One sky, two sky, blue sky, grey sky
New magnum opus dropped this week.
Having a personal newsletter allows me to enjoy the delightful experience of being that one annoying person at an airport bar, happily blogging away with a beer in hand. I'm currently savoring this moment, and I can't recommend it enough.
I’m about to board a flight to Turkey, I was born there and my grandparents still live there. Once a year, I visit to see everyone for a week. The last time I made this trip, just as my plane was boarding, I got a call from a managing editor at Fortune offering me a job. How time flies!
Okay, personal anecdotes aside, I’ve published a few stories since my last email blast. Let’s get into it:
KYLIE’S BYTES
Inside Twitter rival Bluesky’s first major crisis, as investors pressured CEO Jay Graber to speak out about racist incident — This is my personal magnum opus! I have been closely following this Bluesky situation from the beginning. It took me a considerable amount of time to gather the information and write this story, and because of that, this is one of the stories I cherish the most among all that I have written. The story involves various complex aspects and nuances, but I tried my best to present it in a well-balanced manner. I sincerely hope you take the time to read it.
TL;DR: On Bluesky, a soon-to-be decentralized Twitter alternative with a nostalgic 2012 Tumblr vibe that I genuinely adore, a user had a highly offensive username containing the N-word. This sparked significant user backlash, with many questioning why the platform didn't have proper filters in place earlier. As a result of the controversy, several important users (some of whom built the Black community there) decided to leave the platform. Much to everyone’s surprise, the CEO of Bluesky remained silent and did not issue an apology for ten days. During this period, I managed to obtain an email and details from investors who (passionately) expressed their concerns. In this article, I aim to take readers inside the turmoil that the company went through during those ten days of silence.
Elon Musk’s Twitter is at a crossroads amid a rise in hate speech and competition — When I first saw this from Twitter: “99.99% of tweet impressions involve healthy content,” I called bullshit. I had a lot of questions, so I rang up a source who knows everything about moderation at Twitter. As I quoted in the newsletter, the source said that obviously impressions will be low on these tweets because it’s “usually the rando user with like 100 followers who is tweeting that crap.”
“I would guess they have removed any hate speech against trans or gay people from being considered hate speech,” the former Twitter staffer said, adding that there are many accounts with a high number of followers and whose tweets get a high number of impressions that should have dropped the “healthy” score that Twitter cites. For instance, the former staffer said transphobic tweets from right-wing commentator Matt Walsh “should have blown up that statistic on their own.”
Duh. But since I’ve published this, Twitter is now suing (?!?!?) the Center for Countering Digital Hate, who provides this type of data about Twitter. Good lord.
San Francisco police interrupted the dismantling of the iconic Twitter sign but concluded that ‘no crime was committed’ — Same song, second verse, whole lot worse. Since this occurred, Elon erected a giant, flashing X sign atop the building seemingly held down by sand bags, which has since been taken down because it was blinding the neighbors. I do a lot of ranting to my poor significant other about this type of thing, and at the time I said something along the lines of “The laws don’t apply to the rich!”
Passionate Elon Musk employees are coating the Twitter offices in black paint, and boasting about ‘hunting’ and eradicating remnants of the Twitter Bird — This was an interesting progression, and fun to write. I followed about a hundred or so Twitter (X) employees just so its easier to track updates. I’m terrible at lists, I never check them, its easier to follow people. I found that a lot of them were having a ton of fun “defacing” the office, so to speak. I honestly can’t blame them. Its that kind of immature romping about after surviving Nth number of layoffs that I can respect. Fuck it, at that point. Rip it all down! Spray paint it black! Who cares. Obviously, a distinct difference is that many of them do believe in Elon’s vision for X. It’s a bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off.
Mark Zuckerberg says Threads launch proves the power of a lean team in his ‘Year of Efficiency’ — This is a story about Meta’s earnings, which many of us social media reporters followed closely. Zuckerberg treated Threads like a pet project, in my opinion, so that was interesting. 100 million users, no big deal! What was really intriguing, and clearly what I gleaned from that call, was that the pet project had a small team and Zuck thinks it proves his “Year of Effeciency” model is actually working.
“We’ve already seen a number of examples of how our leaner organization and some of the cultural changes we’ve made can build higher quality products faster, and this is probably the biggest so far,” Zuckerberg said during the company’s Q2 earnings call on Wednesday. “The Year of Efficiency was always about two different goals: becoming an even stronger technology company, and improving our financial results so we can invest aggressively in our ambitious long term roadmap.”
Something I’ve kept in mind as I report on social media, whether its Bluesky and Mastodon, or Threads and Twitter, is that the social media space is becoming increasingly fragmented. People have the power to choose the experience they want. My personality veers more towards something like Bluesky, where everyone is feral most of the time. I have a guilty conscience using Twitter, but I do love the platform. Threads is not my vibe, it feels sooooo forced. Matosdon is too weird-not-in-a-good-way for me. I was a huge Tumblr girl growing up, I got my first ounce of Internet fame that way. If we could all just return to Tumblr, that’d be great.
I’m not sure what comes next for the future of social media. The Internet molded me into who I am today, for better or for worse, so I’m still gobsmacked I get to report on all this. I think our networks will continue to fragment, and we’ll divide into factions based on our preferences. Maybe decentralization will become more common place, and we can port our profile over to different servers as we please (I still don’t see the layman, say, people I went to high school with, doing this). Either way, I’ll be posting. This is what I love, what I cover, and I will definitely be seeing it through its bitter end.
OTHER BYTES
Move fast and beat Musk: The inside story of how Meta built Threads — Naomi Nix and Will Oremus, The Washington Post
How Blind Became the App Silicon Valley Bosses Love to Hate — Paris Martineau, The Information
A former Twitter executive’s blog — Esther Crawford, Twitter
Meta starts blocking news in Canada over law on paying publishers — Reuters
Inside TikTok CEO’s Plan to Play Offense — Erin Woo and Juro Osawa, The Information