now, it’s basically just Twitter as it was in about 2012.”

Bluesky is currently in its testing phase, meaning people can join through invitation only.

As such, it’s mainly populated by US tech people, with a few journalists and politicians on there too.

But Robins says another, ungovernable breed of Bluesky user has also migrated to the platform: the formidable ‘shitposters’.

“There is a bit of a civil war going on, it seems … between people who want to use it to talk about their days and exchange news and grow their careers, and people who want to post about buttholes and killing ET with hammers.”

Robins says while the platform will develop significantly over the coming months, it will have to grapple with the same broader issues as platforms like Twitter and Facebook, namely content moderation.

“People are gonna start posting some heinous stuff, some illegal stuff, some stuff that isn’t necessarily illegal but will drive away people from wanting to use the platform, and Bluesky … have not yet faced a lot of the challenges that other social media platforms have to.”

On the bright side, Dorsey at least has some understanding of what those issues might be.

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