For a while, I've been meaning to completely get rid of my Google account. (Yes, I still have one, which I still use for YouTube and anything that I think is likely to send me spam — although I also have a Proton mail address for that too.)

As always when looking for alternative software, I headed to alternativeto.net and searched for alternatives to YouTube. (See the first link in the "Resources" section below.) This led me to PeerTube as the most popular alternative. It happens to be federated (like Mastodon). It also happens to have Mastodon and BlueSky accounts. Seeing as I'm familiar with Mastodon (and have no followers there), I thought I'd check out BlueSky.

What is BlueSky?

Bluesky is a federated microblogging app (like Mastodon). There's not much more that I can glean from the "About" page, other than it seems to be a phone app for both Android (which seems counterintuitive, given that Google's a Big Tech company) and Apple iPhone, as well as a Website that looks a lot like Twitter used to. Perhaps it's available through F-Droid.

"Bluesky is an open network. With one account, you can access both an easy-to-use social network and a shared identity across the entire social internet."

There's a cartoon that goes into more detail about what Bluesky is and aims to achieve. (Hopefully it won't become yet another Twitter/X.)

Should You Join BlueSky?

If you were quite active on Twitter before Elongated Muskrat bought it and meddled with it (or never felt at home on Mastodon), then the answer is probably "yes". If, on the other hand, you're quite happy on X or migrated to Mastodon and attracted some followers, the answer is probably "no". At any rate, I've signed up for it. If you want to follow me and see the random content that doesn't make it into my Pub0x posts, head over to https://bsky.app/, create an account and head to https://bsky.app/profile/gr8-white-snark.bsky.social once you've set up your profile and customised your settings.

So far, I've been unable to post any of my own content, only repost that of others.