So like, did i shoot myself in the foot here or what?

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_{Wanna start off by saying NO, I ain't gon leave Bluesky. The people on there are nice and it's an atmosphere I wish more social medias had nowadays :) this is just a rant (and a genuine question/cry for help sorta lol)}


For reference, a couple of months back I bit the bullet and left twitter for bluesky alongside many other furries in the fandom. I scheduled daily posts reminding my followers on there to follow me on bluesky since it had opened up to the public around that time period and I was hoping to shift a good bit of my following on there seeing as many of the popular artist that I followed around the time were able to be successful in doing so. I knew that these scheduled posts would mean that I was effectively shadowbanned, thanks to Fuckface's (Musk) algorithmic shifts that now punish all and any mention of bluesky or repeated posts regardless of site traffic when they are posted, but I didn't think it would be as bad as it was- when I tracked the stats over the following weeks and months I noticed the views quickly dwindling on the scheduled posts from 20 to 10 and then 1. So my twitter account is effectively shadowbanned, cool. And I had a few friends help me confirm this; some pals who were following me at the time said that in all of the timeline scrolling that they did, my posts didnt show up, and for a few of them my account was no longer even showing up as a suggestion when searching for my account name directly. Meanwhile over where the skies were supposedly blue, I was feeling blue about how slowly my following was crawling back up to the even be able to reach the halfway mark to where I was with my twitter account. Sure, the engagement is a hell of a lot more consistent; I'm getting more consistent views and likes from the same accounts every time, but the overall number is hardly growing or changing at all. After some more time, I decided to check back in with my regular account (I have a private account on there that I occasionally use as a vent journal of the sorts+to post updates to my friends who arent on bluesky, but otherwise i don't really touch the app anymore as a whole), which I have not deleted but instead kept up as an archive+in the rare offchance that an old follower checks in and finds my bluesky from there. You wanna know what I found? 😀

Everyone who claimed to be moving to bluesky and abandoning twitter in favor of speaking out against Elon, against fascist regimes slowly being pushed into online social spaces, against everything that went against what they stood for- they were still there. They were still on twitter, still posting, still engaging, some even going so far as to buying that fucking blue checkmark to boost their posts. When not even 6 months ago they were claiming that they would NEVER stoop so low as to give someone like Elon Musk even a cent. So much for having a spine, right?

And I've seen a few people defend this move and make the argument that "Oh no, you see, I just HAD to give my money to someone I claimed was an actual n@zi and said I would never support in my lifetime because my career is on here!" - Mine was too, so what's your point? I knowingly risked the last bit of everything that I had in favor of standing with everyone else to show that a community can support itself without having to sell out and completely abandon its morals. Only to see that the community seemingly pulled this "gotcha" to just make accounts, post maybe thrice, and then claim the site is dead and useless and go right back to the very thing they said they hated. I know, I know, I'm using a lot of generalizations here. Okay, maybe it's not everyone who said they were moving to bluesky and didn't end up doing so... but it's a damn shameful amount of em', I'll tell you that much. And like I said at the top, I ain't going nowhere or abandoning nothing else, and this isn't me being all "Wah wah you guys didn't follow me fast enough!" I literally just said that twitter has my ass shadowbanned so nothing anyone could've done about that anyways LOL.

I think I just feel like I made a stupid mistake. I think that's where most of my anger stems from. At the end of the day it's not really that "oh nobody in this community is willing to stand on ten about shit" or "algorithms suck and are evil" (even though they are). it's "Why the fuck did I take that big of a risk?" ... and a little jealously, yeah "why didn't it pay off for me when it did for so many others?".

I don't want to have to return to twitter, and at this point I'm pretty sure you know that "return" here means start over since my account with roughly 800 followers is effectively at 3 when it comes to engagement regardless of what hashtags I use or algorithm tricks or site traffic monitoring with post scheduling. But at this point, in order to get any amount of consistent eyes on me in the place where every single furry is ever still for some reason, I gotta start fresh I think. So this is the part where I open the floor and ask for some input or help here, I guess. Do you guys think it would be beneficial for me to return to twitter? I really don't want to, if I'm being honest, but I need to make a living, and at the rate that things are going elsewhere, selling out might be my final destination here :/ any input is helpful, of course. Maybe it's been a different experience for you guys or folks you know, IDK- just kinda wanted to get something off my chest and also see where I need to go from here.