By Cliff Potts, CSO & Editor-in-Chief, WPS News

One year in, no illusions left

I joined Bluesky on February 3, 2025. This essay is written just shy of that one-year mark and published with no expectation that anything fundamental will improve in the next few months. Time served is sufficient. Patterns are visible. Conclusions can be drawn.

This is not a rage-quit manifesto. It is not a hit piece. It is a plainspoken assessment of where Bluesky actually is after a year of daily observation, publishing, and interaction.

Bluesky is not a bad platform. But it is also not the platform many people quietly project onto it.

The moment clarity arrived

The moment that crystallized everything was mundane and unsettling at the same time.

A friend from the early online-dating era—someone who knew my late wife—did not know she had died. She also did not know I was still publishing. She assumed I had simply gone quiet.

That assumption was not based on absence. It was based on non-delivery.

This is Bluesky’s central weakness in human terms: the platform does not reliably convey continuity. Lives, work, and even deaths can pass through the system without reaching people who would reasonably expect to know.

That is not malice. It is architecture.

What Bluesky gets right

Bluesky’s strongest contribution is conceptual, not operational.

The idea of user-selectable feeds and algorithmic transparency is a genuine improvement over legacy social media. The underlying protocol vision—portable identity, composable moderation, and choice—matters. In theory, it reduces platform lock-in and opaque manipulation.

The default “Following” feed is meant to be straightforward: posts from accounts you follow, ordered chronologically. That promise alone is why many writers, journalists, and analysts gave Bluesky a serious look in the first place.

Those are real strengths. They are also incomplete.

Where the system breaks down

After a year of use, several structural problems are hard to ignore.

First, delivery is inconsistent.
There have been documented periods where feeds stalled, posts were delayed, or visibility was uneven. When publishing depends on timing—as news and analysis always do—this is not a minor inconvenience. It is a core failure mode.

Second, following does not guarantee seeing.
This is not user paranoia. Public bug reports and user complaints repeatedly describe posts not appearing in the Following feed or in expected discovery surfaces. When “I follow you” does not reliably translate to “I see your work,” the social contract breaks down.

Third, continuity is fragile by design.
Bluesky does not reinforce persistence. It does not surface long-term presence well. It does not help casual followers distinguish between “this person stopped” and “the system didn’t show it.” Silence and absence are indistinguishable.

Fourth, growth does not equal reach.
Headline user numbers obscure a quieter reality: engagement is uneven, conversations recycle within small circles, and discovery outside those circles is inconsistent. A larger room does not automatically mean a louder voice.

None of this makes Bluesky evil. It makes it immature.

What Bluesky actually is right now

After a year, the most accurate description is this:

Bluesky is a high-signal social layer, not a dependable publishing rail.

It is good for:

  • fast awareness
  • short-form conversation
  • linking to outside work
  • informal peer networks

It is not good for:

  • guaranteed follower delivery
  • durable audience building
  • archival presence
  • serious publishing without external anchors

Bluesky is a hallway. Not a library.

Where WPS News fits into this reality

This distinction matters.

WPS News is the publication.
Bluesky is one of several distribution channels.

WPS News exists to preserve work, context, and continuity. Bluesky exists to occasionally point people toward that work—when the signal gets through.

Confusing those roles leads directly to frustration and burnout. Separating them restores sanity.

What changes after year one

There is no dramatic pivot here. Just adjustment.

Publishing remains anchored on WPS News and affiliated sites. Bluesky remains in use, but with clear expectations: many followers will not see many posts, and planning must assume that reality.

Used honestly, Bluesky is still useful. Used as a primary platform, it is unreliable.

The blunt conclusion

Bluesky has potential. It also has unresolved structural problems that matter deeply to anyone producing sustained work.

Until posting reliably means delivery—consistently, predictably, and visibly—Bluesky cannot function as a serious publishing platform. It can only function as a signal flare.

That is not cynicism. That is a one-year field report.

For broader social commentary and ongoing analysis, please read Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

References (APA)

Bluesky Social. (2023). Custom feeds and algorithmic choice. Bluesky Blog.

Kleppmann, M. (2023). Decentralised social networks and the AT Protocol. University of Cambridge.

The Verge. (2024). Bluesky’s growth, promise, and unresolved limitations.

TechCrunch. (2024). Bluesky outages and feed delivery issues highlight scaling challenges.

GitHub. (2023–2025). Bluesky public issue tracker: feed visibility and delivery reports.

Discover more from WPS News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.