gotosocial.thenexus.today

IMHO the main reason that so much of Black Twitter is currently checking out Bluesky is because of the work Rudy Fraser has done on Blacksky, which includes a starter pack, custom feeds (Blacksky, Blackademics, and Blacksky trending), and moderation service (as well as a personal data store, currently still under development).

Also, in early 2023 Aveta had done a lot of work bringing Black Tech Twitter to Bluesky. There were some major problems with anti-Blackness, and she wound up leaving for quite a while ... still here work should be recognized as a critical foundation.

Rudy's three-part series Blacksky: Expressing the Black Everyday in a New Digital Space from late 2023 sketches his vision, including a different approach to community than I had ever seen before online. And this, from the end of part three is a strong refutation to anybody who says that people going to Bluesky haven't taken into account that it's owned by a VC-funded company:

"Tools like Bluesky and AT Protocol have their own tradeoffs and considerations (what @ntnsndr.in describes as "implicit feudalism" for one) but personally my belief in self-determination extends to my technology use and development. And the opportunity to build out an extensible Black social network that can be controlled by community instead of corporations, that doesn't require being segregated from the broader social space, and reflects the many aspects of the diaspora (not just whatever is trendy at the time or what a corporation is pushing on me) is too important to pass up."

So while I certainly agree that it's wise to be skeptical and even cynical about Bluesky's ownership, and the likelihood that (like VC companies tend to do) that as soon as the money gets tight they'll wind up exploiting their users ... there are good reasons to be there in the short term.

Of course, there are good reasons not to be there too, so I'm not saying everybody should check it out. Make up your own mind! But please please stop sneering at or dismissing people who come to a different conclusion than you do.

#bluesky #BlackMastodon

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