I just clicked on a Substack link and discovered that a lot of names I follow on Bluesky (and lesser so, Mastodon) are actively using it. It’s your choice, of course, and I’m not here to pretend I’m more virtuous than you. But it does show — once again — that X and Substack have ‘won’ in social media.

For someone like me, whose background is online media, it makes me feel like I shot myself in both feet when I see that the most successful “creators” in the tech community are people who never stopped using X or Substack. Often they syndicate across all platforms — i.e. POSSE is being used to justify this.

I have to admit it does make me a bit sick watching people pop up in my feed on Bluesky or Mastodon when I know they are also active on X and/or Substack. But this is the online world we live in. Perhaps I am the outlier here.

I still think the future is open social, so I will continue to shun the walled gardens. But that’s a personal decision I have made. Even though it has hobbled me.