Further about Bluesky
A couple of months ago I wrote about Bluesky and the promise of corporate social media here. I was curious about who actually owned Bluesky, and it was surprising:
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.
And now I learn that a much bigger, secretive deal is in the works now that a significant migration from Twitter has happened, led by a company called Bain Capital:
Who is Bain Capital? It's a private equity firm founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney (former US senator and governor of Massachusets, and the Republican nominee a thousand years ago in 2012) and associates. Private equity firms are notorious for taking over companies not precisely for the benefit of society, but to wring as much money from them as possible whatever the cost to other people, including their customers and employees, and the companies themselves. You remember the buyout and bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us? That was Bain, together with a couple of other predatory investment companies. During the 2012 presidential election campaign, Obama criticized Romney strongly for the practice of Bain companies of shipping jobs overseas.
I am very wary of a social media operation run by crypto and private equity bros. And I am very skeptical about the image that Bluesky has created of itself as some sort of democratic alternative to X. Especially when there is a truly democratic, decentralized alternative in the fediverse.
#Bluesky #Fediverse #Democracy #Corporations #SocialMedia #Enshittification