i like bluesky. it’s good that bluesky shuns nazis and transphobes. not every platform needs to be for everyone. but imho a social media analyst getting dogpiled on here for doing social media analysis is the kind of thing that turns a lot of (reasonable, non-bigoted) people off from this place
that’s a real shame, jd vance follower
Wouldn’t it make sense that less prolific users will be later adopters? I think I would expect average posts per user to decline with growth (barring new features).
Are they dogpiling or simply saying 'so what?' Maybe they should not say 'so what' and Bluesky is a failure if it is not Twitter (which IS losing a lot of users) or Facebook or reddit or whatnot and it can't be that unless [????]. But doesn't its appeal depend on being a certain kind of thing?
Social media analysts shouldn't be criticized when they say stupid things?
He’s getting dogpiled because the premise that slower growth is a “problem” is wrong. Over and over again we’ve seen that exponential growth = bots & enshittification. 1/3
Early adopters tend to be real humans (anonymous or not). As a platform gets bigger, at some stage bad actors flood the platform to take advantage of the platform’s reach. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. Twitter became a cesspool. Facebook became a cesspool. 2/3
I think that most Bluesky users will be very happy if the same thing doesn’t happen here. And it’s kind of ironic that a guy who works for a news outlet whose circulation (paper or digital) has plummeted is defending this bad take on growth. 3/3
People getting attacked in general is a problem on here. It’s happened to me a number of times already, and I’m pretty new…and usually over really mild posts. And I usually have the same reaction—log off in disgust and find something else to do. It’s definitely bad for the Bluesky community.
I would not want to be on a social media platform where dorks like this don’t get cyberbullied.
Where’s your sense of FUN???
“Reasonable non bigoted people” yeah okay but are they fucking losers?
Who? Who is getting turned off by this?
Contrarian mainstream media "journalist" paid for by racist oligarcs... thats who
I think saying bsky "risks becoming a ghost town" because it's not growing at the rate it did during the great Trump/Elon lovefest is editorializing more than analysis
He is a social media analyst. He doesn't post here. He's surely aware of the reaction that these kinds of posts get, especially from people who don't actually post here. He chose to post it and get this reaction. Nothing more needs to be said.
For my taste, Bluesky has always had too much groupthink and still does. But there's nowhere else to go, so I stay on it.
Bluesky is a LOT like early iterations of other social media in that user base is more highly educated and fewer trolls and bots are operating--but with *somewhat* more exclusion of certain outlooks or styles of engagement. But on early social media, we did have a large proportion of lefty eggheads.
Not the fault of users--the cause is monetization over everything and political propaganda destroying people's minds. Engagement and drama made platforms lucrative. Bad actors then fucked our grasp on reality. Bluesky let users build a firewall. Its gatekeeping structure is a reaction to a real fire
What I wish Bluesky had was more thoughtful discussion of issues. There's very little of it.
Many people post good links to thoughtful discussions though. I'm trying to think of a social media site with a majority of people who can do thoughtful discussions now--and I don't know of one. You usually get the same as Bluesky--bits of thoughtful discussion mixed in with lots of blather.
as usual, some of it is reasonable pushback that raises some fair points about the drawbacks of capitalism’s hyperfocus on growth, etc. and then a bunch more is angry people finding their latest target to unload on in ways wildly disproportionate to the perceived offense
My takeaway was: If there’s ongoing growth in users but not growth in posting/engagement, that’s a problem. He doesn’t outline it in the post but I think what he’s pointing to is that user migration from other networks has plateaued and Bluesky now has a growing bot infestation.
especially shitty to jump on someone like Matt who has been covering this stuff for absolutely ages now
yeah. i understand some people may see it quote tweeted into their feed and assume it’s from a bad faith troll. and then jump on it with their own assumptions, knowing everyone here will loudly agree. but that dynamic is also sort of the root of the problem i’m describing
somewhat unavoidable when there are no barriers to post. It's almost guaranteed to happen when there are enough people with varying beliefs on the network.
You're just describing the internet.
too much of it, yes! but not all of it, and i'd submit that's not the way it has to be. one upside to bluesky not hyperscaling is that there may still be some room here for the culture to evolve in one direction or another
I don't define Bluesky by the Catch Up feed 🤷 Like, you're describing tactics that create big, popular posts, but this is an app that goes out of its way to deincentivize the monoculture. I didn't see his post until I saw this thread.
