Date: March 17, 2025
The answer to Bluesky's inconsistent moderation was right in front of us.
Previously, I wrote about recent Bluesky moderation controversies, in particular about Jesse Singal, who is disliked among trans people and leftists for concern trolling over transgender issues, but liked among liberals as he is very successful at promoting himself as a legitimate journalist. Jesse Singal himself isn't relevant to this post as he is merely a symptom of Bluesky's alignment with liberal values, instead of the leftist values many people seem to think Bluesky is aligned with.
At first, even I was initially mistaken that this was some kind of policy change. The reality is that, for leftists, the company is and has always been an adversary; it is a capitalist business operating by capitalist rules, which, for example, includes letting leftists join in the hopes of taking their money, platforming right wingers that aren't publicly espousing fascist beliefs (free marketplace of ideas!), and letting very popular people say what they please, even if it violates their Community Guidelines. This is generally true of all companies, not just Bluesky Social PBC.
In spite of the above, the userbase does have some power. While it seems that Jesse Singal is here to stay, the prominent art community is likely the only reason Bluesky says it will never train generative AI models on their users data. If it weren't for them, I believe Bluesky would've done so, and also add a generative AI chatbot for their premium subscription just like Twitter does.
There are few, if any, extant social media outlets that could be considered leftist, in part because of how the world is. The main leftist social media platform I think of is cohost, which shut down at the beginning of the year due to a lack of funding and burnout. The creators of cohost, the Anti Software Software Club, were unwilling to obtain funding in any meaningful way. Relying on subscriptions tends not to work well when your userbase consists of primarily queer and other marginalized people, which tend to be poorer on average due to systemic discrimination. cohost also refused to run ads on the site or accept any form of venture capital, and as a result of all of those factors, the site never turned a profit and was shut down.
ActivityPub-based platforms like Mastodon or Misskey aren't leftist per-se; the political leaning of the instance is determined by the server owner and so it could be leftist, "neutral" or even outright fascist if the instance is being ran by neo-Nazis. Leftist instances of Mastodon and similar inherent the problems of ActivityPub's lack of decentralized identifiers and credible exit, features that atproto has, so I don't think ActivityPub is the best foundation for a new social media platform.
The decentralization possibilities of atproto, -- the underlying technology that powers Bluesky -- also created by Bluesky Social PBC, does have the potential to power a truly leftist microblogging service, but Bluesky is not, and was likely never intended to be such a site. I am hopeful one day an atproto powered leftist social media platform will emerge, to save the leftist userbase when Bluesky has fully turned on them, though time will tell what existing social media platform it will most resemble.
Regardless of who you are, if you have a Bluesky (or more accurately an atproto) account, you should migrate it away from Bluesky's infrastructure, and onto a PDS that you run, or one ran by someone you trust. The ability to store all your account's data in a separate location from the platform, and to move your account to another PDS at will is, in my opinion the greatest feature of atproto. Even if you never want to touch Bluesky again, you should move your account, and then deactivate it. Then when the atproto powered leftist social media is available, you can reactivate the account and start using it, and if the platform supports it, import your followers and posts.