On Thursday 14 November 2024 we launched our presence on BlueSky, a federated social network. Things took off there rather quickly. Altering that old saying slightly, it could well be that “the sky is bluer on the other side”.

It took us a little by surprise that only five days into our presence on federated social network BlueSky, we had already gained more than 1,400 followers by the time of writing this article (19 November 2024). You can find us right here (web version)

While we were somewhat stunned to see follower figures go up by the hour, it also needs to be stated that the author of this article spent much of his weekend looking up accounts to follow, interacting with other users informing them about our presence, and trying to get into the so-called “starter packs“ (more about this below) of others working in the fields of disinformation detection, journalism, technology and such like.

About BlueSky - snapshot

In many ways, Blue Sky resembles good old Twitter – or better: how the network was before it was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022 and turned around in a way, now a very different experience acting under the new label X.

BlueSky lets you create and monitor lists (e.g., of people working in a particular domain or with specific expertise) and allows you to filter incoming feeds from people you subscribe to or follow according to defined criteria. In a way, this works like good old TweetDeck (even closer to the latter comes so-called deck blue).

You can also search directories that other users have created / set up, and – if you like -with a single click subscribe to all users in such a directory. Of course, you can also select individual users / accounts from these directories.

Then, it is possible to create so-called “starter packs” (and look into these created by others). Starter packs are selections of accounts that a user can create, e.g., of others working on a particular overriding topic or clustered along certain lines (e.g., European news media with a BlueSky presence or such like).

There is a lot more in BlueSky, concerning features, usage, set-up and more – too much to include in this article. Hence I refer to what others have written on the topic below.

Two screenshots from the vera.ai BlueSky app (iOS): left: menu; right: feed of users vera.ai is followingJochen Spangenberg

Where and what next for us?

What is of relevance to us: we will monitor closely what is happening on X (formerly known as Twitter). For the time being, we will remain there with our presence - but likely post less on it. However, due to the fact that X is more and more becoming a spreader of hate, disinformation, propaganda and such like, we may eXit from X in due course, or at least not supply it with no more of our content - making the account dormant. We’ll see.

For now, we consider it great news to have a very promising alternative in BlueSky, in addition to our “just in case presence” on Mastodon, another social network of the so-called fediverse (this presence was set up by us in late 2023 to have an initial alternative to resort to, just in case).

More info and useful resources:

The vera.ai presence on BlueSky (it works both as a web version as well as a mobile app). Follow us there if you want to stay informed about what we get up to  

An article published by The Verge explaining useful features and what can be done with BlueSky

According to its makers, this is “The Ultimate Directory of tools and applications for Bluesky”

Here's a searchable starter pack directory provided by BlueSky

Starter pack created by Marc Owen Jones for those working on misinformation, disinformation, information integrity, digital authoritarianism, propaganda etc. go.bsky.app/V4Po9wB

A starter pack of accounts run by fact-checking websites, created by Lead Stories 

Seana Davies (Logically.Facts) curated this starter pack on “All things fact-checking, misinformation and media literacy”

Enes Altuncu shares this starter pack on misinformation research and practice

(The above list with resources may be updated as we go along.)

Author: Jochen Spangenberg (DW)

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