Some friends are asking if I'll go to Bluesky. I don't want to, for reasons I'll explain. But people there can follow me at

@bsky.brid.gy

And if you're on Bluesky and follow @ap.brid.gy and let me know, I should be able to follow you from here. Details to follow, including my problems with Bluesky.

(1/n)

To bridge your Mastodon account to Bluesky, just follow @bsky.brid.gy. That account will then follow you back. Accept its follow and your Mastodon posts will get sent to Bluesky. If your Mastodon account is @[user]@[instance], your bridged account will have the handle [user].[instance].ap.brid.gy in Bluesky.

(2/n)

To bridge your Bluesky account to Mastodon, just follow @ap.brid.gy. If you're a Bluesky user and your name there is [user], your bridged account will have the handle @[user]@bsky.brid.gy on Mastodon.

I've been saying "Mastodon" but all this should work for other fediverse accounts too.

(3/n)

The system is clunky in some ways, e.g. if you reply to my posts on Bluesky I definitely won't see the replies here unless you bridge your Bluesky account to Mastodon. Also the character limit for me is 1729 while on Bluesky it's a measly 300. I'm keeping these posts short, but often I ramble on.

Why don't I just go to Bluesky?

(4/n)

I put a lot of work into my posts! I worked for free for Google+ and then Twitter. By now I'm tired of doing free work for big corporations. If they didn't disappear (Google+) or go fascist (Twitter) I might not mind... if it were not for the inevitable trend toward "enshittification".

(5/n)

While the CEO of Bluesky, Jay Graber, has good intentions, she doesn't own the company. Bluesky's operation is funded by investors who are pumping in money now, but hope to get more back eventually. At that point, Bluesky will start getting worse.

(6/n)

I can't do better than quote @pluralistic:

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."

(7/n)

I urge you to read @pluralistic's essay on Bluesky:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

I'll quote a bit, in tiny bite-sized nuggets that fit on Bluesky.

(8/n)

"I would like to use Bluesky. They've done a bunch of seriously interesting technical work on moderation and ranking that I truly admire, and I've got lots of friends there who really enjoy it."

(9/n)

"But I'm not on Bluesky and I don't have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/"

(10/n)

"When a platform can hold the people you care about or rely upon hostage – when it can credibly threaten you with disconnection and exile – that platform can abuse you in lots of ways without losing your business. In other words, they can enshittify their service:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess "

(11/n)

"I appreciate that the CEO of Bluesky, Jay Graber, has evinced her sincere intention never to enshittify Bluesky and I believe she is totally sincere:

https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-wont-enshittify-ads/ "

(12/n)

"But here's the thing: all those other platforms, the ones where I unwisely allowed myself to get locked in, where today I find myself trapped by the professional, personal and political costs of leaving them, they were all started by people who swore they'd never sell out. I know those people, the old blogger mafia who started the CMSes, social media services, and publishing platforms where I find myself trapped."

(13/n)

"I considered them friends (I still consider most of them friends), and I knew them well enough to believe that they really cared about their users.

They did care about their users. They just cared about other stuff, too, and, when push came to shove, they chose the worsening of their services as the lesser of two evils."

(14/n)

And that's how it goes. Read the whole story here:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

So I'd rather not hop onto the next sinking ship, even though lots of my friends are there, and I hear the buffet and entertainment are great... for now.

(15/n, n = 15)