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.
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.