Award-winning news editor and writer Ashton Pittman said that he was the sole journalist from Mississippi using the Bluesky app when he first signed up. That was the case, he added, until roughly five weeks ago. However, as Bluesky has emerged as a favorite forum for reporters, authors, activists, and other organizations that have grown more estranged from X, Pittman stated that there are currently at least 15 Mississippi journalists using the platform.
Pittman claimed the audience interaction on Bluesky is flourishing, and his source, the Mississippi Free Press, already has more followers on Bluesky (28,500) than it ever had on X (22,000), the platform that was originally known as Twitter.
According to Pittman, Bluesky is seeing at least 20 times as much engagement as Twitter on posts that are exactly the same on both platforms. The fact that a social networking site does not censor links makes it very evident how severely we were being restricted.
Journalists have found Twitter to be a more challenging environment since Elon Musk purchased the company, and many have begun to fear that the platform has started to limit the reach of postings that contain links to other websites. Musk said on Sunday that postings with links, which were previously the primary way that journalists and other producers shared their work, have been deprioritized on the platform. However, four journalists told NBC News that they are also regaining their audiences on Bluesky, a substitute that is similar to a scaled-down version of X, after millions of users switched there following the election.
According to Phil Lewis, a senior front page editor at HuffPost with over 400,000 followers on X and almost 300,000 on Bluesky, my typical post that isn’t trending or a hot-button topic might not do as well on X as it does on Bluesky. It makes a huge difference, based on retweets, likes, and comments.
The Guardian and Boston Globe’s platform and audience editors have openly reported that Bluesky drives more traffic to their news websites than rivals like Threads and Meta’s X alternative. “We want Bluesky to be a great home for journalists, publishers, and creators,” wrote Rose Wang, the chief operations officer of Bluesky, citing statistics from the Guardian. We don’t de-promote your links, in contrast to other sites. Post as many links as you like. Bluesky serves as an open web lobby.
Originally developed as part of a project financed by Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter who severed his connection with the firm in May, Bluesky was made public last year as an invitation-only network. People who were Black, transgender, and politically progressive were among its first users. For journalists covering topics impacting vulnerable communities, Bluesky has proven to be a far more inclusive space.
According to Erin Reed, an independent journalist who covers trans rights issues on Substack, Bluesky’s target audience is essentially anyone who can’t tolerate the nasty atmosphere that Twitter has devolved into. Toxic remarks and toxicity are disliked by journalists. We don’t want everything to turn into back-and-forth slurs; we want to start talks with individuals.
After Musk took over the site, hate speech usage rose, according to a number of research and assessments. The site developed into a stronghold of the right-wing internet over time.
Additionally, Reed said that since she started blogging only on Bluesky, the number of people visiting her Substack articles has risen. She and author and journalist Talia Lavin, who covers the far right, claimed that anti-trans rhetoric and other types of harassment and prejudice have taken over X. Pittman and Lavin both reported seeing an increase in pro-Nazi and antisemitic accounts on X.
At least 150 pro-Nazi accounts were able to buy app verification and promote pro-Nazi content that had received millions of views on X, according to an April NBC News investigation.
Why am I here if I can’t consistently get Twitter users to view my newsletter? Lavin discussed her choice to relocate to Bluesky. None of the sincerely interested readers are viewing my work, and all of the responses were AI bots and Nazis. So why was I putting oneself through psychic harm?
In contrast to a billionaire who actively despises the press holding power and preventing others from seeing your work, it feels nice to have a place where I can say, “Here is my newsletter, here is my book, and you can at least be exposed to the work I’m writing,” Lavin added. It’s good to have a platform where you’re not being deliberately suppressed, but I’m not sure if it represents a new hope for journalism.
Though they are not the only ones, writers and journalists have started to discover success in connecting with a paying and interested audience on Bluesky. In a post, Aaron Kleinman, head of research for the States Project, a state legislative campaigning organization, stated that even with significantly fewer followers, the group’s Give Smart fundraising campaign generated more revenue on Bluesky than on X in 2023. According to Kleinman, Twitter has been used as a forum for fundraising.
Additionally, according to Lavin and Pittman, Bluesky viewers are favoring a wider range of subjects and narratives, including both political and apolitical ones. Reed stated that she is reaching readers who are learning about the subjects she covers for the first time, while Pittman stated that he is receiving article ideas and tips on the site.
The news is too bad, people always say. Why don’t individuals click on our more positive stories, retweet them, and share them with others? According to Pittman, I believe Bluesky is telling us that the algorithms were to blame. A favorable story on Bluesky receives dozens of likes and shares, while on Twitter, it only receives two likes.
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