I took a closer look at Bluesky. The good, the bad, the ugly.

I'll get the good out of the way first, because the rest is not going to be so pleasant.

It doesn't appear to be purely puritanical. I shouldn't be having to pat a techbro on the back for being scared of sex. Unfortunately, I do.

Some of these terms appear inspired by... QAnon, and are very vague... And suspicious.

This is a big red flag. Rather unsurprising, given that Jack Dorsey interacts with and promotes very right wing figures.

As for hate speech, Bluesky also seems not to like that, and while you might not like hate speech, it's another case where some techbro has decided what to and what not to allow based on his personal whims.

Hate speech is also very vague. Is a joke "hate speech"? Or language lacking hateful intent? What about minor cases against more major cases? Is it proportionate? How much time will they spend chasing these?

How do they moderate these at scale? Also, are some topics off limits because they might result in more hate?

While Bluesky tries to point to federation to side-step these tricky questions a centralized platform might have to answer, they fundamentally can't.

It is not federated. No number of promises about how federation will be added in the future will change the fact it is not federated.

It is questionable whether it will be. If the possibility of someone picking an offensive username is a "scandal", how would they react, if there was federation?

Bluesky tries to bury you in technobabble, crypto jargon, and vague promises. Since the founder is a cryptobro, this is not so surprising.

This doesn't change the fundamentally weak value proposition it currently offers. If this was 2021 or 2022, the value proposition would be even weaker.