Bluesky for Beginners

What is Bluesky? Think Twitter 2012 or so.

Folks, I’m not putting a lot of effort in this post with editing so it’s all shiny and reads like butter, because I don’t care to be a social media resource for you or for anyone else. And frankly, I don’t give a shit if you join. You have “reasons” — fine.

Nomad No More is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

But I’m tired of people going on Bluesky then bitching it’s not great, and the fact is, it’s not great because people aren’t putting in the effort.

That’s a you-problem, not a Bluesky problem. I love the site and I’ve made a great experience there.

This shit ain’t plug-and-play, you need to build a community, and if you don’t, it will suck.

If you’re looking for the social media option that is most like Twitter was in 2010 to 2015, that’s Bluesky.

It was literally started by someone from Twitter, but that dude, Jack Dorsey, washed his hands of it in early 2013 and now it’s its own company.

Great story: Jack Dorsey tried to promote a talk with Robert Kennedy Jr. against vaccines on Bluesky, and the audience handed him his ass SO HARD in May 2023, when there were under a million users, that he deleted his account and later left the Board of Directors.

So that tells you who’s using Bluesky, and there’s 14 million of us now.

Again, not doing a big post here. These are basics.

I cannot repeat this enough: If you do not follow HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE, you will not enjoy Bluesky. Stop being a selective goofball follow the HELL out of people, and then you will enjoy the site.

It’s not marriage, you can unfollow later.

It drives me INSANE when people follow 50 people then complain it’s not a very interesting site. Yeah, that’s on you.

So, why join Bluesky?

Well, it’s a framework and despite it having an owner, people can create Bluesky experiences much like Mastodon, so it doesn’t matter if a new owner comes in — people will have independent Bluesky portals to link to the wider community, so you never have to worry about being tied to one instance of Bluesky. Right? Complicated. I don’t understand how it works, but I understand why.

It’s a good safety valve in an era where companies have changed to the wrong hands.

Unlike Mastodon, Bluesky was created by a dedicated team, not open source, so it doesn’t suffer the “too many cooks in the kitchen” feeling, and it’s also a different community – it’s more flippant, more varied, more loose-cannon like the old Twitter once was.

Here’s my profile banner, and I’m SnarkySteff, I’ll be your tour guide.

The BIG POINT: No Algorithm

If your experience on Bluesky sucks: That’s completely on you. If you don’t find the right people to follow, you won’t enjoy it. If you follow 40 people, you won’t enjoy it.

Don’t put in the effort, don’t follow a lot of people: You won’t like it.

I can’t repeat that enough!

There is NO ONE pulling the strings and prioritizing ANY content on Bluesky. Period.

Starter Packs

When you join, starter packs are the way go get rocking and fast.

These are “packs” of people you can quickly follow to get your experience going.

Starter Packs are created by just about anyone on anything. There are Canadian News packs, foodie packs, all sorts of “packs.” There’s a directory and you can search them all. (There are 3,650 starter packs to choose from. So, pick a subject you like, such as Astronomy, and see what’s on offer.)

They are essentially a curated list of people around that topic or subject, and with a single click, you can follow them all. Or follow just the people who appeal to you, but I say follow them all and then unfollow the weenies.

Follow as many as you can to make things fun, is my suggestion. I have followed all BC people, Canadian news organizations, Canadian journalists, and foodies. I follow 1600 people and it’s getting good now.

Moderation Lists

Same idea as Starter Packs, but Moderation Lists include people you probably want to block. I’ve blocked a MAGA list, and anyone on there is anti-human rights, obnoxious, and so on. There isn’t a directory that I know of but you can do some searches. This is one of the MAGA block lists you can subscribe to, which gives you the option of auto-blocking them all.

But be careful with moderation packs because a “block” on Bluesky is the biggest, harshest block on social media anywhere. People call it the “nuclear block” because you will never, ever see them again. It’s conceivable people who do not belong on there do make the list. You never know. (I’ve blocked the MAGA chuds and haven’t looked back, though, personally.)

Feeds

There are so many feeds on Bluesky. These are great.