Maybe picking a post that was optimized to get a bad reaction isn't actually all that meaningful of an indicator of the app's culture. I follow artists and people I like, and I think it's pretty great here 🤷
that’s great to hear. i would love to think we’re in a world in which social networks can thrive just by being some things to some people rather than all things to all people.
Okay. I don't know why you don't think that. I thought all of the "journalists have capitalist brainrot" takes were exaggerating a bit, but uh...
good grief. i said it’s great to hear you’re enjoying it here. and i expressed hope that maybe we’re in a world where niche networks can thrive. but you assumed it was sarcasm and insulted me. which one of us has brain rot?
Very clear most of the negative posts hadn't read the article. Also that I have absolutely no interest in any of the trending topics on Bluesky! & that areas I am interested in (politics, environment etc) has very good engagement. So I wonder if the Bluesky age range is higher than others sites?
You’re describing all social media - Home of Raging Projections.
I think the quick hostility is from folks who've been hearing different versions of this same opinion every few weeks since bsky got going. After a while it starts to feel sus.
There's nothing wrong with focusing on growth when you're comparatively minuscule. Especially in a place that still doesn't have a sustainable business model in place AFAIK.
And particularly when actual use of the site is measurably *falling*. Nobody cares about "traffic at all microblogging sites", they care about whether the people they follow on (and the friends who followed them to) a service stop posting.
Matt isn't someone in peoples lives and the first time they see him attacking their favorite website with, as you rightly note, skewed analysis, perhaps the first website they've ever found where they feel to be a part of it, they're going to post reactively. It's fine. He's a professional.
Matt's audience isn't general everyone. It's weirdos like me on his email list. I wouldn't stress.
Also, he wrote the post to get a response. again. he's a professional. he didn't write it with the hope of getting people to understand what the current growth metrics are. he wrote it to get a reaction.
Yeah, and his analysis of the data seems purposefully worded to spike engagement. There’s plenty of ways to word his findings without saying BlueSky risks becoming a ghost town. He’s playing the time-honored game of rage bait
It gets tedious how this analysis is always framed as a *bluesky problem* and not a *text based social networks have growth issues in 2025, and returns may not be there for participants in 2025* problem.
It should be enough to point out the difference between acceleration and velocity. He basically said blue sky acceleration went down but that doesn't mean velocity did. And certainly not impact.
Sounds like social media to me.
Agree. The IQ here is almost too high because just about anyone can find something to nit pick with “well, acktually…” and it is tiresome. Also rude! The perfect is still the enemy of the good. CATCH SOMEONE DIONG SOMETHING RIGHT.
Spelling would also help. 😂 Catch someone doing something right
perhaps it's his very obvious negativity when talking about Bluesky 'PROBLEMS' and his support of twitter that makes his statements more subjective than fact based that upsets people.
Never used Threads but l am a former Twitter/X user. For a long time prior to me discontinuing my use of the platform in Nov. 2024, it had become completely devoid of legitimate engagement, just paid accounts, in my experience mostly fake, interacting with each other and amplifying the fakeness.
I cant speak to Matt, but the author is @adhutchinson.bsky.social and he hadn’t been on here in 7 or 8 months, and frankly the analysis was contextless and without nuance.
An author that better understood their subject could have discussed how bsky user growth was EME driven, but lately hasn’t been. I don’t think MechaHitler drove much user growth. Dig into that and there’s an interesting bit of insight to elaborate on regarding the future of user growth here!
Regarding the level of activity, he just posted a daily unique posters chart covering two months and called it a day. Why not compare engagement from high profile users and sites that cross post to X, Bsky, and Threads. Why not discuss the slow rise of sportsky?
Andrew doesn’t seem especially familiar with his subject, and his analysis suffers for it. And he’s not writing for a general interest publication. It’s literally called Social Media Today. They’re not sending their best. Or if they are, oof.
could the political atmosphere be causing a pullback in post/repost lack of interaction?
