Steampunks Are Taking to Bluesky – Here’s Why You Should Give It a Spin

In recent weeks, many steampunk fans and creators have joined Bluesky, a social media platform that’s emerged as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter). They’re not alone: Since September, Bluesky has more than doubled its user base, from around 9 million users to more than 20 million as of Wednesday.

Many of the new arrivals are former X/Twitter users who are unhappy with changes instituted by tech billionaire Elon Musk since he acquired the company in October 2022. That exodus accelerated after the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, as Musk used the platform to promote the candidacy of Donald Trump. X has also implemented new terms of service that allow it to use posts for AI training.

Bluesky launched to the general public in February after a one-year invitation-only beta. The Steampunk Explorer has been on the platform since its public launch, but with this recent influx, I’ve been much more active there. In doing so, I’ve become more impressed with the platform’s design and how it stands out in the social media landscape. I’m now encouraging all steampunk fans and creators to give it a try even if they’ve never used X/Twitter. Not because of politics, but because of the way Bluesky empowers its users.

Why Bluesky Stands Out

Compared with other social networks, Bluesky gives you much more control over the content you see on the platform.

First, it allows users to create custom feeds focusing on specific interests, including steampunk. Unless you’re technically inclined, you probably won’t want to roll your own, but you can choose from thousands created by other users, including feeds related to science fiction, fantasy, horror, anime, cosplay, science, and history. You can pin the feeds to your home screen for easy access whenever you visit.

Bluesky also has powerful features that let you filter out content you don’t want to see, potentially disincentivizing trolls, bots, and scammers. And it is blessedly free of advertising. (Bluesky Social, the company behind the platform, hopes to monetize it by offering premium services such as domain registration.)

The result is a much more pleasant user experience compared with other platforms.

You can learn more about Bluesky in this blog post celebrating the public launch back in February. The post includes a comic book version.

I’ve also posted a guide to getting started on Bluesky.

Steampunks on Facebook and Twitter

Facebook has long been the dominant social media platform among steampunk fans, and that is unlikely to change. Hundreds of Facebook groups are dedicated to steampunk, some with tens of thousands of members. The Steampunk Explorer maintains a page with around 4,800 followers.

Twitter has served a lesser (but still important) role in the steampunk community, mostly as a place to follow authors, musicians, and other creators. Many of them have left or reduced their activity since Musk acquired the company.

It’s All About the Algorithms

Facebook and X/Twitter employ sophisticated algorithms known as recommendation engines that determine what appears in your feeds. The goal is to present content that is tailored to your interests, so you’ll spend more time on the sites. This increases the likelihood that you’ll click on advertising, which is how the platforms make money. But it’s the algorithm, not you, that decides what you see.

Social media companies aren’t always forthcoming about how their algorithms operate. However, in a 2021 60 Minutes interview, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen said the Facebook algorithm was designed to recommend posts based on the number of reactions, comments, and shares. This, she said, tended to boost the volume of angry, polarizing content on the platform. (Facebook denied her allegations.)

Bluesky includes a feed known as “Discover” that uses a recommendation engine to display content, but otherwise it presents posts in reverse chronological order.

Keeping Users on Site

It also appears that Facebook and X penalize posts that contain links to external content, again because they want to keep users on the sites. That’s certainly been my experience on Facebook: Photo galleries uploaded to the platform generally get far more engagement than links to galleries in The Steampunk Explorer.

This latter point is a big deal if you’re a publisher like me, or any kind of creator who wants to use social media to drive traffic to a website. It’s why you often see posts referring to “link in comments” rather than placing the link in the post itself. The idea is that the algorithm is more likely to promote the post if it doesn’t send users away from the platform.

The bottom line is that Facebook and X/Twitter feed you content based on their business interests, not necessarily on what you want to see. We’re probably stuck with Facebook given its reach and the lack of a viable alternative. But now we have some good alternatives to X/Twitter, not just Bluesky but also Mastodon and Threads.

The Other Choices

Mastodon is a decentralized open-source social network that launched in 2016. It gained a large influx of users after Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, growing from 3.5 million to nearly 9 million users over the following year. It has pretty much plateaued at that point ever since. Fewer than 1 million are active on the platform. One common complaint, given its decentralized nature, is that it’s difficult to navigate.

Threads is a Twitter alternative from Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram. The app is tightly integrated with Instagram, which helped it amass millions of users shortly after its launch in July 2023. It now claims approximately 275 million active users, far more than either Bluesky or Mastodon, and many users who have fled X/Twitter have also shown up there.

One knock on Threads relates to the feed algorithm, which de-emphasizes news and adds random content designed to keep users on the platform.

In recent days, Meta has announced changes to the app, apparently in response to Bluesky’s explosive growth. These include custom feeds as well as enhancements to the search function. In addition, the developers said they’ve adjusted the algorithm to give more priority to accounts you follow and less to the random posts.

The new custom feeds feature is rudimentary compared to Bluesky’s. They’re little more than saved searches that you can pin to your home screen. As far as I can tell, you can’t share them with other users as you can in Bluesky. However, Threads makes it relatively easy to create feeds within the app, whereas you need special tools to create them in Bluesky.

In general, I find Bluesky to be more customizable and an overall better experience, but that may be a matter of taste. The Steampunk Explorer is active on all three (Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads) and nothing is keeping you from trying all three platforms.

King of Threads

One prominent arrival on Threads is author Stephen King, who announced his departure from X/Twitter in a post on Nov. 14: “Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic,” he wrote.

King also has an account on Bluesky, but he appears to be more active on Threads. He began posting there soon after leaving X/Twitter and already has around 660,000 followers (he had 7 million on X/Twitter).

The Network Effect

One feature that distinguishes any social media platform is its reach — the more users it has, the more valuable it becomes, a phenomenon known as the “network effect.” As I noted above, Threads claims around 275 million users, compared with nearly 21 million (as I write) for Bluesky. But that’s not the whole story. By some measures, the gap between the two is much smaller, and in others, Bluesky is outpacing Threads. For example, since Nov. 13, Bluesky has been the No. 1 app in Apple’s U.S. App Store.

“Bluesky’s audience is still much smaller than that for Threads, let alone X – but could catch up with Threads if it keeps growing at this rate,” stated David F. Carr in a blog post from Similarweb, a market intelligence company.

In social media, who is on the platform matters just as much as how many. In its heyday, Twitter was a place to follow authors, journalists, academics, celebrities, politicians, and other people regarded as opinion leaders. Many of those folks have taken their musings to Bluesky.

Much of the commentary relates to politics with a decidedly left-of-center slant. But with its custom feeds and other features, Bluesky lets you follow your interests even if you have little or no taste for the political discourse.

If you decide to take the plunge, we’ve tried to make it easier with custom feeds and a set of starter packs that list steampunk-related accounts you may want to follow.

Additional coverage: A Steampunk’s Guide to Bluesky

Bluesky Surges as Steampunk Creators Abandon X/Twitter

This article was updated with additional information about Threads.