Not long before the election, some journalists, news organizations and leftists alike announced on Twitter/X that they had created accounts at an alternative social media platform, Bluesky.
Once it became clear that then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump would win the presidential election, the departure of those same groups to Bluesky picked up. Many suggested they could no longer tolerate Twitter/X owner/billionaire Elon Musk considering his support for Trump and considering he was less heavy-handed with the throttle/shadowban buttons than his left-leaning predecessors, who admittedly would censor conservative accounts with wild abandon.
Interestingly, what the reporters and news outlets that moved to Bluesky post-Election Day didn’t pick up on was the fact that in doing so, they were in effect confirming what conservatives had long said about them in the first place: They were liberally biased.
I mean, how else would you explain the fact that so many journalists, pundits and other prominent public figures/commentators quit Twitter/X and ran off to Bluesky just as the left was touting its supposed benefits?
As far as I’m concerned, this was not a coincidence, and a biased write-up from NBC News about the journalists fleeing to Bluesky seemed to prove the point.
“Some of its earliest users included Black, trans and politically progressive people,” the news site observed. “Journalists who belong to and cover issues affecting marginalized populations have found Bluesky to be a much more welcoming environment.”
Others talked about how the engagement at Bluesky was much better than it was at Twitter/X.
“My average post that isn’t a hot-button issue or isn’t trending might not perform as well on X as it does on Bluesky,” the HuffPost’s Phil Lewis told NBC News. “Judging by retweets, likes and comments, it’s a world of difference.”
Well, when you’re on a social media platform where everyone has eerily similar political mindsets, that is going to happen, especially when everyone is new and eager to commiserate about and stew over election results with like-minded individuals.
Some journalists, like the Mississippi Free Press’ Ashton Pittman, announced in a late November post that the last straw for him regarding Musk’s ownership of Twitter/X was that he was allegedly tweaking the algorithm to boost conservative voices who were also supportive of Trump.
In his view, this made Musk a “government-aligned billionaire (who had) the ability to control what you see, whether anyone sees what you have to say, and to manipulate your emotions.”
It was a fascinating justification and would have almost been believable if not for the fact that Pittman and other journalists who have used the same excuse for their exit from Musk’s platform stuck around during the coronavirus outbreak as billionaire Twitter higher-ups colluded with senior government officials to suppress any voices critical of the government’s response to the pandemic.
In other words, that excuse rings rather hollow.
The bottom line is that most of the folks who have run away to Bluesky have done it because Twitter/X is one of the few places where they can no longer control the narratives and information flow. They are finding that easier to do on Bluesky, where conservative accounts that have been created are regularly flagged for “harmful content” simply because they post contrarian viewpoints.
George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley hit the nail on the head with his assessment of the lessons (not) learned by these same people in the aftermath of the election.
“Ironically, one lesson from this election is the danger of both the press and pundits in becoming increasingly out of touch with most of the country,” he wrote. “The shock expressed by many is due to a lack of exposure to opposing views — not the need for further ideological isolation.”
’Nuff said.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
