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But then Twitter went sour. Moderation started to get worse. The right-wing started to really infest the place. Elon came along and accelerated that infestation. At some point, the frog boiling got a bit too fast, and it broke the bonds of the network effect - people had to get away from there.

But where would they go? Threads? No, everyone knows Old Man Zuck has bad vibes. Mastodon? No, it's too confusing, and full of nerds. Tumblr? It was a contender for a while, but their moderation was getting pretty rough too.

Cohost? Maybe - if you were willing to deal with the intentional discovery and Numbers limitations, plus the general uncertainty of it all.

But Bluesky? That's a fresh slate. It works just like Twitter - hell, it literally came out of Twitter. Moderation? Maybe - they haven't had a chance to prove themselves yet, it could work. They're even talking about that whole "decentralisation" thing that all those Mastodon nerds love!

It was perfect timing. Right when X got too unbearable for people to stay, Bluesky was there and ready to offer a brand new "Twitter 2" - a place people could move without any user friction, save for the inevitable lag of the network effect.

But now that it's caught up, Bluesky has solidified itself as "the place where everyone went after X". We should have seen the failures coming from a mile away. I did - it's why I didn't jump to Bluesky right after Cohost shut down.

It was doomed to repeat the same failings as Twitter/X, because it's just the same thing again - same design, same founders, same venture capital dependence, same moderation philosophies. But that's the appeal, isn't it?

The shape of social media needs to change. We can't keep jumping into the same thing and hoping, praying that this time they'll get it right, only to be swiftly disappointed when the marginalised and most vulnerable inevitably get sacrificed at the very same altar everyone is praying at.

No more praying. It's time to start designing. Our social spaces need to be consciously designed to resist bigotry, harassment, and vitriol, and to foster community, acceptance, and healthy engagement. Twitter was only one of the possible shapes of social media, and it's failed.

It's time to move on. We don't need to make Twitter again. Our communities aren't beholden to capital and the Rot Economy - they're beholden to us.

We have to build spaces that serve each other - because if we don't, they'll never be free of the harm and exploitation that underlies the foundation of everything that's come before us.

What does that look like? I've got ideas. The Fediverse is certainly not without it's flaws, but I think its model of federation and decentralisation is a step in the right direction.

Allowing smaller, intentional, independent groups to all coalesce into a larger fabric of groups freely associating with each other is a solid idea in my opinion, and I'd like to see it explored further.

Where I feel the Fediverse breaks down, unfortunately, is the lack of intention in it's structure. Putting all of these groups in the same room and just expecting them to get the unwritten vibe was never going to work.

Intention is key - a collective of groups can only be cohesive when there's something underlying their unification, and the Fediverse just doesn't have that consistency.

The concept of "island networks" is starting to catch on within Fediverse-adjacent spaces - networks where communication between groups is opt-in, not opt-out.

Island networks are a way we can bring that intentionality back to the model of the Fediverse, and I, personally, believe this is a direction worth - at the very least - some experimentation with.

Hell, I believe in it so much that I'm working on making it happen - the Website League is an attempt at exactly this model. It's built of smaller groups all agreeing to come together under a shared set of rules and values to form one cohesive network.

It's early days now, and it's still quite Twitter-y due to us using off-the-shelf software to get started, but we're here to experiment with new website designs too.

To bring all of this together - the current problems with Bluesky aren't new. They're an inevitability brought about by it's decision to be little more than another Twitter, save for some theoretical decentralization sprinkled in.

It's time to explore new ideas. It's time to learn from the past failures. It's time to make something truly, meaningfully new. Because if we just keep trying to do Twitter over and over again, we're never going to have places where we can truly feel safe. [end]