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.

My qualms with Bluesky has less to do with ideological leanings (it’s true that there are ethics implications that a lot of people like to sweep under the rug and that should be pointed out) and more with how depressing it is to use, with an overwhelming sentiment of doom.

I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend everything is just peachy (it’s not) but the doomerism is so strong and pervasive that I think it breeds complacency that when met with the sugar high of social media engagement reacts to form armchair activism (which breeds yet more complacency). All that time and energy may be better spent building each other up and encouraging action through an optimistic outlook.

The same trend is noticeable here on HN. Many threads are full of top-level posts that are just someone pattern-matching on a word they don't like in the headline and using it as an excuse to vent about whatever their pet issue is. Usually posts like that are magnets for zero-effort "me too"s and similar. Sometimes interesting discussions happen deeper in the threads, but it's disappointingly rare. It's really sad watching the entire internet turn into this, and I can't help but feel like places like Twitter/X and Bluesky are the source.