Should you fly to Bluesky?
Everybody talks about Bluesky, and creators are fleeing to the platform too, mostly from their AI-haunted X and Instagram, or just as a trial run to see what the story is there.
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Story of the week 🗞️
Everybody talks about Bluesky, and creators are fleeing to the platform too, mostly from their AI-haunted X and Instagram, or just as a trial run to see what the story is there.
The official Bluesky account itself posted recently about how artists and creators found their new home on the platform and took a moment to reassure everyone that they have no intent to train generative AI on creators’ content, unlike X and Instagram:
As you can see, they use AI for internal purposes and to make their algorithm work — but these are not generative AI systems trained on creators' content. However, it’s important to point out that Bluesky is an open and public social platform and outside companies could still scrape data from it.
The company said, “We’d like to do our part to ensure that outside orgs respect user consent and are actively discussing within the team on how to achieve this.” That’s all we can have on that front for now, but it’s surely better than what some of the other platforms can promise you.
Should you fly to Bluesky?
We see what’s going on. Creators are tired of jumping on and off new platforms, always hoping to find one that respects their work and values, then keep returning to the same old ones that, instead of getting better with age, just keep finding new ways of disrespecting them.
There’s also this thing called platform risk you want to avoid and there’s this understandable need for creators to protect their art against AI, too. This is a lot.
Users @earlygravedreams and @twistedbunnyfinearts had this “platform hopping” conversation on Instagram when @theinnerobserver (Watercolor artist Kaitlyn Page) announced that she’s on Bluesky:
(I can’t fit the topic of Cara in this newsletter, but I just want to mention that the Cara app is still running and welcomes artists. A couple of weeks ago, Jingna Zhang, the founder of Cara, participated in an interesting panel discussion about how AI startups can navigate legal and ethical minefields. Here’s the video and here’s the article recap. It’s worth taking a look.)
Now, back to Bluesky.
We agree with Kaitlyn. This is a “What can you lose?” type of situation, and paired with the information above that Bluesky apparently doesn’t use creator content to feed any generative AI systems or harm the artistic and creative value of creators in any way, we think it’s definitely worth a try. Bluesky does look promising.
If you used X before, you’ll get a quick handle on it, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was highly involved in laying down the foundations of Bluesky. But, as a fresh start, you can use our article to learn how to get started on the platform (and learn what other creators think about it so far).
Creator quote of the week 📌
From digital artist Lois van Baarle or @Loish:
Are you on Bluesky? Share your experience.
Also, send me your handle so we can follow you, or hit follow on The Creators’ Diary Bluesky profile.
See you next week,
Petra
Petra Gönczi
