I was on Twitter from fairly early days. I lived in Vancouver at the time, and it was fun, engaging, safe place to connect and meet people. I met one of my closest friends to this day there through a weird conversation about bagpipers, and two of the most meaningful and important person relationships I’ve ever had started there.

I left a while ago, in no small part because of the demise of one of those relationships, but it was also starting to..change. Hostility was rising, people were “creating content” instead of just connecting and communicating. When it was eventually bought by the now-Shadow President and turned into X it was clear I’d made the right decision.

Bluesky came along a few years ago, and I had an invite so staked out the name but it wasn’t very active. Fast forward a while–a year ago today, apparently–and invites were no longer needed. When the Sentient Cheeto who is now in the office of the President of the United States return, an exodus of sorts started and Bluesky’s number swelled.

So, is Bluesky the new Twitter that everybody’s been waiting for? Maybe. Some argue that we now just have two echo chambers–X for the right wing, Bluesky for the left. I don’t think that’s true. Bluesky certainly feels friendlier and more respectful, but I don’t think that’s a result of it being an echo chamber. Respecting others viewpoints doesn’t mean agreeing with them–it just means not adopting shouting them down as a strategy, which seems to be what happens on X these days.

Still, only time will tell. Bluesky’s user number are a still a fraction of what Twitter’s were, and X’s are (though many of those accounts are probably fake) and as it grows it may normalize. When that happens civility may–again, it’s worth noting–go out the window in favour of anger, aggression and the loudest voices. I hope not.

In the meantime you can find me in two places: my main account is penguinstorm and a more Salesforce focused one at cloudtoolbox. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep both alive, but we’ll see.