X still appears above the fold in a special section on Google with custom previews.
Eg. searching 'Anthony Albanese Bluesky' for Australia's leader has a link to X, with custom integrated previews, above the Bluesky link of the PM despite the search explicitly stating Bluesky and despite the account posting to Bluesky.
It's hard for anyone to move over since the lack of engagement is rigged like this.
For years I've tried switching full time to DDG and always found myself typing !g so much that I gave up and went back to Google. For the past year and a half or so it's finally stuck and I cringe it I'm on a different device and accidentally get a Google result. It's become everything it wasn't at launch.
In my experience, the change has been positive. I rarely see feuds on Bluesky and when they happen I find them especially embarrassing because it’s so unusual.
I stopped posting on Twitter around the acquisition but kept my account. When I do randomly check my timeline I’m genuinely disturbed by the disinformation and pseudo-science, especially in machine learning.
It would be nice if scientists started being just scientists again instead of activists. Hopefully being cloistered on bluesky will bring the old vibes back
My academic twitter migrated to Mastodon. Most my colleagues from different universities who used to be on Twitter are there now and I do not miss not being on X. There are even servers run by organizations like ACM (Association of Computer Machinery).
As a light user who bounced around X, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads, I completely believe that scientists are weary of X. It’s increasingly toxic and driven by engagement bait posting (“shitposting” as they call it) where the loudest accounts continuously post provocative takes not because they believe it but because they know it will trigger their followers into debating it. Even the levels.io guy that everyone idolizes as the indie hacker hero is now posting a non-stop stream of factually inaccurate claims and taking swipes at contentious issues like burnout because he knows it gets people talking in his replies.
X seems to know this is a problem. They hired Nikita Bier who is posting claims that the algorithm is being improved to favor people sharing best in class knowledge every day, but the current meta appears to be posting controversial hot takes that are easily argued or debunked. Tricking your followers into fact checking you is a game in itself because it generates engagement and therefore extends reach. This is why some accounts are deliberate exaggerating facts or posting known misinformation now.
That said, I have a hard time believing everyone is migrating to BlueSky instead of simply leaving this type of social media. Bluesky feels relatively dead except for the few accounts playing the BlueSky meta game, which is largely about infighting and creating hyper cliques from what I see.
One account I follow went to BlueSky but then returned to X because he couldn’t stand it. He described BlueSky as the place to go if you wanted to be constantly attacked by people who 98% agree with you. My impression is that it’s a smaller pond where the people who were previously small fish on X see it as their opportunity to fight their way to the top of a smaller food chain. It just feels ugly and mean half the time. I’ve had to unfollow a lot of people on BlueSky who I previously enjoyed on X because they got sucked into the BlueSky toxicity competition and now they’re just taking swipes at other people on BlueSky all day instead of posting info I wanted to see.
Could you please stop posting in this inflammatory style? The guidelines ask us not to fulminate, to eschew flamebait and to avoid using HN for ideological battle. It's fine to have an ideological lean and to argue for your positions, but this inflammatory style of commenting is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for, and you've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly.
I don't understand how Bluesky is going to continue to exist past 2026, based on the sharply declining usage, their headcount, and the amount of funding they've taken.
It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't see how you can raise at all for a social network in 2026 with flat numbers, let alone the declining numbers Bluesky actually has.
I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon. Earlier on, there was some truth to the idea that Twitter had a much larger audience, but you'd get better engagement on Bluesky. I now get better engagement on Twitter. I can see people I had followed into Bluesky moving back to Twitter.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm curious to hear a coherent story about how Bluesky isn't cooked.
> I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon.
What do you count as "engagement"? Views/likes? Those can be produced. Interesting conversations that aren't obviously LLM can't. That's the metric I use for anecdotally seeing Bluesky (and Mastodon) as immensely more engaging in a signal/noise ratio.
Most of my hard science contacts (physics, biology etc) from my days in student government have moved to Bluesky. Newer academics seem to be starting out there and skipping Twitter entirely.
If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term.
51 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 54.9 ms ] threadonly thing that seems to be missing from bluesky migration is athletes and that's probably because it cannot be monetized (well not easily)
Eg. searching 'Anthony Albanese Bluesky' for Australia's leader has a link to X, with custom integrated previews, above the Bluesky link of the PM despite the search explicitly stating Bluesky and despite the account posting to Bluesky.
It's hard for anyone to move over since the lack of engagement is rigged like this.
[0] https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/
I stopped posting on Twitter around the acquisition but kept my account. When I do randomly check my timeline I’m genuinely disturbed by the disinformation and pseudo-science, especially in machine learning.
[1]: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
The comments took issue with the conclusion
[1] - https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-smoking/more...
X seems to know this is a problem. They hired Nikita Bier who is posting claims that the algorithm is being improved to favor people sharing best in class knowledge every day, but the current meta appears to be posting controversial hot takes that are easily argued or debunked. Tricking your followers into fact checking you is a game in itself because it generates engagement and therefore extends reach. This is why some accounts are deliberate exaggerating facts or posting known misinformation now.
That said, I have a hard time believing everyone is migrating to BlueSky instead of simply leaving this type of social media. Bluesky feels relatively dead except for the few accounts playing the BlueSky meta game, which is largely about infighting and creating hyper cliques from what I see.
One account I follow went to BlueSky but then returned to X because he couldn’t stand it. He described BlueSky as the place to go if you wanted to be constantly attacked by people who 98% agree with you. My impression is that it’s a smaller pond where the people who were previously small fish on X see it as their opportunity to fight their way to the top of a smaller food chain. It just feels ugly and mean half the time. I’ve had to unfollow a lot of people on BlueSky who I previously enjoyed on X because they got sucked into the BlueSky toxicity competition and now they’re just taking swipes at other people on BlueSky all day instead of posting info I wanted to see.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't see how you can raise at all for a social network in 2026 with flat numbers, let alone the declining numbers Bluesky actually has.
I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon. Earlier on, there was some truth to the idea that Twitter had a much larger audience, but you'd get better engagement on Bluesky. I now get better engagement on Twitter. I can see people I had followed into Bluesky moving back to Twitter.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm curious to hear a coherent story about how Bluesky isn't cooked.
What do you count as "engagement"? Views/likes? Those can be produced. Interesting conversations that aren't obviously LLM can't. That's the metric I use for anecdotally seeing Bluesky (and Mastodon) as immensely more engaging in a signal/noise ratio.
If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law