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.