alt Hacker NewsThe only way in which BlueSky is preferentially catering to the left is by existing as an alternative to X and specifically providing tighter control of what is in your feed; and this is only “catering to the Left” because of the groups towards which X either has weakened or stopped enforcing its policies against harassment towards.
(In a market with strong network externalities, being the dominant player is self reinforcing and it takes failing hard to lose that positions, and its naturally hard to compete because getting users is a chicken and egg problem.)
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"Catering" to the left is too generous, even pandering isn't strong enough. Anyone with dissenting views is group blocked at best and banned at worst. Most of the user loss is thanks to bans, I would bet.
In a way it's good: X is now much better that the more radical Bluesky types went away.
Twitter has right wing and center/apolitical people on it, bluesky just has left wing people. They "cater" to them by not clamping down on those people harrassing anyone who joins who doesn't agree with their politics. A smart move, because if they did then the leftists would leave too and they'd have nobody. But the result is they can't even get the centrist/apolitical people to move.
Didn't they immediately ban JD Vance on his first completely innocuous post on the platform?
That's aside from the blatant echo chamber nature of the platform. Both the left and the right post on Twitter. Only the left post on BlueSky.
This probably contributes to the decline, but I think the biggest contributor is the lack of interesting content. If you wanted to gorge on leftist viewpoints wouldn't you just read a leftist subreddit?
X no longer makes the "people dogpiling conservatives is consequence culture" vs "people dogpiling far leftists is harassment" distinction, but BlueSky still does.
Even the CEO sees there's a problem with this: https://gizmodo.com/the-ceo-of-bluesky-says-he-wants-less-of...
BlueSky isn't an experience set by the owners, it's an experience set by interacting with its people.