Twitter's entire problem is Elon Musk, the debt he saddled the company with, and the intentionally awful decisions he makes. But it still has the most users and is by far the easiest to directly monetize.

That may relegate Bluesky and Mastodon to niche platforms for people who want to avoid ads and other shit. And that could be a lot of people! But it may never dislodge Twitter from its current place of importance.

Only Musk can fly that rocket into the ground.

In the meantime, Bluesky is going to get attention because people are attracted to a shiny new thing and frankly, most social media users don't want to think that hard about what platform they're on.

The people who will leave Twitter typically want the alternative to be extremely Twitter-like, easy to use, with big names they're familiar with, and preferably slick to look at.

They don't care about decentralization or who owns or controls what.

That's neither good nor bad, but it reflects the fact that the average Mastodon user doesn't care about replacing Twitter and is often opposed to making it more Twitter-like, culturally and technologically, even it means driving potential users away.

Bluesky, meanwhile, is very specifically aimed at people who want a Twitter replacement, even if it's not there yet.

Regardless, this could all end with Twitter winning by default, with all of the negative political consequences that entails.

Bluesky seems to have targeted its invitation and recruitment process at popular Twitter super users, although this process was apparently easily gamed, and if it can get a critical mass to sign on and stick around, it might even succeed, leaving Twitter full of nothing but blue check Musk dittoheads.

It's definitely the best funded and organized "Twitter killer" we've seen recently.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything to Mastodon, of course, other than some people who came here to get away from Twitter may eventually migrate away. And good riddance, some would no doubt say.

Mastodon and the Fediverse may regret that attitude if -- and it's a big if, as there's no reason to trust Jack Dorsey -- Bluesky succeeds at becoming the bigger and more popular decentralized platform.

@gwynnion This has always been my frustration with #Mastodon — that its developers and community don't aspire to unseat Capitalist control of social media. They "think small," despite the huge potential #ActivityPub offered.

Had Gargron allowed for "quote toots" and popularity-sorted feeds, Mastodon would have nipped #Bluesky in the bud *months* ago.

Now that window has probably passed, and some VC-funded alternative protocol will overshadow it.