The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is the regulator for vaccines and medicine in the European Union (EU), has stopped using the social media platform X. The website is owned by Elon Musk, who is an important ally of the newly elected United States president Donald Trump. The EMA, whose headquarters are based in Amsterdam, is currently the only EU organization to leave the platform.
Out of the frying pan, into
the fire.yet another frying pan.Are you implying Bluesky is worse? Because that’s what that idiom means.
No, not worse. It’s just not decentralized in a meaningful sense, so it suffers from the same enshittification problems that have killed Twitter, Reddit, BoingBoing, Digg, Slashdot…
Fundamentally, it’s not any worse, but it’s not any better either.
Well… Bluesky was founded by the same sort of techbro culture that spawned Xitter, but hit hasn’t gone full incel fash fanboy like Xitter. So maybe it’s more “Out of the fire, into the frying pan, then back into the fire” because I’m pretty sure Bluesky will follow Twitters trajectory.
Twitter truly went to shit when Musk bought them, and I doubt anything quite like that will happen any time soon, especially considering the huge loss in value since the takeover.
But hasn’t yet and that’s good enough for me right now. I’m not interested in letting perfect be the enemy of good.
In what way?
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
https://torment-nexus.mathewingram.com/is-bluesky-decentralized-its-complicated/
Basically, Bluesky is not functionally decentralized, so it’s just another platform destined for either failure or enshittification.
So moving from a platform run by a far right, nazi saluting Jackass, to a platform that is building it’s user base at X’s expense is a step backwards?
Also, Bluesky is run mostly by former Twitter employees, so they know exactly what will happen if they follow in their footsteps.
Bluesky is a step sideways, not forward or back. It kicks the can down the road a few years, but the fundamental concept is doomed. It has been tried, time and time again, and the inevitable result is gross enshittification.
Given how many social media companies have collapsed over the years because they made their service worse, and their user base migrated en masse to other platforms, I don’t think it’s inevitable at all. Senior execs will be well aware of the consequences of that type of behaviour.
Don’t forget, Bluesky is rising out of the ashes of Twitter, which is a spectacular example of what not to do, and something shareholders will be terrified of.
To which I would respond:
…it doesn’t seem that “senior execs” are capable of learning the necessary lessons. Quite the contrary, the “senior execs” and most of the (early) shareholders of all these failed companies seem to be doing quite well for themselves, long after the companies have gone belly up.
Even if they are capable of learning, they don’t seem to care.