The Coming Enshittification of Bluesky – Daily Kos

There’s an interesting article about academic Bluesky over at Science Magazine. It’s a brief piece that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the platform by researchers that use it. Essentially, scientists find the new platform to have a collegial atmosphere that fosters productive interaction. A positive feature of Bluesky expressed by one of the researchers is the lack of a recommendation algorithm. Instead, the default is to show posts a user follows in chronological order, with the most recent first. This kind of feed could allow an early career researcher or student an equal opportunity to gain exposure to the community. A disadvantage of Bluesky’s newness is the small size of the user base. This limits the interaction of scientists with the general public, which is necessary in the fight against dis-and misinformation. Also, many academics don’t see the current culture of Bluesky lasting. The key point for me came at the end of the article. That there will be pressure for the company to make money eventually. “Ideas including selling subscriptions or services, such as certain domain names, have been discussed. But the company is likely to eventually switch to advertising… creating the same incentive that operates on other platforms: to keep people online as long as possible. As long as the profit motive is at the core of the operation, platforms like Bluesky are doomed to eventual enshittification. Once the drive to grow at all costs to satisfy investors, Bluesky will just become another mouthpiece for conservative propaganda and dominated by trolls. The only way to prevent the coming enshittification is to remove the for-profit nature of Bluesky. It needs to be owned and operated by its users or by a not-for-profit foundation (similar to Wikipedia) that has strong community controls against hate speech, violent speech, and mechanisms to fight dis- and misinformation. I am sure there are many things that can be implemented to keep Bluesky a credible place for debate, discussion, and information without it becoming another shallow, corporatized firehose of dreck and lies. But as long as making money is the prime purpose of the platform, enshittification will come.What do you think?

Source: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/11/2296375/-The-Coming-Enshittification-of-Bluesky