I'd love to know the breakdown in declines between bot/engagement accounts and organic posting, though that's likely impossible even with the labeling system. I couldn't tell if there's even a perceptual decline in the former because I've mass-blocked them through blocklists and labelers.
Subjectively, I have only noticed a steady increase in posting activity on Bluesky and Mastodon over the last few months, to the point where I now have a hard time keeping up with my feed.
I can see it. I feel like it not taking off. Sad.
joining bsky was just a protest vote, not a legit desire to engage
threads felt the same, its also dead
This is the reality of a platform that is hostile to corporations (even if it is hostile for good reasons). As far as I could tell, the company running Bluesky has limited ideas about monetization. In part, because they’re well aware their user base is hostile to X-style monetization (which, sure, probably made money, but at what cost?)
Hopefully some other ATProto implementor will come along with a better idea.
It is interesting to me that e.g. Adobe left Bluesky after relatively minor pushback, but they stay on X despite the much larger problems associated with that platform.
Bluesky has the same problem as Mastodon. Both of which fully understand their problem; neither of which are willing to change.
It's ultimately their choice to make. The current choice means they can never take off and they automatically let X win.
Who am I to tell them what to do?
It must be about 2 years ago when they published their community guideline rules and it's trivial to see how they have no chance of success.
Perhaps users realized it's not much different from the early Twitter, with likely a similar future: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yoursel...