On the app, on the main homefeed, you can “swipe” between feeds. So, you can have anything from Blacksky, which has every Black person on the site, right up to plant feeds and foodie feeds.

The nice thing about adding a ton of feeds to your Bluesky experience is you don’t need to follow everyone to follow the feed. You can pop in and see what folks are posting on, say, the dog feed, or gardening, and then go back to your homefeed. Think of it like a magazine on that subject that includes anyone posting on it that day.

There’s also a setting under “Feed Preferences” in the settings where you choose feed post to randomly show up in your home feed, to keep things hopping.

I had that setting turned on for the last year, but now that the place is getting really busy, and I follow 1600 people, I’ve turned it off.

Behaviour

Bluesky is definitely centrist and left-wing, and it really, really hates MAGA and racists and jerks. Bluesky is a low-tolerance site and people will not only block you fast, they will tell others to block you. It’s a social movement against hate, most of the time, but it’s an engaged audience and people will speak up on things.

As an example, Catturd is a legendary bad actor from Twitter and he showed up this week — not only was he blocked by hundreds within the first couple hours, but his hatemongering and threats got him removed from the platform by the end of the first day.

Folks on Bluesky are pissed off and fed up with the way other social networks have gone, and the fast-blocking, low-tolerance has been a result of that. Now it’s the culture there. It’s not anti-conservative, but it is anti-hate.

We do NOT engage with trolls on Bluesky, we BLOCK them. If YOU engage with trolls, it might get YOU blocked because you’re increasing their visibility.

We END their visibility and they fuck off the site. It’s great, because the right-wing bad actors really, really hate it.

Swearing? Fuck yeah! It’s a really chill place so don’t worry about beaking off and having fun, but don’t be surprised if you get blocked by a few people too — it’s such a low trigger point for some, but who cares? Just do your thing and live your life.

Alt Text

There’s a very strong “alt text” public on Bluesky and people will hound you to add alt text to photos. This is just a quick description for either people who are low-vision or blind, or people who are neuro-divergent and may not understand why you chose that photo for your post.

But unlike every other site, alt text essentially gives you 2,000 more characters for your post – it’s really easy to write more in the Alt Text window on a photo, and then it displays like a caption under the photo when someone clicks to look at the whole picture. (This makes it super-useful if you’re into sharing cooking and other things that need more explaining!)

And the Bluesky app has a little square box with lines in it that you can click, on the alt-text editing screen, and that will find all text in your photo and allow you to “copy/paste” it into the description if you need to.

Other Basics

It’s pretty obvious on there. You can use hashtags (but look like a schmuck when you do).

There’s quote-posting, thread-posting (this is newly added, yay). You can change your audience on a post, even long after it’s been up if you want people to stop replying.

Unlike Thread or other sites, “liking” someone’s posts won’t cause you to receive notifications on it, so like away!

People love getting likes, so spread them around like it’s free, because it is!

Before You Start Following People

You will NOT get people following you back if you don’t have:

A good bio, a photo, a banner photo, and A FEW POSTS on your profile. Feel free to copy and paste some of your best posts from Twitter – no one cares about that, but people do hate Twitter screenshots. (Stay there if you like Twitter so much.)

We are getting flooded by Twitter jerks, and people are being guarded on who they follow, because there’s literally been an increase of about 30% traffic in the last month or so. Making an effort on your profile before creating community will ensure you actually are able to create community.

A Last Word: Muting Terms

This is a great way to tone down any social media site, but what I like about muting things on Bluesky (like the word “Trump,” for me) is that you can click a box that excludes “mutuals.”

So, anyone you follow who decides to mention that term you’ve blocked, you’ll still see, but someone else will be muted.

On Twitter, if you muted a word, and someone did a Quote Tweet and the muted word (ie Trump) was in that post, you’d see their quote-tweeted post. On Bluesky, though, they’ve changed that – I’ll see the person who’s posting the quoted tweet, but the quote tweet itself will show that it is muted due to a term I dislike.

Highly recommend the muting tool!

Anyhow, that’s my very basic getting-started-on-Bluesky advice.

Join, or don’t — but the experience you have there is 100% on you.

I’m not sure who created this graphic, but it’s great:

Nomad No More is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.