The way Bluesky “shuns Nazis and transphobes” is often dubious - often banning people for merely being socially conservative or using non-PC terms like “tranny.” Such snowflake shallowness probably loses followers, with the possible exception of ardent Demrat true believers.
the guy has only replied to half a dozen posts on bluesky in all of 2025. I'm not sure thousands of people yelling at him even gets noticed
Typical bluetick opinion, discarded
It's not important to me that WillO like Bluesky. What matters is does WillOR use ALT-TEXT in photos he publishes? Idc abt 35 mil or 36 mil shitty accounts cos every time ThisPlatform gets bigger, it's it's due to ShittyAccounts* that are on-boarding; been happening for almost a year! SocialMedia
turn some off from this place to go where is my question? to do no social media whatsoever? I don't like where this is going
you’re not exactly an authority on this dude - you work for an outlet cheerleading a fascist take over
yup, just clicked on his profile and first thing is WaPo... like, for real
bluesky really is a wonderful place for confirming your priors about everyone you suspect of harboring a different worldview from you, if that’s what you’re here to do
What worldview are you even referring to here? All you did was white knight for someone with a contrarian clickbaity skeet.
I like Bluesky but get more engagement on Threads even though I have fewer followers.
I can understand that but to me it would be worth it not to have to deal with Zuckerberg's bs...
Part of the problem I think is that they have nowhere to go with their anger because the people that they’re really angry with they’re not on here. And the more commercial bigger accounts tend to migrate back to X. If we could get more than just DEMS over here-that would be something.
I agree, and also: that's a post that is almost engineered to get dogpiled. Not so much analysis as descrptive provocation.
i can absolutely see how it would come across that way! but i think it’s a case of context collapse. having followed matt’s work for years, this is just the sort of observation he routinely makes, without fear or favor. it’s what i count on him for when i go to him as a source.
Tbh I think there’s actually something to the criticism due to the VC funds that bsky has taken in, but both the original article as well as matts quote mistaking total user count for monthly active users is very rough for outlets that pride themselves on being social media experts
that seems like a very legit criticism! flagging for @mattnavarra.com jfyi, maybe some conflation of total users with MAUs in the article you cited?
Thanks. Actually noticed this a while after posting. A few people have spotted the mistake by the author But that’s been over shadowed by the scale of abuse + toxicity in the comments here, + the irony of Bluesky users saying X is so toxic but not seeing how Bluesky appears no better in this thread
So you really think the toxicity of formerly twitter is really the same? I mean, you're comparing actual Nazis, transphobia, racism, and so on to... People being rude? What's the equivalent here that makes bsky as bad?
yeah. there’s also the frustrating thing where if you post something that accords with the CW then it gets no scrutiny even if it’s made up, but if you post anything that upsets people it will get picked apart on every possible level
Still no nazis though.
People shouldn't be dicks, but I just can't take it seriously each time I hear "twitter's a home for actual Nazis, has a robot singing Hitler's praises and the guy who runs the site and made the robot is a fan of Nazi salutes, but some Bluesky users are rude, so it's really no better."
Also, I think a lot of folks are just generally exhausted at the shareholder mindset of "thing must constantly grow, or it's a failure."
Thank you for this. I honestly mean no disrespect to the author, and he has the right to his feelings about the responses…but to equate that thread to what happened at Twitter/X - then or now- indicates to me that he might have chosen to forget what happened to marginalized folks on there…
Jaron Lanier: "If, when you participate in online platforms, you notice a nasty thing inside yourself, an insecurity, a sense of low self-esteem, a yearning to lash out, to swat someone down, then leave that platform." If only everyone who left X for Bluesky had that motivation.
This is valid. I went with the user count quoted by Jay Graber, which is not MAU.
Another fair criticism is the “ghost town” narrative Bluesky is at its very early stage, and is built on radically different ideas compared to other social media Treating it as “yet another booming-ish startup” is not good analysis in my opinion, especially coming from social media experts
That being said, the horrific vitriol Matt received is unacceptable and has nothing to do with fair and balanced criticism of what he (or the piece he quoted) said
yeah. that was my main point -- not that his post was unimpeachable (few short-form social posts are!) but that there's an attack-dog mentality prevalent on bluesky that is not reserved for people who actually deserve it
It feels a bit like Mastodon, and to a certain extent, Threads: a small, but vocal and very toxic, minority has very strict ideas about what the platform should be, and any idea that moves away even a little bit from their views is treated as an existential danger that has to be eradicated
I love Bluesky, but this kind of extreme tribalism is really beyond me We're not fighting against a planetary invasion by hostile aliens, we're (allegedly) grown-ups discussing, sometimes with poor arguments, a social media platform
I get that. But if one is a social media expert, part of the way you have to communicate your findings is in the context of the medium. It's very annoying that this is the way this post is received but it's also *very obvious* if you have spent a single day here. Context awareness is necessary.
