Bluesky reminds me of the golden age of X.

Gaming Twitter hasn't felt like Gaming Twitter in years. This might not change on Twitter any time soon, but Bluesky feels like a window into the not-so-distant past.

Twitter has dropped significantly since Elon Musk took over the site in 2022 at the end of August. The social media giant is expected to be worth nearly 80 percent less than before the takeover and after the US presidential election in November. Hundreds of thousands of users have closed their Twitter accounts (now known as X) in support of Bluesky, a Twitter competitor that has added eight million users since October. which increased from 13 million to 21 million.

Twitter's loss is Bluesky's gain.

Musk publicly committed himself to Donald Trump's re-election bid, and the former president's return to the White House was the catalyst for many users to finally get serious about finding an alternative to Twitter. It has increasingly become a source of right-wing activity. in the election Come closer I get it, I'm still on Twitter, but I understand why some people have chosen to leave during this time. In the past, I've seen a lot of gaming accounts I follow get shut down.

This is despite the fact that users bringing up more hateful talking points are causing major damage on the site. And as a result, advertisers will flock away. But Musk's problems with Twitter go deeper. His decision to change the blue checkmark from the icon that identifies users to the person they claim is a status symbol that everyone else uses. They can pay eight dollars a month to pin their profile. This makes the site significantly less trustworthy and more difficult to navigate.

Musk also gave priority to users with a blue checkmark in the algorithm. So you will see their tweets more often. That extends to their replies being given priority over all other replies, and this is the biggest change that makes Twitter borderline unusable.

blue check mark problem

I don't want to generalize, but blue checkmarks are the site's worst users. When Musk introduced the idea of ​​paying for verification, long-time Twitter users often responded with, 'F*** you, you should.' Will pay me.' People who decide to use free features are It's mostly posters who haven't been able to grow their audience, that and bots. The result is that replies with blue checkmarks often lack any insight at all. If you're known for your quick wit, You don't have to pay to shove it down someone else's throat.

So, if you're really interested in starting a conversation with a tweet. And that tweet gained some popularity. You'll have to scroll through dozens of nonsensical answers before you get to the one that's actually relevant to what you're talking about. If you want to reply to an interesting post. Your tweets will not be visible. Unless the poster had to go to the trouble of searching through all that trash.

And if you're just interested in seeing the conversation You need to work on it or you will likely move on. This negatively affects Twitter's functioning as a vector for conversations about shared interests. And it destroys your ability to click on funny tweets. And read a lot of great replies, which is exactly the point of using Twitter.

The ugly change I thought about today: You can't see other people's likes at all.

As a games journalist who started his freelance career in the 2010s, Twitter was at the center of conversations about games. It's where I go to see what other journalists or indie game developers are talking about, and I get a lot of recommendations through different types of posts. that the algorithm doesn't like right now You can see the developers interacting with each other. Reply to the player and talk about their games

Developers have shared the levels they are building with Blocktober and gathered some cool topics. that they learned from the games they played Beyond any of those specifics, it's a place where anyone who works in the industry or covers it can go and talk about what's going on in games. And see what their followers have to say about it.

The Twitter game isn't coming back.

Under Musk, Twitter has heavily promoted right-wing accounts. Mostly because, given his political turn, most others would be embarrassed to hand over a blue check. Even if they wanted to. That makes it difficult for anyone to have conversations about even remotely sensitive topics like race, gender, and sexuality in games.

If those posts get attention It gets responded to with a hostile blue tick, so people don't talk about it much anymore. and gaming, which is already a vector of right-wing extremism. It lost its progressive sound.

But Bluesky still works like uninterrupted Twitter: you'll still see the most liked replies first. Not all responses from people who paid to be considered interesting, in fact I saw people talking about the game in interesting ways. share their work and respond to cool things created by others I've seen users do that 1 like = 1 game as a way to engage with their followers.

People still post pictures of their food. or share articles they wrote Or just talk about their ideas about new games with the expectation that they won't part with them out of pure dishonesty. It feels like my Twitter feed is the same as it was before 2022. Elon ruined the Bird app so badly that a competitor doing what Twitter did three years ago would be a huge breath of fresh air.

Considering how quickly Twitter has changed, with Musk only taking over in October of 2022, it's easy to see how Bluesky could follow suit. In a world where money can buy anything No matter how important it is as a global public communication tool, It seems entirely possible that a bored billionaire could buy Bluesky and remake it in their image. It is the dark side of life under capitalism. But for now I will enjoy this little window into a slightly brighter past.