Masnick's point about this guy just riffing darkly is correct, but the clipped bit is also a funny reflection of how venues that depend on wingnut welfare largesse are effectively outside best practices. A big following on Twitter is worth zero in traffic, due to their policies. Not the case here. - ThreadSky

davidjroth.bsky.social • 32 days ago

Masnick's point about this guy just riffing darkly is correct, but the clipped bit is also a funny reflection of how venues that depend on wingnut welfare largesse are effectively outside best practices. A big following on Twitter is worth zero in traffic, due to their policies. Not the case here.

Reposted from Mike Masnick

Thought I'd seen the dumbest, most ignorant take on Bluesky last year, but I was wrong. This person is living in a world that only exists in their own mind.

As far as I can tell, the author is not even on Bluesky, so they've just fantasized what must be happening here.

Comments

mrontology.bsky.social•31 days ago

The idea that open, honest debate will result in the good ideas floating to the top has been definitively disproven. We have moved on.

nattybowditch.bsky.social•32 days ago

C’mon. It’s obviously satire.

The giveaway is “Analysts estimate that the company’s total value is approaching the $44 billion Musk paid for it in 2022”

russet-burbank.bsky.social•32 days ago

You mean not running away from it as fast as possible?

jackiesquidonassis.bsky.social•31 days ago

EAIAC. It's the fascist way to live.

veloxiraptor.bsky.social•32 days ago

These right wing tapeworms have already become intractable from any number of other socmed sites but they shrivel up if they have to suffer the knowledge of even ONE they haven't infested yet

jenniloumack.bsky.social•32 days ago

The actual ❄️❄️❄️

brendyg.bsky.social•32 days ago

Is he advocating Twitter as a bastion of 'rigorous debate'? 🤡

caesura30.bsky.social•32 days ago

I saw nazis and magats. I left to avoid throwing up.

goldengateblond.bsky.social•32 days ago

yeah I have almost 300k followers on X and back when I was posting (before the election) I might as well have been doing it to an empty room

floridanorcross.bsky.social•32 days ago

that place is dead, anyway

thecrossfader.bsky.social•32 days ago

Swingers. Well played.

pleasebecool.bsky.social•32 days ago

lol the idea that I fear those mush brained conservatives and THATS why I left Twitter is hilarious

buckchaser.bsky.social•32 days ago

Mike doxxed a turkey vulture earlier.

okay.condition.rocks•31 days ago

"Debate me" guys still going strong in 2025.

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

A big part of what I post are stories I think are good or, failing that, just were written by me. That just doesn't work on Twitter because it's owned by and run on behalf of a functionally illiterate reactionary who has buried that sort of post. (Unless, amusingly, his name is in the headline.)

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

This is the sort of thing you'd know about if part of your livelihood depended upon new people reading your stories or subscribing to your site, instead of staying on the right side of the handful of rich dullards that prop up your half of the industry.

burtonad.bsky.social•32 days ago

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man or woman who assures wealthy people that their views are perceptive and correct and that their fortune is deserved will never be in want of a livelihood.

gpijanowski.bsky.social•32 days ago

Not just large accounts...before Musk my tweets would get about 300 views if not retweeted, after Musk it would be less than 10. In the end, the only interaction left was with Neo-nazies, anti-vaxxers, and pornbots.

treblaw.bsky.social•32 days ago

But David have you considered the dialogue that you are missing

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

As a victim of trauma, I am afraid of this sort of thing.

jginsburg.bsky.social•32 days ago

Well worry no more woth Dr. Hokeum's miracle "Worry Away All Day" medicine, you won't think about anybody at all while you are on a half pound of Laudinum mixed with the finest Cocaine.

shampeon.shampeons.com•32 days ago

I'm Dr. Debate, and for your trauma I prescribe you a vigorous reply war with a dozen identical drop-shipping scammers about the exact manner in which a mob will "find you and make you beg for mercy lol".

