Making a Sky Change

It’s a bit long, but in this post you’ll learn how to get your best possible start on Bluesky – like a detailed bio, some intro posts, blocks and word filters, search – and what the upsides are to giving it a go.

TLDR? Jump ahead to the guide and steps for using Bluesky!

Also, you’ll find me there at @mike.realcool.co 🙂

UPDATE: Zuck calls his play

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed Meta will pull out the stops on hate speech, “removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender”, and moving the company’s moderation teams to Texas to “remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content”. You can read his detailed post here on Threads.

So, if you’re thinking about checking out Bluesky, here’s my little guide to understanding the Twitter-inspired platform’s user-focused features.

Note: This guide was published in November 2024, but I’ve updated it with details of the platform’s newest features.

I got to thinking recently that a ‘sky change’ might be a good thing. Escaping from the hustle and bustle of Threads and its constantly moving (force)feed of content.

I feel like so much of the content I see on Threads is either:

1. Engagement bait

2. Good people asking questions that get them accused of engagement bait

3. People complaining about engagement bait.

So… I wonder if folks on Threads would be interested in giving a week of their social media time entirely to Bluesky instead of Threads?

JUMP

The Upsides
The Obstacles
Getting Started
Some pretty minor irritations
NEW: Lists with accounts you can block in bulk!
NEW: A searchable directory of starter packs!
NEW: Thread creation (tweet storms) now possible
NEW: Interaction controls!
NEW: Trending topics!

I like the analogy that a week on bluesky is like taking a break from the city life – making a tree change. In this case, a sky change!

If we all understand that every successful social platform eventually attracts shitheads, then it’s clear that bsky could still be ‘the good place’, because of the moderation tools and filters it gives us, and a sensible algo that doesn’t thrive on engagement bait. Those features are, frankly, so much better than what any Meta platform offers!

Remember: Meta platforms are based on growing their traffic, so that they can position more ads in front of more people – and that means using an algo that grows traffic (‘daily active users’) by whatever means necessary, rather than an algo that cares about user safety and satisfaction.

✔ THE UPSIDES

1) Strong moderation features that you control

Whether it’s the more advanced muted word filters, your own curated lists of moderated accounts, or the classic muted and blocked accounts function, Bluesky seems to care more about this aspect of user happiness than Threads. There’s also a section devoted to showing or hiding adult content, and even what level of adult content it’ll show.

2) Feeds & lists

Make your own shareable lists, or follow a keyword- and profile-targeting feed created by somebody else (for now, feeds can only be made with some dev skills). Whichever you go for, this is a really handy way to curate your time on Bluesky.

3) Following Feed and Thread preferences

Decide whether you see replies or reposts in your home feed, how replies are ordered in threads, and more.

4) Strong controls on exactly who can engage with your posts

Want to have a discussion with only the people you trust to have good input on the topic? Put them all in a list, and then select that list as the only people who can respond!

5) DMs!!

Yes, Bluesky has private messages. They’re not E2EE yet, but that’s apparently coming.

6) Third-party apps, and… a skydeck!

You loved Tweetdeck, right? Me too. Bluesky doesn’t offer one natively, but neither did Twitter for a long time. There are third-party alternatives though (yes, Bluesky is open to third-party devs!), including my favourite, @deck.blue. Another great one is Skeetdeck.

There’s also a great list here of awesome Bluesky third-party apps. It’s just like the olden days on Twitter and Reddit. Remember those times?

7) Curated lists of dropkicks you can block in bulk, with just one click

If you’re of the zero-tolerance persuasion, and you don’t mind that you’ll end up with a little bit of an echo chamber (of sorts), it’s possible to click the ‘subscribe’ button on a list and then immediately tap ‘block all’.

To that end, the incredible @alancerny.bsky.social has shared a number of lists occupied by MAGAts, NFT and Crypto bros, far-rightflakes, content scrapers, and more. Check ’em out here.

8) Bluesky Directory by Mubs

If you’ve been worried that it’ll be too hard to find people worth following… problem solved. I mean, apart from the suggestions I’ve offered further down on this page, the Bluesky Directory is an incredible and epic searchable resource of starter packs. Check it out!

Bluesky now has a Trending Topics feature, in beta, which you’ll find in the app by tapping the search button or on desktop in the right-hand column of the page.

