In my experience your experience with any social media depends on how strictly you train the algorithm on your preferences. They all have obnoxious algorithms that try to feed you things that are provocative in one way or another. I have to constantly tell Instagram not to show me certain things, when I only want to see nature photos and art. I have to constantly tell twitter not to show me certain things when I only want to see thoughtful conversations and appreciation of nature. I’ve seen a number of screenshots from Bluesky of newsfeeds full of passive-aggressive hot takes, but I’m assuming the people who took those screenshots also didn’t do a good job of managing their feeds.
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Bluesky doesn’t use algorithms to populate your feed. There is a “discover” tab, which seems to recommend people who are linked to people I follow, and you can also do a keyword search. But my “feed” is 100% all and only posts from people I follow. I have had a few sketchy accounts follow me, but you can always block those if you want.
Given that my follow list is nothing but nice people with nice pictures, my bluesky experience has been great.
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In the past science Twitter had a lot of SciComm accounts that would be out there communicating what was going on in various sciences with accounts run by scientists. And there were a lot of working scientists both chatting about their work and also participating in various SciComm things. For me there was always new interesting biology/taxonomy/palaeontology/etc. content and discussions happening whenever I looked at my feed, so when my job wasn’t busy and I could scroll through the feed for a while, there was always new content related to various domains I’m interested in. The volume there is far higher than anything seen here, which is both good for keeping up on what’s going on with interesting research and bad for keeping you scrolling through an ad-driven attention parasite. Also March Mammal Madness is really fun, it’s a has a lot of fans that make it fun and the science communication is very effective since it’s so engaging, and a blast to participate in - you learn a lot about animal focused biology if you tune in (and lots of related things, esp. taxonomy) though it has only been on Twitter/Facebook, hopefully they’ll really move to BlueSky next year.
Nowadays I have a BlueSky @bug-appreciator.bsky.social and a Mastodon https://ecoevo.social/@nemo account, but I have a busy job and an aversion to scrolling away my time and attention now, so I mostly just post sometimes to share interesting finds, doing something like the original idea of microblogging, but I wouldn’t want to do the same here, that would be spamming the forum with my bird and bug and other wildlife photos.
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-it allows you to talk more in the greater context, not just limited to things mostly about INat
-it isn’t moderated the same way. This forum has a lot of strict rules about ‘staying on topic’ and stuff that i struggle to understand how they work (social norms, really). BlueSky doesn’t have that. On the other hand, too little moderation can be very bad too, as with Twitter. Time will tell if BlueSky gets more toxic than it is now. It’s also true that even right now there’s a lot more trolling, bots, etc than this message board.
Basically if you’re saying this forum and iNat meet your needs, there’s no real reason to try BlueSky (if you want another place to talk about iNat there’s also an unofficial Discord server that is pretty great, too). I’d say try BlueSky if you used to like Twitter but don’t like it or otherwise want to use it any more. Or if you’re curious. If you don’t feel any reason to do so, you probably won’t like it.
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All true. I’d add that social media other than INaturalist are useful for getting the word out about something. If you just published a book or article, if you are organizing an event, if you have a good idea that you want people to know about, if you have a really amazing citizen science/nature website you want to attract people to–social media can be an effective way of getting people’s attention. INaturalist has accounts on most platforms that it uses in this way. It hasn’t made much/any use of Bluesky and I think it should, since Twitter has become so toxic to so many. Users could find INaturalist stories/pictures/news on Bluesky without having to slog through all the ugliness and negavity on X.
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It’s an opportunity to engage with people (a) who aren’t already deeply engaged with nature, and/or (b) who aren’t already using iNaturalist, and/or (c) who aren’t already using the forums.
Like any other social network, it does partly come down to where people in your area of interest are congregating. In some fields, there isn’t much going on over on Bluesky. In other fields, if you’re not on Bluesky, you are missing significant opportunities.
Nature Bluesky in general is pretty well-organized and there’s a lot of great conversations going on, so I think you would find it enjoyable if you decided to give it a try, but it’s not at the level that I would call it professionally necessary just yet.
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Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Might be a reflection of my age — I graduated from university before the internet and social media existed — but I’ve been seeking ways to spend less time looking at a screen, especially since I’m soon to retire. However if these different sites are valuable to others, no criticism from me. I do like this forum.
