If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen people argue that the social media platform Bluesky is a failure. It has “only” 36 million-plus users, compared to more than 600 million twitter users. (The latter is a number I think is highly suspect, but that’s a topic for another day.)

I joined Bluesky more than a year ago, I think, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on the social media site until last fall, when some odious thing the owner of twitter had done drove other people there. All of a sudden, Bluesky seemed populated – much more so than in the first few months after I had joined – and much livelier.

So-called “Starter Packs” on Bluesky – curated lists of writers, engineers, performers, artists, whatever – gave my follower count a boost early on, but the growth in the number of followers there has been pretty consistent. I have about 2,800 followers there now, compared to more than 4,000 at my peak on twitter. That Bluesky following was built in a matter of months, by the way, compared to all the years since 2009 I’ve been on twitter.

(I still have a twitter account, to keep in touch with friends who are still more active there than on Bluesky, but I spend much, much more time on Bluesky.) I’m also active on Facebook, where I started an author page this year despite my misgivings over the attitudes and behavior of the suck-up American oligarch who owns it, and I post regularly there and on Instagram (same owner, same dislike for the owner). The reason I’m still on all those platforms is, besides keeping up with friends who are on them, is to publicize my book, THAT OCTOBER.

But I spend most of my time on Bluesky, regardless of follower numbers and engagement, because it just feels like the least awful place on socials. I’m not choosing the lesser of evils here, I promise. I feel like using any social media is like building a new house (ie active thread that’s hopefully engaging) on somebody else’s property.

In other words, all of social media is someone else’s real estate. When they want to take it away from us, they can.

That’s also why Bluesky is the least reprehensible social platform. The owners of twitter and Facebook and other Meta platforms have shown themselves to be dishonest in how they treat the people who actively bring eyeballs to those platforms. They take the value of our work and bluster and censure us.

BlueSky seems the least likely social media platform to do this.

This might change if the semi-collective, not-especially-concentrated ownership of Bluesky changes, perhaps through a sale at some point in the future. Money talks and bullshit walks and aside from political ideology, there’s been no more certain death knell for various socials than how much their owners can make by selling them or just selling out.

So I’m spending time on Bluesky – too much time, probably – and little time anywhere else, although I have a presence everywhere. This site is a pretty reliable place to find my latest thoughts but it is not a two-way street, unlike even the worst social.

So I don’t think Bluesky is dying. I do think it is, right at this moment, a less reprehensible (there’s that phrase again) place than the alternatives.

We’ll see if that continues to be the case.