One really cool thing about Trending is that it respects your filters – so if you’ve muted any words, they’ll blocked not only in your feeds but also in Trending.

✘ OBSTACLES TO MIGRATION

Don’t be deterred, but here are a few things that might bug you. Obviously I’m hoping for some improvements in these areas!

1) We know a big obstacle to moving away from Threads and its algo (for those who dwell on the idea as I do), is the folks you leave behind. Just as it was with Twitter.

But if you can build momentum towards one specific week together on Bluesky, then you get one obstacle out of the way: your friends are there. The conversations can continue, and new friends you don’t know yet will join in, and then you’re cooking.

2) The influencers probably won’t follow. They need to be somewhere that offers an algo focused on growth, and Bluesky mostly isn’t that place.

Of course, if the Sky Change mission is a success, influencers will eventually show up – but really, it’s up to you to decide how badly you want them around. I’m friends with a number of great Youtubers and other creators, but we all know there’s many more bad than good seeds in that world. 🤷‍♂️

But hey, take a look at these Starter Packs to see if your faves are there.

3) REMEMBER: Depending on how many of your friends come over, you’re going to immediately feel like there’s not much happening.

That’s how it was before Meta’s algorithms that force-fed ‘suggested’ content into our minds – we’ve just forgotten that, and frankly we’re a little addicted to it.

There are fewer people on Bluesky, and yep it’s slower – because the Threads algo here has trained us to see a flood as good, making slow a ‘ghost town’ – but right now I’m loving slow.

Stick with it, and follow my steps below!

4) Bluesky looks like Twitter and Threads, but it works a little differently (although thankfully not as differently as Mastodon), and ain’t nobody got time for learning a new platform!

So, here’s the basics. Read on!

GETTING STARTED

📝 Firstly, get signed up.

Duh. Head to bsky.app and click ‘sign up’.

The Create Account page is like any other, except for one thing: the first field, Hosting Provider. This is a bit like Mastodon in that you can use a custom server if you want, but for most folks, the default and pre-filled Bluesky Social host is the way to go.

🪪 Fill out your bio, and introduce yourself!

👋 If you want people to follow you, or even just follow you back, give them a reason to.

Something I see so often on every social platform is getting a follow from somebody with zero details on their bio. If I don’t know anything about you, why would I hit ‘follow back’?

You might not want followers – for example, you might only be there to browse and read – but if you do want to make friends, get that bio filled out and put up an intro post!

👨‍💻 Find people!

To find your people, you should post on Threads with a link to your profile, or pop it into your profile bio. You could also add the #skychange tag.

To find new people, the easiest thing for me to recommend is checking out my own follows and followers lists as a starting point. Depending on what you’re into, of course!

There are also user-created lists and feeds you can check out, like this Tech Starter Pack. The Consumer Tech Journalists pack is another great one. There’s even a profile that collects and shares starter packs: Skypacks!

Okay, yet another update: I didn’t know Bluesky Directory exists, and it has a searchable page of starter packs. Damn that’s good. Cheers to @mackuba.eu for the heads-up!

🔎 Look around

Of course, even if none of your friends come over, you’ve got me 😁 – but you’ve also got the search tool.

Throw some keywords into the search box, filter by Top or Latest, set your preferred language for the search results, and find interesting people!

This is how I got started on Twitter back in the day, when I knew about three people on the entire platform. I just searched for my interests, and voila, I suddenly had a great list of accounts in my follows list.

🧚‍♂️ LISTEN: I strongly recommend that you get your muted words filter set up first, so that your search results will be cleaner and more useful than they otherwise would.

Okay, now, there are some…

😑 Irritations

Threads has spoiled us a little, when it comes to the sugary features like post length, images per post, and video length (if not rotating videos…)

On Bluesky you get only:

300 characters instead of 500 (drives me nuts!)

Four images instead of 10 (or is it 20 now on Threads? Come on!)

Videos can only be 60 seconds long and if you post a video, that post can’t have any additional videos or any images. They also take a while to process.

No polls, although @poll.blue is a pretty clever workaround.

~~No pre-drafted skeet storms~~ whup, this is now possible!

No edit button. I suspect they’ll add this at some point, but don’t be surprised if it’s a paid feature. (They’re trying to find monetisation options that don’t rely heavily on ads.)

I think that’s about it, really.