Reading Newsletter #11: Still on Bluesky, social media and news, and my love for science fiction
Things that I pay attention to, that got my attention, and I want you to pay attention to.
I now have 81 followers on Bluesky and am following 311 people/accounts on this growing social media platform. I have also posted 47 times and have gained new “friends” along the way. I also started this so-called Starter Pack for Asian Journalists and Filipino writers. Cool.
Based on my last reading, Bluesky has collected more than 22 million users and is still growing fast. One report said that Japanese users are among the fastest-growing segments in this social network. Mark Zuckerberg is also alarmed by the hockey-stick growth. It has become a “race to replace X,” one analyst said. Indeed, the Japanese Cluster in Bluesky is now one of the popular feeds.
As a user, here are some things that make Bluesky a little different from X or even Threads, owned by Facebook.
Opaque algorithms do not run Bluesky. You can choose the feeds you want to follow. This eliminates the noise, possible bots, and trolls that can clog your feeds. It doesn’t have that “for you page,” made famous by TikTok.
It feels like the original Twitter I’ve come to love. So, no love was lost there.
There is a growing sense of community in Bluesky. Because Threads is Facebook/Instagram, these social networks are more extensive—it’s like being one of the spectators in a giant coliseum.
You can block users on Bluesky and opt out of future AI training on this platform. On X, you have no choice but to take the red pill of Elon X.
Bluesky feels like a town hall where conversations and discussions are sane.
Social networks and news
As a former journalist, I need my dose of news every day. I have this #FOMO news of not knowing what’s happening out there.
Admittedly, I still go to X (and I’m still using it) for breaking news. If I hear firetrucks sounding their alarms nearby, I fire up my X and search “fire” or “sunog,” which is fire in Filipino. Most of the time, I find a witness posting a video of the fire, where it happened, and when it started. This massive fire over the weekend was reported on X primarily by news outlets and a handful of witnesses.
I noticed that I am getting less news on Facebook. Its algorithm is spewing ads after ads, memes, and topics being pushed by this social network just because I clicked or liked something. I have been telling Facebook to stop showing me irrelevant ads. I am on Facebook to connect with friends.
Fun fact: a recent study showed that people do not read news on Facebook and other social networks. They share it, but they don’t click it. The study added:
Social media have enabled laypersons to disseminate, at scale, links to news and public affairs information. Many individuals share such links without first reading the linked information.
This study’s findings are not surprising. I would even venture to say that people don’t read things on social media. They do share content, but the format that gets the highest engagement is short video clips. Thus, TikTok and Reels are making social networks stickier than ever. But do people care about the news today?
Another question: Do people use social media for news these days? Again, as a former journalist, I see social media mainly as a tool for discovering news. New social tools like Sill and Open Vibe are emerging to help make sense of the cyberspace that is producing too much information.
Sill is a new social media tool similar to Nuzzel that aggregates news sources into one platform. Currently in beta, Sill allows you to aggregate news from Bluesky. On the other hand, Open Vibe is a cross-posting social tool where you can add accounts from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and other smaller social networks.
These social media tools are experiments that hope to gain traction from savvy users. So, I’m keeping my eyes open and fingers tapping as I discover ways to use these tools for work and play.
Reading science fiction
I’m a big fan of science fiction. I’ve read books by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, H.G. Wells, Frank Herbert, George Orwell, and many more. What makes science fiction a treat for me?
These writers speculate about the future. Gibson, for example, was writing about cyberspace, the matrix, and his version of AI in the 1980s. Asimov is known to have created the Three Laws of Robotics, which I remember clearly from when I discovered them in college, reading one of his novels in one corner of our school library. I still remember these three laws:
First Law: A robot must not injure a human or allow a human to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey human orders unless those orders conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect itself, as long as that protection doesn't conflict with the First or Second Law.
And who could not forget Philip K. Dick, whose novels were made into films, including the 1982 iconic Bladerunner movie by Ridley Scott, which was based on Dick’s 1968 novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” There are more Dick novels made into movies: Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, and a recent series shown on Amazon Prime: The Man in the High Castle.
The appeal of science fiction lies in its ability to jump into complex societal issues, like Asimov’s The Foundation series, in which man has become an interplanetary species but is ruled by an Emperor who has cloned himself for immortality.
Science fiction creates imaginative future scenarios based on scientific possibilities (even impossibilities). Asimov, for example, introduced the concept of psychohistory, in which math is used to accurately predict the future or at least paint a clear picture of where interplanetary human beings are headed.
Science fiction creates a sense of wonder by imagining new worlds and technologies. These often reflect current societal concerns through a futuristic lens, allowing readers to engage with thought-provoking themes from a safe distance.
Minority Report, for example, explores the idea of a crime-preventing authority who uses the power of twin psychics to accurately predict when a crime is about to happen, way before it happens, until…
Science fiction is my ticket to a future unknown but familiar. Robots, anyone?
I used Twitter as a news feed. These days, it's Bluesky and Threads + Feedly for RSS feeds and Meco for newsletters. I wish Bluesky would enable removing and blocking bots and random trolls from our Follower lists
I’ve been on Bluesky for about a year now and love it. It’s a lot noisier now that I’m following so many and so many are following me compared to before the X-odus, so I love the Lists feature. I have one for Fil and Fil-Ams.
I never did get my news from social media. I use the CNN app and the apps for my city’s newspaper (one of them) and my preferred news channel.