Trickle, Threads. Big bang, BlueSky.
Following the ban of Twitter in Brazil, a fiesta of users are looking for a new home. And from the early outset, BlueSky looks to be the big winner, eclipsing Meta's Threads or Mastodon with the most important new audience to be captured.
People have not left Twitter in a mass. Rather, what we've seen is a slow trickle, as individual users get irritated with the degradation of the platform, and go away. The drum beat of Twitter is still strong enough that most active users, have stayed.
Threads, with the lustre of a corporate overlord, has outwardly been winning the choice of destination for those on the run. The ability for Meta to tap into the engagement skinner box on Instagram has provided Threads with a continual hum, a baseline of activity that the other alternatives struggle with. A weak heartbeat is better than none.
In i am drowning in mutes please help, I lamented the state of Threads on release. A pristinely clean backdrop for brands and celebrities, to post inane things. It has improved, but not substantially enough to, as the kids say it, have the juice.
The classifier for determining whether posts are safe is turned up so high, that it actively inhibits remotely taboo topics. The end result is that speech is chilled, but to the point of boredom.
The algorithm is trivially easy to engagement farm, as journalist Katie Notopoulos decided to torture us with (6). 12 The algorithm also surfaces posts, intended for specific subcommunities, to the entire platform, leading to people whining about no context on a post that never needed it.
Threads, despite seeing Twitter make the same mistake, has a invite-only monetisation program. No doubt people will combining it with engagement farming.
The background users of Threads, the ones sustaining that background activity, are the spawn of Facebook and LinkedIn. Gullible, noxiously positive, and lacking any sense of humour. Even mice would be appalled at the rate they fall for bait.
Facebook fell apart when the foreground users went away, leaving a graveyard of background halfwits, doomed to like AI pictures. Threads already faces the same fate.
The Brazilian migration is different to all before it. Instead of individual users seeking out a new home, an entire country is now looking for a place to land. We're not seeing a trickle anymore, but a big bang.
And it is clear that the people have picked BlueSky.
When you are not concerned about looking for activity, you can pick the best service. And BlueSky is the best Twitter alternative, not Threads.
It is liberal enough to allow free expression, but moderated enough to keep the Nazis away. Search actually searches! It does not force you down the algorithmic feed, which fits the aesthetic of Brazil's internet better. The UI is lifted from the golden era of Twitter. Brands are less suffocating, without the Meta red carpet.
BlueSky has been handed a gift. As mentioned earlier, the competition was not about feature set, or platform. It was largely a race for users, and BlueSky fell far behind. No more.
If this is the only big bang migration, it might peter away, especially if the ban is lifted. This is a golden opportunity to try and build up the heartbeat, so that it can withstand challenges in the future, and become the premier destination for all seeking the leave a broken Twitter.
She has a knack for this.
See users like this for people doing this unironically.