Sailing through the Bluesky
Posted on August 24, 2024 by Aywren
When Twitter started to morph into X, and finally took away TweetDeck, I knew it was time for me to head off to greener social media pastures. I’d already left on my main Aywren account, moving over to Mastodon – which I’ve been extremely happy with.
However, I decided that I didn’t want to create a second Mastodon handle for my FFXIV character account. I did try it for a time, but felt it was too confusing switching between web browsers just to use Mastodon. Also, the main FFXIV Mastodon instance has closed down not long ago, so while I’m sad to know that, I’m also somewhat glad I didn’t seal my FFXIV account in that instance.
Instead, when I finally got a Bluesky invite, I created an account there for Amon. I can’t remember how long ago that was – long ago enough that there were still Bluesky beta invites – but I’ve been active on that account ever since.
I’ve seen Bluesky grow and develop a lot since then. My biggest grouch about the platform originally was the lack of filtering tools. I tend to keep all of my social media accounts strongly filtered for certain words and topics, so to not be able to do that there was a big deal to me.
They did eventually add this feature in the Moderation section. Since then, everything else they’ve been improving along the way has been just gravy.
There’s a pretty sizeable FFXIV fandom on Bluesky, for which I’m grateful. I’m sure it’s not as large as Twitter, and I know a number of folks who gave it a try, but ended up bouncing back to Twitter in the end. There’s a wide enough community, however, that I feel perfectly content with the folks that I interact with.
I feel like, for this account at least, I’ve had about the same amount of interaction with other people as I once did on Twitter. My posts don’t have the same reach in numbers, of course, but reach doesn’t mean much if there’s no conversation and engagement with others, at least, in my mind.
Even though Bluesky does have something called SkyDeck – which acts similar to TweetDeck did - I haven’t felt the need to use it. Whereas, I simply could not use Twitter at all without TweetDeck.
This might be because you are able to filter out reposts on your main Bluesky timeline. I’m on social media to see my mutuals’ original content, not all the stuff they repost, so I turn this filter on and keep it on. I don’t believe Twitter allowed this in grouped timelines (and you had to individually mute retweets when you added a new follower), which is what drove me to use TweetDeck.
I’ve had no desire to return to Twitter. Between Mastodon for my main account and Bluesky for my FFXIV account, I have all the social media connections that I seek. I hardly even keep up with the crazy Twitter news anymore, which is somewhat a relief.
The last thing anyone needs is drama created by the social media platform they are using. And if Twitter has anything, it’s drama in spades. Therefore, I’m content to be sailing in the Bluesky for now.