Why It's OK For Your BlueSky Account To Be an Echo Chamber

Following the election results from earlier this month, a lot of people finally said goodbye to Twitter. The social media platform we all stridently refused to call X has reached a level of toxicity so irrevocable that even the most mordant users felt the need to jump ship. Elon Musk had poisoned the well, strip-mined the site for parts until it was borderline unusable, and remoulded it to be a safe haven for Nazis. For writers like me, who had found Twitter not only useful but a professional requirement, it no longer made an impact in terms of our click-through rates. Articles that once garnered thousands of interactions now barely scraped past a hundred in the age of Space Karen. The blush was gone and it no longer felt worth having a front-seat view of the sinking of the Titanic.

Enter BlueSky, a rudimentary Twitter clone created by that site’s former maestro, Jack Dorsey. BlueSky is a lot like Twitter in its early days, albeit with some major changes. The character limit is 300, you’re not bombarded endlessly with ‘trending topics’, and you can block massive amounts of people in one fell swoop. Block lists allow people to collate a selection of users whom they wish to see erased from their timeline and block or mute them with one click. It’s become an essential feature of the site, a speedy and giddy way to clean away all the worst excesses of Twitter. It’s an imperfect tool, one easily abused, but for now, it’s been a helpful way to ensure that your BlueSky experience is as seamless as possible.

This feature has, of course, pissed off all the right people. All the hard-right blowhards, the transphobes, the crypto shills, the election grifters, and columnists endlessly ranting about wokeness are taking the block list personally (probably because they’re so prominently featured in many of them.) Thomas Chatterton Williams, never knowingly correct on any issue, is jumping between BlueSky and Twitter to let the world know he’s not mad about being blocked. Every think-piece writer with a hatred of pronouns and Palestine has ranted about their free speech being infringed upon. Others are claiming they’re much-needed voices of sanity amid this far-left frenzy. It’s all very silly but it reveals a lot about how social media has functioned for the past decade or so and how many of us want it to change.

The accusation these weirdos fling at sites like BlueSky is that it’s an echo chamber, a bubble of ignorance made by poor sensitive souls who don’t want to hear other opinions or engage in the marketplace of ideas. It’s the pseudo-intellectual version of that one guy in your mentions who won’t stop asking you to debate him. None of it has anything to do with free speech or debate. As history has proven, using micro-blogging sites as a means to advance discourse and politics has not gone well. Getting thrown into the mud pit with the bigots, faux-furious, and smarmy is just a good way to get dirty without any of the fun attached.

I see it less as an echo chamber and more as a means of building community, of learning from Twitter’s mistakes and being aware of how platforms like this can amplify the most bad-faith and petulant voices to the level of experts. A lot of people made a good amount of money off of Twitter, whether it was through endless tweet threads offering conspiratorial speculation about politicians or hard-right trolls currying favour with Musk to be elevated to Important. How many writers do you know who turned being called a ‘transphobe’ on Twitter into a full-time job? The almighty algorithm seemed to prefer this shallowness and cruelty over simple attempts to talk to your friends or post pictures of cats. Why would anyone fleeing Twitter want to return to that model of business?

So, why are all these losers now moving to BlueSky and desperately trying to pick a fight? I don’t think it’s for any altruistic reasons or sudden opposition to Musk, whose views on trans people and ‘wokeness’ echo theirs. They need the oxygen. Not satisfied with having won on a national political level, they’re still gasping for the attention of those who fuel the weak ideas that populate their Substacks. They need the content for yet another article about cancel culture or how the far-left is exactly as bad as all the Nazis. It’s patently obvious, sleazy, and deeply uncool. Truly, all of these people are such dorks. Oh, your next Spectator column might have to be about something other than the four same things you’re always whining about? My god, that’s inhuman!

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want social media to return to a sense of kindness and frivolity. Not every waking moment on the internet needs to be a debate or troll battle. And for those seeking to use BlueSky as a political or activist-focused platform, why should that mean having to engage with the same losers who will never agree with you and just want to hurt you? Why should it mean being forced to navigate the same torrent of bigots, scammers, and sycophants who made the last site utterly unusable? This is not the trials of Hercules: it’s blogging. Have fun with it. Frankly, we may only have a few years before tech bro capitalism ruins it all and we have to start from scratch yet again. Block whoever you want to. Enjoy yourself. And if you annoy some grifters in the process, all the better.