BlueCry? Nah, Decentralized Social is Just Better

Bluecry is what I see Joe Rogan calling Bluesky, the semi-decentralized X alternative that a lot of people flocked to after Trump won the election.

The social media landscape is interesting today. We have defacto fragmentation. There are a bunch of different X-like platforms that have a fairly-sticky user base.

• Bluesky seems to be the safe-haven for those trying to escape the tyrannical right unleashed by free speech firebrand Elon Musk on X.
• Threads, Meta's X alternative, seems to have a lot of users and people seem to like it (though apart from that one week where everyone was talking about it, nobody talks about it now)
• And then there's Farcaster, the semi-decentralized crypto-based X alternative full of libertarians and crypto-natives that keeps unlocking interesting crypto use cases.

Some have definitely and very loudly deleted their X accounts after setting up elsewhere. Most people seem to be following the Uber/Lyft model: why pick one when you can do both? Or do both/all until there is a clear winner. They're all 'free'.

Fragmentation is a bitch. I'd love to be on Bluesky because it just seems more peaceful and positive than X. Same for Farcaster. But most of the content I consume is only found on X because the users that create the content are there. And a lot of them love the chaos and aren't willing to give up their big follower counts. Thus, content is tied to UI and scattered everywhere.

Its also a bitch that most people don't understand the benefits of an open system. Farcaster and Bluesky have a model where if you don't like what you're seeing, or they decide to ban you, you can take your account and your data to another version of the platform. Infinite versions can exist. In theory, these types of platforms are interchangeable front-ends that don't own your data, because you own your data.

We should mobilize to make something like this the defacto social media model. It would allow for free speech while allowing for people to go to a version of the 'app' that feels right to them. It would also provide a lot more privacy protection than an X or Threads. Its amazing that no matter how many times we get burned by data collectors, which most all social media businesses are, we keep going back for more. Imagine the amount of data Musk is collecting on X, and how he could choose to use it in the future. Same with Threads.

We deserve better but we also have to be willing to go after it and maybe rebuild what we had. That's my first pitch for crypto on this blog. There will surely be more. If you can wrap your head around why Farcaster is a better model than X, you can understand why Ethereum is a much better model for many if not most of the things we do online today.