Algorithmic Social Media is broken.

Hank Green in his video Twitter (and Threads) Have Made a HUGE Mistake on YouTube.com on November 29, 2024:

…you gotta go on BlueSky, you’ll see links to articles, and then you’ll click on them!

In this video Hank Green rants about Threads and ~~Twitter~~ X down-ranking content that leads users to leave the site/app. Both platforms manipulate their users through their algorithms by giving posts containing select keywords or links in general less exposure. For example, if you post on X and your post mentions BlueSky, the algorithm will show it to fewer people.

I’ve been shouting into the void about this for what feels like forever at this point. If you provide free content to companies such as Facebook/Meta/Threads, X, and others, you give them the power to control your audience. Same goes for platforms that might not do that right now, but could choose to at any point—like Substack. Unless you run your own website, you are at the mercy of the owner of the website you post to. And once you run your own website, you are at the mercy of Google, but at least the audience you have will be yours and not Musk’s, Zuckerberg’s, or anybody else’s.

These platforms are not democracies, you can’t even switch to another access point like you can with other services. If your email provider annoys you, you can switch to another one, if your Mastodon server shuts down, you can move your account and take your followers with you, if you want to leave BlueSky, you can actually run your own server—but if Musk or Zuckerberg dislike your posts, want your username, or just feel grumpy, you are at their mercy. One honorable mention, of course, has to be YouTube here. YouTube seems to actually want to do right by its content creators.

Watch the video, it explains why BlueSky is better than Threads or X, then follow me on Mastodon.