Sick of Twitter / X? 10 reasons why you should try Bluesky

If you haven’t heard of Bluesky yet, where have you been?!

While X (formerly known as Twitter) and Threads have been the big text-based social media apps for a while now, a new contender has gained a lot of steam in the last month: Bluesky.

If you haven’t heard of it or have even heard of it but aren’t sure what it is, it’s about time you took a look, especially if you are wondering if you should jump on what is the most hyped social media app of the year.

Here are ten reasons you might want to consider joining Bluesky.

1. You care about having control over your account

So far, most of the social media networks that have existed (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) have been centralized (closed). While everyone can email each other despite some people having an email through Apple or Google or Microsoft, that's not the case with social media platforms: you can’t, say, join Twitter and then reach out to someone on Instagram.

Right now, Mastodon is the only one that is fully decentralized, but Bluesky plans to follow suit as well. This means that, if another social media platform comes along that is also decentralized and you prefer it, you could move your account to that one instead without losing all of your connections.

That’s why a decentralized social media network matters. Your account is moveable along with your audience. No more starting from scratch every time you join a new app. Email had the right idea all along!

2. You don’t like Twitter anymore

If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you’ve been present through a lot of changes on the platform — especially in the last few years. While the last administration generally didn’t do much to change the service, Elon Musk came in with a wrecking ball (for good or bad) and made a tonne of changes to the platform.

Between the rebranding to X, introduction of paid tiers of the service, and a load of changes to the algorithm and privacy and safety practices, Twitter has undergone a serious transformation since Musk bought the company. If you aren’t feeling as good being on the platform as you did before, it might be time to try out something new.

3. You are tired of the algorithm

If you’ve been on social media, you’ve likely heard of “the algorithm.” The algorithm is pretty simple: it shows you what the social media app thinks you want to see based on what you’ve watched, liked, and a number of other factors.

Algorithmic-based feeds have been around for years and taken over almost all of these platforms. TikTok, especially, has an algorithm so good that people are concerned what kind of data the company has access to. It seems that it knows your interests a little too well.

While most companies offer a feed that is not influenced by an algorithm, it is rarely the default — they want you to use that algorithm. Bluesky, in contrast, does not make an algorithmically-driven feed the default on its platform. So, if you’d rather just see the newest to oldest posts for people you follow and want that as your default, Bluesky is the social media company committing to that.

4. You don’t want to use Meta products

When Facebook originally rolled out, everyone wanted to be on it. It went beyond what MySpace offered and became the place to hang out online with your friends.

Today, the feeling about Meta — and specifically, its control over Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — has shifted. People don’t trust the company like it used to. From political to social and mental health reasons, the public opinion of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire has changed to concern at the very least and outright hatred at its worst.

Bluesky is the newest player on the block and seems to have a leadership team focused on building an open experience for its users rather than containing them inside their little empire. So, if you’ve grown sour on Facebook and Meta’s other products, you might want to give something new like Bluesky a try.

5. You hate ads

One of the things that almost everyone agrees that has ruined the social media experience is the domination of advertising on these platforms. You can’t make it more than a few posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or X without getting assaulted by ads.

The proliferation of ads on social media, while largely blamed on Meta, has made its way into almost every social media app in existence. While Threads doesn’t have ads right now, Meta has already announced plans to bring them to the app starting next year.

Right now, Bluesky doesn’t have ads or have plans to add ads to the app. The company plans on creating revenue through other ideas like subscriptions to algorithms, subscriptions for premium features, etc. If you’ve been looking for a way to gets ads out of your feeds, Bluesky is going to very soon be the only app offering an ad-free experience without having to pay for it.

6. That’s where your community is heading

If you are on a social media network, you likely end up landing within a community. While Reddit breaks out its communities more structurally through the implementation of Subreddits which focus on a particular topic, most people end up following a smattering of people or companies that turns their feed into a pseudo version of such a concept.

So, what happens if all of the people you follow start to move somewhere else? That’s currently what’s happening with certain communities on Threads and X. A lot of people from certain communities are either also posting on Bluesky or have decided to move completely to the newer social network.

So, if you notice a mass exodus of your favourite people from the social app you are currently on and see that they are heading to Bluesky, you might want to follow them over there.

7. You love to customise your experience

Back in the day, there were a lot of third-party apps for Twitter and Reddit. While the apps released directly by Twitter and Reddit were great in their own right, some people wanted more. They wanted even more customisation of the experience. That’s where third-party developers came in, creating some of the most beloved apps for both services.

Unfortunately, both companies eventually turned hostile towards third-party developers. X basically shut down the ability to make third-party apps for the service and Reddit made it so expensive to do so that it essentially had the same effect.

Bluesky, in comparison, is open for third-party developers to go nuts with. There are already some great third-party apps for the platform that recreate some of the experiences that used to be beloved for Twitter. So, if you want choice and options to customize your experience with your social media, Bluesky will let you do just that.

8. You want control over content moderation

Content moderation is a bit of a hot topic lately. Ever since Twitter and Facebook went hard into content moderation — specifically regarding politics — it seems that the pendulum has swung the other way in favour of little to no moderation…for some.

For example, since Elon Musk bought Twitter, the trust and safety teams of that company have been shrunken down and content moderation on the platform has seen quite a decline. This has led to a lot more content, which would have previously been flagged or removed, not only being allowed but even being boosted by the algorithm.

If you’ve noticed that you’re seeing more sensitive content and don’t wish to, Bluesky is invested in more content moderation than its X counterpart. The company is even expanding its team to ensure it can meet the growth it is experiencing right now. Even better is that, since Bluesky is open, you can subscribe to feeds that have either no, little, or a lot of moderation. The amount of moderation is up to you.

9. The promise of interoperability with other social apps

Interestingly, Threads is ahead of the game when it comes to the fediverse, which will allow you to create a post on Threads but for someone to see it on Mastodon, another decentralized social media network.

However, Bluesky has committed to supporting this as well. So, in the future, you’ll be able to create a post on Bluesky and people on Threads will be able to see it without you having to post there as well. In addition, you’ll be able to like and comment on posts across the social media apps.

This brings down a lot of the walls we currently experience, causing us to have to create accounts across many different apps in order to see everything we want to.

10. You’re an early adopter

While Bluesky is the hot topic right now in social media, it still only has around 25 million users. This pales in comparison to Threads and X, who have hundreds of millions of users.

But, if you’re someone who loves to try out new things before most people, jumping into Bluesky is going to be a lot of fun. As an early adopter myself, I love to try new and upcoming apps to see if I prefer them compared to what I am currently using.

So, if you like to be on the forefront of new technology, taking a look at Bluesky is definitely going to be up your alley.

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