It's not the fault of BlueSky or their users, but I really haven't enjoyed the social media climate right now. If I want to have a discussion about subject X I would need to be deep inside echo chamber social media network Y. For some subjects that is BlueSky and for others it would be platforms I don't want to participate in.

I think the reality is that most social media platforms will inevitability create hyper-polarized audiences that do little more than generate content.

The hyper-polarization is probably preventable, in my estimation. The main thing a social network would need to do is to stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly. That might mean something along the lines of a system that puts a hard cap on the reach any profile or topic can have, and when engagement exceeds the triggering threshold, reach actually tapers off proportionate to how far the threshold is exceeded.

In theory this would naturally elevate posts that are more measured and mundane while sinking posts with big emotional lizard brain appeal (by design or otherwise). With time this would establish a self-reinforcing norm that makes polarized and inflammatory posts look as clownish as they actually are.

>It's not the fault of BlueSky or their users

I'd actually argue against this. although I'd probably blame Reddit more.

It is now normal for social media to be composed of echo chambers and that's because administrations and users enable and seek that. If someone's to blame more than Twitter/Reddit and their respective users I'm missing it, and on that note, blocklists as a functionality in BlueSky are there precisely to protect echo chambers.

The user base is the problem on Bluesky, at least for me. It’s full of well-meaning middle-aged people who don’t understand online discussion etiquette. Any non-political post that gets any sort of traction will get filled up with irrelevant bot-like (but real, as far as I can tell) political meme replies that barely make sense.

I think that Twitter (and by extension, Bluesky) is designed in such a way that it promotes hostility and division. You can't really have a good discussion when the format makes people limit their posting to super short messages; it means people just dump hot takes on each other and wind up shouting past each other. So in that sense I certainly would call it the platforms' fault. Twitter (and Bluesky/Mastodon) are toxic to our society and we would be far better off if they were never created.

There's a lot of hot tub parties out there. Some have people you want I really want to interact with, some do not. Some have good house rules making it feel comfortable, some do not.

The best part of BlueSky in my opinion is that it's really easy to control what you want to see, without the site-owner's algorithm choosing for you. No matter who else is at the hot tub party, I don't have to worry much about them peeing in my particular hot tub. I hear Mastodon is somewhat similar, but it's been a while.

The balance between discovery and curation and control is nigh-on perfect for me in BlueSky. If I want to focus just on my corner of the science world, it's super easy for me to build a network of people just in that corner and not get spammed with, say, racially-tinged fight videos that are meant for engagement bait, as has happened on other social networks.

If you want hyper-polarized communities, some of those can be found on BlueSky too! But at least on BlueSky I'm able to choose what I want rather than having the preferences of the site owner control my information environment.

I left X because of how bad it got but BlueSky is also quite often useless in terms of good discussion. Recently any substack article posted is just filled with comments about how using substack supports Nazi ideology, no other discussion to be had. When it comes to anything related to AI the comments are all about stealing from artists. It is as if people just wait for the right buzzword to appear and post their canned response. Interesting posts that don't cause any controversy just don't have much engagement.

The hyper-polarization is already in the real world, so I don't think social media can avoid that.

For all that it sounds unlikely, it'd be nice if the blogosphere, with blog replies and pingbacks, could come back for this sort of discussion. No monetization, though, so substack and co. are out.

> If I want to have a discussion about subject X I would need to be deep inside echo chamber social media network Y.

To me, this is the crux of your problem. Social media is like a, well, social space like a bar. Not everyone shares the same opinions, but most of the patrons can at least agree enough to not fight each other, which is sort of an echo chamber since yelling something against the grain would get your ask kicked in a bar.

Forums are the place to have a discussion about subject X, since everyone is there to have that discussion. Of course, if you get off topic or snippy the conversation may devolve, but if you stay on topic you can have a nice conversation about subject X.

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That's the one question I had over and over when Twitter was slowly dying. Do we really need another Twitter?

This completely depends on the moderation policies of the website. So, yes, the platforms are at fault.