Okay so the thing is that people seem to want to put the atmosphere into a bubble. People look at it and see it as a way to do social media and nothing more. Constantly people are asking Bluesky and Bluesky alone to implement features that already exist in other spaces.

Just The Social Stuff

Microblogging

Pronouns on your account? Bluesky doesn't do it, but Mu does. There's no barrier to switching off bsky.app and moving to mu.social. They're just websites. They use the same accounts and the same communication method. Want a cat to roam about the footer of your screen? Mu's got you covered there too. Don't like Bluesky's moderation? Blacksky's got you covered there and, again, there's literally no barrier to switching between them. Your account stays the same, your posts are all there, your followers are all there, your feeds are all there. But now you have completely different moderation just by logging into another site. And all of that is just for microblogging, which is perhaps the least popular form of social media out there.

The World Outside Microblogging

Want to mostly post pictures and look at pictures? Grain and Flashes have you covered. Want to focus on shortform video? Spark and Skylight have you covered there. Want to blog? Pckt, Offprint, and Leaflet have you covered there. Just want to read news? The Social Wire, Standard Reader, Skyreader, and more have you covered there. How about boards of pictures instead of a scrollable feed? Currents has you there. Streaming? Streamplace and Plyr.fm have you covered there whether it's video or audio you want to stream. None of these different ways of interacting with social media require different accounts, different sets of followers, or different posts. That is all separate.

Non-Social Stuff

On top of that, there are entire services that have nothing to do with social media at all. Chatrooms like Roomy and Colibri can be used for group organization. L@tr.link can be used to save links to read later. Semble and Margin can be used to organize anything across the web. Marque, Tangled, and ATCR can be used to build software.

None of this stuff has anything to do with Bluesky and shouldn't have anything to do with Bluesky. There's no reason someone should be using Bluesky to update their DNS records or deploying their software. There's no reason Bluesky should be used for real time chatting at large (basic DMs and the like to share posts, maybe, but you're not running your business off Bluesky DMs).

Be Free of Bluesky

Ultimately, there's nothing about your atmosphere experience that has to have anything to do with Bluesky. It's the first app on the atmosphere, sure, but you can use entire swaths of the atmosphere without ever touching Bluesky and it's time we stop treating the atmosphere like that's not true.

You can create an account on Tangled and only ever subscribe to Standard Site publications and only ever read them through The Social Wire and nothing that has transpired has anything to do with Bluesky. Bluesky isn't the center of the atmosphere—it's just an edge.