treblaw.bsky.social•32 days ago

Lol at drop shipping

ghostofjohngode.bsky.social•31 days ago

but doctor, I am the drop shipping scammer

dash-notheactualworddash.com•32 days ago

I sincerely hope that Mike is right and the author is not on BlueSky. I’m pretty sure this counts as traumatic

steadynappin.bsky.social•32 days ago

theres something here about X and the dem establishment totally unprepared for the idea of someone eating their lunch by doing the bare minimum

jaywillis.net•32 days ago

I remember reading a couple years ago about how Musk wanted to suppress links in an effort to incentivize “creators” to post “directly to X” and thinking, what would that even look like? Now I open the app and see only 4000 word tweets about crypto investing and am like, ah, ok

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

Why click a link and go to another website when you can read a venture capitalist's unhinged and unedited manifesto right there on the site where you used to joke around with your buddies? Wouldn't that be more fun?

dougbonham.blog•32 days ago

It just encourages typing directly into the CMS, which is unhinged behavior

rdrsfn82.bsky.social•32 days ago

Hey, don’t discount your extremely funny posts about how we are all doomed! And random sports stuff that was what originally brought me to Deadspin. Now I follow you so I can hate the world, get screamed at by Drew in podcast and print, and read Moskowitz writing beautiful things about horrors.

vanfirth.bsky.social•31 days ago

Why would you give up an audience of millions of AI troll-bots plus actual trolls who exist solely to post insults? Don’t you want to engage them? They’re poor unfortunate sealioners just asking questions.

daleranderson.bsky.social•31 days ago

I don't disagree with that last statement. Maga is a dangerous contagion that should be quarantined.

internationaljesse.bsky.social•32 days ago

The idea that conservatives embrace reasonable debate… this is quite literally the party of crab rangoon!!! Loud noises!!!

schooley.bsky.social•32 days ago

Or maybe we just found Elon and his parade of promoted weirdos and shit advertisers insufferable.

alanhartley.bsky.social•32 days ago

You don't want to make a detailed argument and have it met with "I know you are but what am I." I do sometimes worry how dumb it's getting out there though

owl-bear.bsky.social•32 days ago

everyone is afraid to splash around in the poop fountain with me because i expose them to dangerous ideas

bartsmith.bsky.social•32 days ago

not to mention that a big following count on twitter is a pretty meaningless number at this point. if you’ve been on that site for a decade, there are lots of people following you that haven’t logged into their account in 5+ years and that’s even before last year’s big exodus

teddybuns.bsky.social•32 days ago

Beware the intersectional hothouses,you never know where they're hiding.

ahuihou.org•32 days ago

Masnick’s clip also ignores twitter’s immense, incestuous bot problem.
https://www.teslarati.com/twitter-accounts-80-percent-bots-former-fbi-security-specialist/

jimpjorps.bsky.social•32 days ago

reminds me of all the Bush era conservative outlets like Human Events and Commentary and American Spectator which liberals were chided for not taking seriously as the voice of the moral majority but then they had readerships in the low four figures

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

The clipped bit is literally from Commentary. It's still going somehow!

jimpjorps.bsky.social•32 days ago

it’s like discovering an old friend

jimpjorps.bsky.social•32 days ago

that does make the sneering about walking away from a big following number that much more pathetic considering he’s never even had a fraction of it himself

moxiegrrl.bsky.social•32 days ago

I love that they come to this conclusion, too, after progressives on Twitter spent years doing exactly what they say we should do to absolutely no avail with people whose debate tactics included "WOMAN DETECTED OPINION REJECTED" and "COMMIE SCUM".

yikesahootie.bsky.social•32 days ago

You forgot the au courant “groomer”

flashesofquincy.bsky.social•32 days ago

They made this whole damn airplane out of progressives debating policy.

