X rival Bluesky was available by invitation only until today, but now everyone can join. The question is, will they?
Bluesky was announced in late 2019 by then-Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey to develop a decentralized standard for social media and has grown to have over 3 million users.
I don't blame anyone for going to BlueSky, it does seem like it’s where the ‘cool kids’ all went to and I get it’s fun to follow your favorite bloggers, writers, podcasters, etc.
But man, it’s just gonna go into enshittification like every other platform that runs on VC cash. Eventually, they’re gonna need to monetize you and your content. And I’m just done with that nonsense personally, even if a lot of weird/left twitter went there.
I like how Dorsey waited until NOW when there's no active "fuck Elon where can we go?" campaign. He should've opened it up, even if it had some bugs, 6-12 months ago when people were actively trying to flee. But whatever.
I've got nothing to prove this, but I'm pretty sure the purpose of the invite system was not to prevent the fledgling platform from being overloaded, but to construct a social graph of people coming aboard the platform.
There's an app, on iOS and android, called "TextNow" which is totally free (with ads of course. Out the ass) that allows you to text/call over WiFi. It's not the only app, but I have tried a bunch of these, and most are total scams. This one is probably some level of a scam, but it works for getting a text-able phone number which isn't your actual number. You can keep it too if you sign in at least once per 30 days and send a text. I've here maintaining a "throw away" list phone numbers for... years... now. (Don't ask)
You could easily make a throwaway email via VPN, make an account there still via VPN, and always use the app via VPN to maintain some amount of anonymity. If you wished.
Controversial but I honestly really like BlueSky so far. It has its issues, and maybe I'm naively hopeful, but I feel like it's set up to be better than its predecessors. No harm in giving it a go, and it's easy to jump ship if it ends up going down the shitpipe like the other platforms did.
I remember the earliest ads for Twitter making it out to be this mystery product that we wouldn't know about until it was finally unveiled. Never signed on it once and nothing has been making me see the need for it now or any of its imitators.
I might be remembering wrong, so ignore if so. Aren't they the ones that have/had the thing in their TOS that claims that all your creations and posts are legally theirs and to use how they want? I feel like that was brought up at some point and seemed like it was like how some companies basically automatically own the rights to things you make while working for them. Not saying the other social media companies are doing this, just that they do it in ways that profit them but just don't claim the actual rights to your stuff.