Twitter is dead, long live X and Bluesky

With the death of Twitter we now have in its place X and Bluesky. These both represent dueling impulses that were always present in Twitter, now finally set free to exist on their own. X we could call "true" Cyberpunk, where technologies are used by an oligarchical class to manipulate and oppress the masses. Bluesky represents the ideals of a Free and Open Society existing on the Internet.

X represents the impulse of social media control by owners for owner interests. Twitter was a traditional private and then public company, before being purchased and taken private once more. And while public, there was a constant tension among the userbase about how ownership was manipulating the algorithm, content review and removal, and censorship. Were they doing it fairly? Were they promoting some views over others? What financial interests were they serving? The Covid pandemic brought all of this to a head with some believing Twitter was suppressing valuable information, but that Twitter deemed was misinformation or disinformation that would cause harm if allowed to propagate. With X going private, the new owner controls the algorithm, censorship policies, and content review policies for direct financial and special interests. Purely and unabashedly. The recent takeover of the @america handle to convert into the owner's PAC's microphone for his candidate of choice is a clear illustration.

Bluesky represents the idea of a Free and Open Society on the internet. The founding principles, and what it is in practice today, are that it is not a "platform" but a protocol, free of algorithms, and that each user is their own website. Verification is done via web domain validation, not via some company's internal review process, as was Twitter's approach. If social media can be likened to town squares, X is a town square owned and regulated by one person, and Bluesky is a town square owned and maintained by the municipality, with most of the regulation being social and done by the citizens. The lack of algorithm means that no one controls which users or content gets featured or amplified.

Now, some would point out that Bluesky has moderation, and isn't that therefore not a free and open society? To which I respond—in every Free and Open Society, there is always some level of enforcement of rules for safety. If there were not, society could not be free and open. Banning accounts and removing posts that represent CSAM, hate speech, and threats of bodily harm to other users is, in fact, 100% consistent with and necessary for a Free and Open Society.

While X and Bluesky can change course at any time, the founding impulses seem likely to constrain where they go next. X will almost certainly stay as a corporately-controlled platform, serving the financial and special interests of the corporate owner(s). Bluesky, as a publicly built-and-maintained protocol, will continue to serve its userbase and be shaped by it, and the protocol itself could be used to start other offshoots. The impulses of Cyberpunk in X and a Free and Open Society in Bluesky will both shape society and be shaped by it. While it's hard to say if there will be winner, they are and will be competing.