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As Elon Musk continues to clear ascending levels of diabolical madness, many Twitter users are understandably disgusted with the whole thing and looking for alternatives. Many are flocking to Bluesky, an initiative of Jack Dorsey, the original creator and CEO of Twitter. After the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk, Dorsey had joined the board of Bluesky in 2022, only to leave two years later. On Twitter, or X as it was now called, he posted

Don't depend on corporations to grant you rights. Defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you're on one).

In July of 2023, Bluesky made an initial offering of shares for \$8 million, which was followed in October of 2024 by a \$15 million offering. Eyebrows were raised when the second share offering was led by a firm called Blockchain Capital, especially because the new CEO, Jay Graeber, is a software engineer coming from a blockchain and cryptocurrency background, having previously worked as a developer for cryptocurrency called Zcash.

Naturally investors will seek a return on their investment, so Bluesky will have to find ways of making money. They promise not to do it through advertising, but instead offer subscription services. Right now they offer a way to create a personal domain, and they are also musing about things like charging for higher quality video.

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The goal of Bluesky, like any other social media company, is to make money, and as much of it as possible, for those investors and shareholders. The platform for you to share your thoughts with others is not the goal. It's the mechanism.

Cory Doctorow, who has done a lot of thinking about the evolution of tech corporations, which led him to the concept of enshittification, explains why he won't join Bluesky here. Sure, Bluesky is cute and refreshing by comparison to Twitter, but so was Twitter scarcely ten years ago.

The web was not built to be fragmented into walled gardens that are delightfully simple to enter but practically impossible to leave. Quite the opposite, in fact. The web is designed for democracy. We owe it to ourselves to use it in that way.

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