There's been some strife on (the English-speaking, USA-centric parts of) Bluesky recently that has been rolling around in my head a bit. It started with this sharp joke post:
(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??
It's a good, truthful joke! There are definitely people on Bluesky who take any opportunity to get mad about something in the world, and how someone else who made an innocuous post should also be mad about it, and is a bad person for not focusing all their attention on it. The Louvre of Bluesky is full of examples of this behavior.
Even Jay Garber, CEO of Bluesky agreed... But then things went off the rails. When someone replied to her post about the joke by asking about banning Jesse Singal (a transphobic journalist whose dubious reporting has significantly harmed the trans community), she replied:
A good chunk of users on Bluesky did not like this. It then kicked off a few days worth of Jay trolling Bluesky users in her replies, in a way that was reminiscent of Elon Musk on Twitter/X.
So what's the problem here? Isn't it just like that initial joke, where someone is coming in hot saying something unrelated that they're mad about?
I don't think so. To modify the original metaphor, Jay is the manager at a Waffle House, and Bluesky users are the diners. Some of them are coming up to her on her smoke break to complain that the food is raw. Is that a little gauche? Maybe, but they are raising legitimate concerns. And I don't think they would be appealing to her directly if they felt they were being heard through other channels.
I don't think the CEO of a social media company gets to have a normal experience on that social media app. If you are posting as the CEO, you are the face of the company. I've never had to deal with anything close to internet fame or running a company, but I'm sure it can be difficult and overwhelming at times. Jay is allowed to be human and vent - but it's maybe counterproductive to blow steam directly into users' faces, especially vulnerable folks in the trans community, while wearing the CEO badge. It did not work out well for Elon*, and is partially why people started coming over to Bluesky in larger waves.
*(well, maybe techncially it did work out, since it's likely his goal was to burn down communities on Twitter/X)
To her credit, Jay has also been emphasizing that Bluesky-the-company has been focused on building the underlying ATProto tech in such a way that you can take your business elsewhere if you disagree with how they run things, without having to lose your account. It's not a completely frictionless experience yet, and hosting a PDS does take technical knowledge and money, but it is possible. Rudy Fraser has been doing good work building up Blacksky's community-first alternatives, and what I've read from him so far is incredibly thoughtful.
There's a lot of pain and anger in America right now, and it'd be nice to have an online space focused on nurturing community. Maybe this Waffle House has some issues, but the next one down the road might be better.