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I’m giving it a try in Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/nature-obs.bsky.social) although I wasn’t on Twitter even before. I have to say I love the Nudivember trend (month appreciation of nudibranchs) and see there are many people with shared interests.
I use it so far more as sharing some reflections with some observations. But I find this forum to be better use of my time and more fulfilling experience.
I used to be on Instagram following animal photographers that I liked, mostly from NatGeo and similar publications. But it becomes just about short videos so I stopped.
Social media just seems to be an excuse to catch your attention after all.
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Social media is a tool. Like a hammer, it can be used to create, or destroy.
On the PLUS side:
On the MINUS side, social media could be used for habitat destruction. For example, social media could be used to spread misinformation that gains “social licence” for habitat destruction, by either making people think that it’s no big deal, or even making them think that it’s a GOOD THING somehow.
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I’m new to Bluesky but the 1st thing I encountered was requests for topics to feed its algorithm. It has an algorithm. It just tends to keep it contained in the Discovery and Search parts of the app. I think it was putting things in my feed until I met a few metrics, like following 10 people or something. I’m also not used to unrelated topics ending up in my feed because of a reply 4 layers deep where someone mentioned “pens”. I’m still learning my way around. It’s a bigger network so I may use it for topics that are dead in Mastodon.
Mastodon is my preferred social media. No algorithm. If you don’t follow accounts or #tags, you don’t see anything. That’s why many new users make “how do I find people or content?” posts. It’s not super active for the topics and people I follow. I like being able to keep up without much effort. It has its quirks, but I like it.
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Oops. Deleted my previous reply…
Interesting… having not had any experience with other sites, I’m still figuring out what kinds of behaviors - like replies - are preferable, changeable, etc. And I should have figured there’d be some kind of algorithm. 
I will say I’m starting to get a little annoyed by the crypto bros and influencer girls who are suddenly following me. Feels like it’s soiling my otherwise pristine internet hygiene 
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Yes, this is an important distinction. People oversimplify the “no algorithm” thing. There are feeds which do use some kind of algorithm, although it tends to be less heavy-handed than what many people are used to from other large platforms.
What people usually mean when they say there is algorithm is that there is no algorithm in your main following feed. It only shows you the people you are following, with their posts, replies (option), quote posts (optional) and reposts (optional). It doesn’t try to decide for you which of those things you most want to see, it just shows you all of it, in chronological order.
I don’t know if this helps, but you can turn off showing replies in your following feed. You used to be able to only show replies that had a certain number of likes (a number with you could set yourself), which was really handy, but I think they stopped doing that while I wasn’t looking.
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I’m setting this thread to close tomorrow, it’s becoming a bit too off-topic for this forum, which shouldn’t be a place to compare or help people use other social media platforms.
Regarding iNat posting to Bluesky: I honestly haven’t had a chance to familiarize myself with Bluesky, but once I do and if it seems like a good fit I’d be happy to add it to our regular list of platforms to which we post content.
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Sounds good! I hope you agree that it’s a good alternative to X. Thanks so much for your attention!
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I expected that since other platforms have the option. BS seems unique that they show you the top level post and you have to wonder how it got into your feed by searching replies. Others show you a reply and let you chase it up the thread if you want more context.
This is the answer to “Why would I need social media outside of iNat?” You don’t like promotion of other social media yet that’s where you’re driving users. You don’t like discussion any other non-iNat topic. That’s not social. That’s why many of your users see iNat as a repository with a social aspect despite your efforts to create a social network with a repository as an artifact.
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Quick thanks for this info before the topic gets shut down - which I do agree is the right call for this BlueSky rabbit hole. :-)
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I have a BlueSky and a Mastodon account and cross-post to both. I like Mastodon a lot but it doesn’t produce quite the same audience as BS … fewer people on there and bit less user-friendly on first encounter.
I just wanted to post before this thread gets frozen in carbonite
- The logo for Bluesky is a lepidopteran
- The meme above references cryo-preservation of living beings
- There is a lepidopteran — A tiger moth named Pyrrharctia isabella — where “cold acclimation rapidly induces cryoprotectant synthesis via hemolymph osmolality”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1097-010X(20000301)286:4<367::AID-JEZ4>3.0.CO;2-F