Blacksky is not like Black Twitter, and it doesn’t have to be

If you live And in some neighborhoods of the Internet long enough, rules of governance, no matter how ridiculous or toxic, become second nature.

And on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, harassment, racism and hate speech are also present Uniquely toxic Under Elon Musk’s ownership, if you identify as black, a woman, queer, trans, or disabled, you definitely have a target on your back. The combat environment generated a kind of dark humor. Even fans of the platform may refer to it as “site hell.” But people stayed, largely because there was no viable alternative. The topics were strange. The mastodon was complex. For a long time, it was bluesky Very quiet– Until something changed, with the American elections coming and going, and people were fed up.

Millions of users have moved to Bluesky over the past two months. Although the platform is not perfect, many newcomers are puzzled by the platform’s upbeat atmosphere. “I’m trying to find a subset of niche humor here,” @lvteef posted on December 3, “because as of right now, millennials are very happy, lucky with this app.”

“I’m like where’s the misery? The sick jokes? The hate in this dance?” He responded @knoxdotmp3.

Clearly, some of us are struggling to shake off the shock of X. Meanwhile, long-time Bluesky users also have questions about the future of the platform, and whether the environment they’ve created can handle the influx of new people. It’s like social media is turning a page, and Open a new chapter. But this time, the architects of that not-so-distant future are determined to get things done right.

One of those vanguards is Rudy Frasera 30-year-old New York technologist with a background in enterprise IT and community organizing. He is a creator Blackskythe Customized feed and moderation service Which is slowly turning into the main route for many black users on Bluesky. If the phenomenon sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Since the first flashes of Internet exploration, black people have searched for their own oasis on the Internet. It was true Net Noir in 1996 And recently from Black Twitterthe center and driver of Internet culture during the first decade of the twenty-first century. When those experiments failed, NetNoir faded and Black Twitter, though still very active, was lost Any semblance of protection When Musk bought Twitter, Fraser wanted success. “Moderation is a key part of it,” he told me in a recent video call.

Fraser has a knack for bringing people together. In addition to IT consulting, he has worked as lead organizer with We The People NYC, a grassroots mutual aid organization, since 2022, and also created Papertree, a digital mutual aid tool that allows large groups of people to share funds. “I wanted to create a community bank account for all the residents of Bed-Stuy,” he said of the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. When that didn’t work, Fraser reevaluated.

It was spring 2023, not long after Bluesky invites started rolling in, and Fraser got one during his beta test (there were 51,921 users). He was already involved in some Web3-related projects, and was interested in questions regarding data ownership. Bluesky’s mission — to be a decentralized social media platform, making the social Internet a truly self-governing ecosystem — appealed to him for similar reasons. “The idea of ​​the AT protocol and the promise of a personalized algorithmic feed seemed like a great thing to jump into,” he said.