benschwartz.bsky.social•32 days ago

Those pieces are always written as if Truth Social doesn't exist for conservatives, or that these platforms are products, and Twitter doesn't work for me if I don't pay to be on it. I also told Elon I'm not coming back until he kicks ketamine. #ToughLove

thebystander99.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yep, exactly. These folks seemed to understand the pretty simple concept at work here when it came to Bud Light, but apply same idea to Twitter and you get Think Pieces for days

issuefortyfive.bsky.social•32 days ago

As a casual social media user, I’m a little confounded by these types of arguments. I don’t log in to have my beliefs challenged. I log in to laugh at the stupid jokes from my imaginary friends that live in my phone.

jginsburg.bsky.social•32 days ago

Also cute animals, SO MANY CUTE ANIMALS

timprice.bsky.social•32 days ago

And crucially, these guys actually hated having their beliefs challenged so much that Musk blew $44 billion on buying and destroying a popular website where people made fun of him

below-left.bsky.social•32 days ago

as always free speech is their right to say things that we have to listen to and can't push back on.

timprice.bsky.social•32 days ago

Oh, you don’t like hanging out on my awful website full of paid trolls and bots anymore? Is it because you’re worried about losing a battle of ideas with Literal Child Pornographer and The Vice President’s Pal Who Says the N Word?

coraswan666.bsky.social•32 days ago

I'm only here to sell my porn so I'm not smart about such things but isn't grabbing 10% of the user base in a couple years like.... Pretty amazing for a start up social media whose whole deal is "we made this thing you liked, but how it was before it got bad"

thurstonsam.bsky.social•32 days ago

Is it so hard to understand that if you don't like Nazis then you don't wanna hang out at the Nazi bar that is owned by a Nazi? Sorry that must be my "intersectional hothouse" talking

lfn.bsky.social•32 days ago

. @jeremylittau.com 👆

possumappreciator.bsky.social•32 days ago

Also I think he’s over promising a little when he says X has rigorous debate. I am not afraid of rigorous debate, I’m just not interested in a flood of weird Nazi robot copy pasta

ajc-mis.bsky.social•31 days ago

THIS IS THE ANSWER.

lasernnjtrllranger.bsky.social•32 days ago

"Ideas that the left finds offensive". Like undermining the Constitutional rule of law? Like oligarchy? White supremacy? Ideas like that?

jeremylittau.com•32 days ago

This has me really curious about the clickthroughs Defector is getting compared to Twitter. Mostly because Defector was one of the first publications I knew of that embraced BlueSky as a whole-staff initiative.

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

There's no comparing it at this point. Twitter was never the hugest source of traffic for anyone, it's worth noting, but we were seeing much more traffic from here than there many months ago, despite having 30k more followers there.

jeremylittau.com•32 days ago

Thanks for sharing. Publishers I’ve heard talk about Bluesky keep saying there isn’t much traffic from here (as if Twitter ever had that juice, as you say), but then I look at their staff presence and it’s clear why even before we talk network effects of a community built differently.

tovanish.kimdokja.company•32 days ago

I think subject matter can also affect traffic. certain groups moved to Bluesky faster/have moved at all while others are still firmly entrenched. sports coverage, at least US based, can still be a mixed bag here

davidjroth.bsky.social•32 days ago

A lot of that is driven by video, but for sure The Conversation about a lot of this stuff—the kind of shitty endless replies-to-Shams-Charania stuff—is still over there. It's not a great loss in that sense, but I'd trade half the politics I see on here for a little more sports.

tovanish.kimdokja.company•32 days ago

yeah, not news-news but I'd trade for more of the subculture/media accounts coming over. it's like pulling teeth and means you have to play telephone to get updates. I appreciate people doing the work to grow things over here

mdhayward.bsky.social•32 days ago

I wonder if this was back translated into Russian. 🤣

gpgon.bsky.social•31 days ago

Lol, if not for man child screwing the US I would've left because of the bots and blue checks making every thread complete garbage

jaredwade.bsky.social•32 days ago

Slight edit to fix: "But the move made sense as an expression of [a newspaper wanting people to click on the links they share and go read their articles on their website, since that is their goal and having a 'rigorous debate' is not something a newspaper actually even does on social media.]"

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