Bluesky is the social media platform to which woke leftists, and their media buddies, have been flocking in recent months. Account creation has accelerated rapidly in the wake of Donald Trump’s election day victory over Kamala.
They are leaving Twitter/X because they find it intolerable due to Elon Musk, the owner’s, support and involvement in the new President-Elect.
Among the specific reasons they’ve given for fleeing to what they feel are safer spaces are that Musk is not as quick to throttle/ban supposedly offensive and threatening content, something they say has only gotten worse since November 5th.
Jesse Singal is an independent journalist who tried out Bluesky. Singal says that he wasn’t looking for an alternative because he feared different viewpoints, but rather because he no longer found Twitter/X engaging or fun. He also was not a huge fan of Elon Musk.
Singal has been using Twitter/X for some time, but he decided to visit Bluesky early in December. He found that it was even worse than his critics had claimed.
It is a very angry place, as I quickly discovered. In part due to a culture of impunity among its users when it comes to violent threats, it appears as a potentially hazardous one. This is something X or Twitter never did in the decade plus that I actively used this platform. Bluesky either has a deliberate policy of ignoring serious threats of violent violence or its moderators cannot protect against them.
I have become a symbol of bigotry and hate to activists, online trolls, and advocacy groups like GLAAD who spread misinformation about the supposed safety and effectiveness of these treatments and try to punish journalists such as Abigail Shrier just for covering this controversy.
Bluesky seems to have attracted an especially high number of trolls. Some of them made sure that I didn’t feel welcomed even before I got on the platform.
Here are some receipts from his account (via this thread).
Last but not least (Language Warning)
The screenshots that he sent were too offensive and disgusting to be posted here.
A Twitter/X user replied to Singal’s thread, stating that “I had created an account and spent perhaps half a day looking around.” “I’ve never witnessed such deranged hate in my life.”
This was also my experience after I created my social media account (for research). That’s quite a feat considering the amount of hate directed at me on various platforms, including death and rape threat messages over the years.
We previously reported how cringe-worthy “tech reporter” Taylor Lorenz was comfortable enough using Bluesky to say that she had little sympathy for the murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, because “people have an extremely justified hatred towards insurance company CEOs.”
On any social media website, you will find stupidity and ignorance. You’ll also see crudeness, grotesque callousness, and violent rhetoric.
But when the bad stuff becomes the rule more so than the exception, you’ve got a problem. A big one. And that goes double for left-wing havens like Bluesky, which have been promoted by their defenders as warm, welcoming places that are tolerant of disagreement but which at the end of the day will attack non-conformists like a pack of wolves until there’s nothing left.
Keep this in mind when you hear about “smart set” people who are cutting ties to Twitter/X because they cannot handle the “hate”, they believe Elon Musk encourages. You’d think that if they truly despise hatred, they would not go to Bluesky, which is, as Singal said, “an incubator for deranged discussion and death threats”.
They are still there. This is an inconvenient fact (for them), which confirms that they don’t hate “hate”, but rather anyone who dared to challenge their false narratives or agendas, and refused to be punished for it.