Beyond that, neither his nor the linked post address the question of: is this normal? What might sustainability on federated social platforms that don't seek to be a universal carrier look like? Etc. Boosterism is boring but so is horserace-everything.
Agree with you here. Another angle it doesn't address: are post numbers alone a good proxy for usage? I can say anecdotally I find myself posting a lot less on here than I did on Twitter, but I log in just as much to read/consume, perhaps more because I find the quality/noise ratio much better here
Right, also what is the poaster/lurker ratio here, how is that the same or different than in other places. Lots of questions to contextualize what the data mean.
again, great questions. and also questions that i think a social media analyst probably does not need to tackle every time they do a post, and indeed would probably be very bad at their job if they tried to do so
Sure! But like I said - there's none of that here, just a post that has pretty predictably chummed the waters.
it’s predictable if you start from the assumption that saying anything that seems negative about bluesky on bluesky is basically asking to get dogpiled. i think that predictability is part of the dynamic i’m gently lamenting here
Bro, it's not just "saying anything that seems negative about Bluesky on Bluesky." The "bluesky is dying" narrative is a specific one that people are very done with at this point. Are you being willfully obtuse?
That's not quite my point - it's not about "anything negative" it's "negative and only negative." Not quite the mainstream figures who come here and only post about how it sucks but a cousin to that. I believe the numbers! I think it's worth talking about what they mean. But that's not this.
It’s not just a negative statement, it’s a negative statement that matches the statements of any number of bad faith actors. But I guess we need the context of all of the guy’s post to understand what he actually meant.
He probably wouldn't have gotten all the grief if he hadn't said "risks becoming a ghost town." That's not "without favor favor" (a phrase which is lost all meaning among mainstream reporters), it's a baseless projection designed to provoke.
ok! happy to leave it there for now, you've raised some good points and i think we just see this a bit differently and that's fine. cheers
And hence why predictable. Anyways, I do agree with you that that stinks! But also, that might be a more general feature of contemporary discourse even beyond its specific instance here.
The dude’s statement is also pretty poorly worded. Bluesky is growing, but not as fast, and posting has “dropped off.” It’s worded to make you think posts have dropped off 60%…
Agreed, Matt says it's continuing to grow, albeit at a slower rate, but ends by suggesting Bluesky will die out. TBH, I am so tired of folks telling us how Bluesky will not make it.
>Washington Post You work for a dying newspaper, guy
This guy is a WaPo Influencer, disregard
I'm ok with less "Social Media Analysts".
🤔That is clickbait, no more, no less. Bluesky has completely other userbase than X. It is correct, bluesky is declining. But so slowly, it isn´t becoming a ghosttown any time soon. Rebound incoming. bsky.app/profile/aloa... on x: x.com/Nature/statu... here: bsky.app/profile/natu...
Seems "growth at all costs", which caused a lot of problems, is now the standard and anything less is considered a problem.
Except this level of "analysis" is befitting of a five year old
At the very least, describing the userbase as growing and, in the same breath, asserting that this means the core is *shrinking* is deserving of pushback. His presentation of the stats seems *designed* to elicit the kind of reply you're noting.
The post says growth has dropped 60% and that it risks becoming a shrinking core.
I think part of it is people are tired of seeing "bluesky is dying" takes from people who clearly don't even use this website
Actually has seen or heard. Love this site. Got followed by Elon Musk on X (sure it was a bot) and none of my contacts ever heard from me again. I was able to contact one person that told me that had not seen a post in a couple of months. I have told several knuckleheads to go back to X. SMH
Bad typing. I have actually not seen or heard that commentary
why are you defending a website?? It's not a personal attack on you and that's the way people are reacting. It's like this weird parasocial relationship with a social media platform.
