For the first time in what feels like eons, we’re in the midst of an actual social media upheaval. Twitter is deflating like a balloon animal riddled with holes by the very clown who claims to have molded it, and Bluesky is swooping in to scoop up disaffected users. Recently Bluesky hit 20 million users, and it’s growing at a rate of nearly one million per day. But just as Twitter was once a marginally-enjoyable experience – like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube before/after it – Bluesky’s honeymoon period can’t last forever. On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we discuss what comes next.
This time around, we’re joined by Ryan Broderick of the fantastic Garbage Day newsletter to discuss all the latest trends in the world of Online. We begin by talking about Bluesky and the potentially fatal blow Twitter has sustained at its hands. Or, more accurately, at Elon Musk’s hands, but Bluesky has far and away been the main beneficiary of Trump’s wannabe baby boy’s bumblings. How long will the good times last, though? Is Bluesky destined to eventually become a massive crock of shit, just like every other social media platform?
After that, we dig into the myth of The Liberal Joe Rogan and how actual left-leaning and leftist political influencers are adapting in the wake of an election that decidedly did not go their way. Lastly, we speculate about which specific Fortnite skins a fraudster recently purchased with Nathan’s credit card (hopefully as many Gokus as they could get their hands on).
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can someday build a new, better internet from the ashes of the old (or at least buy Threads and immediately shut it down).
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Nathan: I’ve seen a couple larger conversations on and around Bluesky about what it stands to become, and one of them centers around its culture. People are wondering if it will remain intact as the platform scales up, and that one is a little weird to me because – and we’ve talked about this some – the culture you see on a platform like Bluesky is a product of who you’re following. There are many cultures on there, as opposed to a singular monoculture. But I think that maybe the bigger question people are trying to ask when they say that is “As this thing grows into potentially a Twitter replacement culturally if not in terms of size, will it – just by nature of scale and platforms on the modern internet – become a cesspit?” Will it suck shit after a while?
Ryan: I mean, historically, yes. I was just reading the other day about how the earliest Usenet communities almost immediately got a neo-Nazi problem. I think it was on a Behind The Bastards episode where they were talking about how there was a bank robbery to steal computers to set up the first neo-Nazi message boards to network and radicalize Usenet communities. So this is not new. Other than generative AI – which is just a form of spam, which is not new either – none of the problems of the modern internet are particularly new.
I do think there are moments when the architecture of the modern internet makes it better, and then there are times when it’s worse. The times when it’s better are when the different pockets of the internet are able to communicate but not forced to. And I don’t think that’s a scale issue, actually. I think of it as like biodiversity. In a world with more websites, you don’t feel like you have to use one. I think we can all kind of agree that as Twitter became the only website – and this was earlier for the media than everybody else – but during covid Twitter basically ran the world for, like, nine months. And that’s bad.
Like, I honestly don’t give a shit what 4chan or 8chan are up to until it becomes, like, a domestic terrorism problem. For the most part, go do whatever you want. I don’t give a shit. It’s when I’m forced to interact with those people and see their content all day, that’s when I get mad.
Nathan: Ryan, did you see when one of the people who works for Bluesky – one of the 20, because they have a very small team – was talking about how they’ve tried to engineer the platform and the business specifically around the idea that the company could wind up becoming the enemy of the future? For example, the company could someday succumb to many of the same problems that Twitter and others have. So they want to build their business and their platform now to be able to be immune to some of those problems – or to ensure that if things get bad, users can take all their data and go somewhere else. Did you see them talking about this?
Ryan: I have. I think it’s admirable, but as someone who has had to migrate off a platform, Substack, that made the same promise, and it was a fucking nightmare, I just sort of assume always that they will be the baddie if they live long enough. And that’s fine. We’re all journalists. It just comes with the territory.
But I like that they’re using that in their story and in their propaganda. I like that open platforms are now cool enough that companies can kind of be facetious about it and be like “Yeah, we’re open.” And it’s like, first of all, Bluesky you’re not open because you’re not even actually on ActivityPub. You had to make your own thing that you own. So let’s pump the brakes here. But I like that they’re leaning into that idea.
Gita: They can’t do it anymore because the site’s too big and everyone knows who they are, but I remember in the early days, [developer] Paul Frazee was a poster’s poster. He was out there letting the trans community on Bluesky mess with him on FaceApp and bully him into trying to become a catgirl. [The Bluesky team] was totally engaged and happy to have this community, and they have wisely I think taken a step back from being shitposters themselves in order to run this place. Because in any good community, there’s always a bit of antagonism toward the mods. I think that’s good for a community. You want to always be a little bit mad at the mods, because then the mods are forced to continually improve the platform.
But there’s only so much you can do to stop capitalism from doing its thing once you start a company or a business.
Ryan: But also, like, we talked about the Tumblr porn ban, and just so we’re all clear, that was because of child pornography on the site. That’s why they did that. Everyone was like “It’s capitalism.” But no, it was a hub for predators.
Gita: I talked to a woman for a story on Kotaku about the porn ban, and she said she was a victim of revenge porn that was disseminated onto Tumblr. And what she said was interesting: She didn’t think that banning all porn was the answer because she literally could not get an answer from Tumblr when she was trying to get the post of her revenge porn taken down. But she also understood that this move was because Tumblr was becoming a haven for child pornography and revenge porn.
Ryan: And the reason I bring it up is because it was a deeply unpopular decision that people are still mad about to this day, and that is just the nature of one of these platforms. Your most cuddly-wuddly uwu platform will eventually have to do something because of child predators, neo-Nazis, or investors – all the same kind of guy, actually. That is gonna happen. That’s OK. That’s normal, to have those antagonistic relationships with your admin or your mods. That’s their job.
