Thoughts on the Bluesky Explosion

Don't like it too much

Good Evening:

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I am pleased to see Bluesky making serious inroads into the cesspool that used to be Twitter. I have not spent real time on Twitter since I was booted off 18 months ago, and I haven’t missed the place. I have, by contrast, missed very much the critical mass of journalists, scholars, activists and thinkers who all congregated there. Having a lot of people all in the same space was lovely, and that this conversation is reconstituting itself at Bluesky—slowly, and then in an ever-quickening cascade—is rather gratifying.

That this cascade is depriving Elon Musk’s platform of the intellectual oxygen it needs to stay vital is doubly gratifying.

And that said, I can’t say I am thrilled that we are effectively recreating Twitter on Bluesky. Sure, Bluesky’s more open than Twitter. But it’s still a huge concentration of people on a private platform that’s owned by people who can sell it to psychotic people who can then wreck it and make it into another engine of noxiousness. So yeah, it’s lovely now, but for how long?

So even as I have watched it rise, which has been fun, and watched my own following on it rise, which is doubly fun, I do not want to invest in it. I don’t mean that in the financial sense, but in the sense of putting my own sweat equity into a building a following there. I don’t want to give away my writing for the platform to monetize. I don’t want my voice and thought to be someone else’s product. And I don’t want my access to my readers and followers mediated through someone else’s algorithm.

Substack mostly solves this problem. And so, while my readership is smaller here, I plan to continue doing the bulk of what used to be my social media on #DogShirtDaily. Yes, I will post elsewhere too, but largely for the purposes of promoting my work on Lawfare and here. I will always base my work on platforms where I can control my own relationship with readers.

It was a lesson hard-learned on Twitter. And it’s honestly not an error I intend to make again, though Bluesky does seem like a very nice place.

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On this morning’s #DogShirtTV, the estimable Eve Gaumond executed a lightning coup—though fortunately a bloodless one—wresting the position of interviewer from my grasp and demanding that I answer her questions on cabinet appointments, long-range missiles, and anything else that crossed her mind.

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The Situation

In my column today, I offer a few words in defense of Attorney General Merrick Garland on the silly charge that he is somehow responsible for the election of President-elect Donald Trump. To put the matter simply, Garland is the new Comey:

the search for an explanation for Trump’s election in the individual decisions of law enforcement figures is wrongheaded. Donald Trump didn’t get elected in 2016 because of Jim Comey, and he didn’t get elected this year because of Merrick Garland either. The sooner we stop looking for investigative “but for” explanations in the justice system and start facing the reality of his attraction to tens of millions of people, the sooner we can hope to begin counteracting those attractions.

The reaction to this column on Bluesky, normally a very nice place, was dripping with raw hatred for Garland. Seriously, look at the comments on the post.

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From now on, I’m going to be including highlights from Lawfare on #DogShirtDaily. I do this occasionally already, but I’ve decided to make a regular practice of it.

How Geoblocking Limits Digital Access in Sanctioned States

Harry Oppenheimer, Anna Ablove, and Roya Ensafi explore how geoblocking by platforms—used as a de-risking strategy in the face of ambiguous sanctions—has restricted the digital freedom of the Cuban people. The authors suggest possible solutions, including reforming federal sanctions regulations, increasing transparency, opening up digital infrastructure, and more:

The market for access to open information failed the Cuban people. Even if the Cuban government didn’t block any websites, and Cuba had a robust internet infrastructure with fast and inexpensive access, users would be unable to access numerous digital resources because of server-side discrimination. Despite licenses to promote access to free services and educational resources, as well as published guidance on sanctions, websites voluntarily restrict users in sanctioned states.

Organized Labor Is Key to Governing Big Tech

Sophia Paslaski argues that as new and potentially dangerous technologies emerge from Silicon Valley, organized labor can act as an important safeguard against threats to the public good. Paslaski suggests that unionized tech workers could play a crucial role in securing laws on data privacy, regulating generative artificial intelligence (AI), and establishing wider accountability in the industry:

The power of organized tech workers, it turns out, rivals that of the government when it comes to effecting change in Silicon Valley. From ensuring AI is not used in warfare to pushing regulation requiring transparency of AI-generated content, a thriving Silicon Valley labor movement could help create the guardrails for Big Tech that are desperately needed.

The United States and Australia’s AUKUS Delusion

In this week’s installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Sam Roggeveen contends that Australia’s faith in AUKUS—its alliance with the United Kingdom and, in particular, the United States—is based on the misconception that the U.S. will reverse the shift towards Chinese hegemony. Roggeveen implored that, rather than relying on a non-committal Trump administration, Australia should seek to strengthen itself and its regional partners first and foremost:

this is a delusion. Both countries are wrong. Not about China, which clearly has ambitions to become the leading power in Asia and to push the United States out. The delusion lies in the belief, which Australian and American policymakers share, that Washington has sufficient motivation and will to resist this power shift.

Today on the Lawfare Daily podcast:

Kevin Frazier sits down with Christie Hicks and Mandy DeRoche to explore how environmental law and national security interact under the Biden administration’s AI agenda. They consider the tensions between advancing emerging technologies and existing environmental commitments, grid stability requirements, clean energy goals, and more.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay, nominated by the estimable Anne Stickley Michel, has “a large, gelatinous hood, tail like a paddle, and bright bioluminescence,” giving it a fashionable look in any company—as long as that company is very, very deep underwater. I trust that today’s Beast will be only the first deep-sea slug discovery of many. Popular Science reports:

Marine biologists have found a new sea slug that is right at home in the ocean’s deep and dark midnight zone. With a large, gelatinous hood, tail like a paddle, and bright bioluminescence Bathydevius caudactylus is so unique that it belongs to a whole new family of sea slugs. The animal nicknamed the “mystery mollusc” is described in a study published in the December 2024 issue of the journal Deep-Sea Research.