Waffles eat Bluesky | Techcrunch

In the last few days, my Bluesky -Feed is increasingly filled with mysterious positions on waffles.

Back and forth appears to have started with a tongue-in-kind post by Jerry Chen Lampooning a form of social media shrine that has become too recognizable on Bluesky: “(Bluesky uses bursts in waffle house) Oh so you hate pancakes?”

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber quoted this approved and added: “For real. We will try to fix this. Social media doesn’t have to be like that.” Another user then asked, “Have you banned Jesse Singal yet or,” which grabs simply replied, “Waffles!”

Singal’s presence on Bluesky was a flashpoint last year – while Bluesky built an early reputation as a refuge for trans -users, Singal has been widely criticized for his writing on trans issues. A petition for Change.org, which argued that Singal violated the social network’s social guidelines and urged Bluesky to ban him, received more than 28,000 signatures, and he was the most blocked user on Bluesky until Vice President JD Vance exceeded him.

In a follow -up post, Graber wrote, “to harass the mods of banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general never changed its mind.” She also referred to the controversy by placing a nudge-nudge wink-wink photo of waffles, just like Singal did.

Users continued to criticize her, where grabs fired back – when one compared the criticism with a customer who threatened to cancel their service, she asked, “Do you pay us? Where?” When someone else suggested she apologize, Graber said, “You could try a poster’s strike. I hear it is working.”

It may be tempting to reject this whole thing as another example of leftist battle, especially since the Bluesky Discourse has already advanced to the question of whether “Clanker” is a slurry.

Or maybe, as a satirical story suggested, there has just been “a week’s long gas leak on Bluesky Hq.”

But the controversy also emphasizes continuous tension between the company and some of its most vocal users. It is a tension that could be seen last month in skeptical answers to the company’s updated social guidelines, and in recurring complaints that Bluesky has been too quick to ban Palestinian and Transusers while offering easing to large accounts such as Singal’s.

It may be simplified to reduce this tension to a single matter, but I suppose much of it comes from different visions of what makes Bluesky special: If you think it’s Bluesky’s society, especially the early society of marginalized users, it can feel like a betrayal when bluesky leaders don’t seem willing to stand up to these users.

A user who posts under the name Katie Tightpussy speculated that Bluesky Leadership has come to dislike “having a great social media app that they would never have” and suggested that they spin it off so they can return “to protocoland where they never have to think of Plebeian’s opinions.”

When grabs do not respond to criticism with positions on waffles, she actually resists to identify Bluesky with any specific group or political inclination, rather than emphasizing the decentralized protocol that allows users to build their own alternatives.

In the midst of the current controversy, she posted “decentralization acceleration” and wrote, “We are system architects in the core. We built a decentralized network so you could run your own moderation,” then suggested that the company’s “upcoming healthy discourse project take some swings on the interaction model that drives these dynamics on Bluesky.”

Grabes may even have foreseen some version of this conflict as Bluesky started with the vision of a decentralized system that allows users to migrate elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with business management. As she reportedly wrote in Bluesky’s basic documents, “The company is a future opponent.”