I once taught in a college in OK. 30 students in a classroom. 4 days a week. Of course having the phone on your desk is not seeing what is right in front of you. I started to pickup the phones during a test and a student literally started crying. Same thing when working SUDs. I'm kidnapping thier ID
I'm not a lonely male. If I understand your concept, any social media platform is a relationship with the user. The nature of the relationship guides thought and feeling. It is a form of addiction (hate that word). The pharmacy is in their minds. The anxiety when they don't have a phone is real.
well I can't really answer that because I don't feel like this is a personal attack on me, I'm just also a person who worked in social media for a long time and I think his take is bad. pretty simple
totally fair feeling but i’d argue misdirected in this case. he says right up top that it’s still growing. the analysis is nuanced and objective, not a case of “people made me mad on this site so now i’m gonna cheer on its demise”
I don't get why this platform needs to compare to 2012-era Twitter, tho? There are several online communities that serve diff niches -- including X now. Plus, growth ≠ "ghost town" -- the last time a social network achieved this month growth absent a pre-existing user base was a long, long time ago
also fwiw, matt used to be on here a lot more. i assume the fact that he’s on here less now reflects his judgment that it has become less essential to him as a platform. just like i spend less time on threads these days for my own, different reasons (it sucks)
he's on here more than Twitter, fwiw
Total sidebar, I know, but Threads really does suck
someone the other day described it to me as "exactly what I'd expect from a Twitter that everyone on Facebook automatically gets signed up for"
I call it Instagram, but with words
💯
This (or who expressly want people to go back to twitter).
That's always the framing, right? They are victims of their own consequence. On Bluesky they can't buy followers so it's "no one follows back" instead of "decent people don't want to follow nazis." It's the "male loneliness epidemic" that's victimizing men & not toxic patriarchy victimizing us all.
and...i think analysis rooted in "traditional" social metrics (eg 'hockey-stick growth at all costs') misses what bluesky is trying to do? not everything needs to scale.
🎯
or scale the same way anyway
yes! like, differentiation can be good? the vc-backed social platform era destroyed our brains in so many ways. and from a product and revenue POV, drastically.
THANK YOU nobody talks about differentiation any more. or what it means to scale sustainably vs. just blitzscale and copy old playbooks from bygone eras.
bc the vc model wormed its way into media, and because i was a longtime media reporter and now editor of a relatively large media company that does things differently, it's always on my mind these days. i am all about sustainability bc i like getting paid every 2 weeks.
yes, all good points! but i also think there's some rationalizing going on at this point... i don't think matt would have gotten ratioed for pointing out bluesky's growth back when it *was* on a hockey-stick trajectory by people being like "wow this really shows your priorities are all wrong"
the other platforms have found new ways to do harm since this one launched & i think it colored the responses. to me, it's a valid question whether the old metrics should be used to judge a platform that's trying to do better for all stakeholders not only shareholders (bad attitude notwithstanding)
yes, agree it’s a valid question
the quality of whoever decided to follow me blows me away, and i take it as how much better this platform is to connect people that I admire a lot and how this SM is less noisy which might help each other see qualities that given the noise on different SM would not let such connections happen.
I disagree. If he'd cherry-picked some stats during a major twitter exodus to argue that "bluesky is clearly the next twitter!" the ratio would have been just as harsh if not worse.
right i think that’s a fair critique/response and if all or even most of the responses to his post were like yours then i wouldn’t use the term dogpile to describe them
Right, but that’s such an obvious conclusion that ignoring it (at least in the post) in favor of “risks becoming a ghost town” is just asking for a pileon. Especially coming from someone who pops in here to post once every two weeks.
Also re growth of users vs usage, a big part of that is people coming from platforms like Facebook and finding it’s not for them. Which is fine, and in fact the experience here would arguably be improved if *more* of them quit!
comes with experience and expertise ;) i get heated about other things lol
The social media analyst has been declaring Bluesky a graveyard in multiple articles for months. There's a difference between analysis and providing propaganda for Twitter and Facebook.
Why havent you quit from the Washington Post... sus
The dog-piling doesn't help, yet his assumptions and data cut-off seems to lead to the wrong conclusions. If you take a longer term look at the data, the rate of decrease as been declining after a few growth shocks; this means usage is stabilizing, not continuously decreasing.
That’s fair. I’m not sure at this point that social communities won’t be anything more than “smaller” concentrated nodes. The thirst for growth in everything seems like the big issue.
First of all, the post is ridiculous and the author is being justly ridiculed for it. Second, dogpiling is basically the main mode of interaction on twitter, it’s how it thrives. And yet, this’s where all of concern trolls move, or threaten to move to…I guess dogpiling isn’t really an issue for them
I find it amusing that neither the author nor the commenters read my comments under the post they cite as proof Bluesky has reached 38M. It's actually at least a few million lower based on the number of accounts that have a bluesky profile record in their database, before you account for bots & scam
