Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

Man, this was fun to see in real time. A site whose earliest adopters were Twitter refugees who hated the crypto/AI/NFT boosters, created actual art, and ultimately left Twitter because of rampant fascism and bigotry, effectively cyberbullied the company and its Head of Social Media so badly the latter left the site entirely.

You have to be pretty bad at your job to misread the room so terribly. Just taking a casual look at Clearsky’s block rankings would show how many lists are specifically blocking and targeting brands, griftos, fascists, and bigots of various stripes, and likely dissuade you from approaching the community without some form of battle plan.

Treating BlueSky like a “new Twitter” is a dangerous mistake to make, something Adobe learned the hard way. To make matters worse, they also poisoned the community well to the point there’s a fresh witch hunt out for brands and companies to add to block lists, thus harming everyone else’s “engagement”.

This is a spot on analysis. Bluesky and Mastodon are full of people that felt and continue to feel disenfranchised and excluded. They embraced Bluesky because it reminded them of what Twitter used to be and had found themselves what they felt was a relatively safe space.

Companies like Adobe and other major tech players have enabled the hostile environment we see growing every day. It’s no wonder that disingenuous posts like this from predatory companies receive such a backlash.

Yup. The increasing fragmentation of social media means you really need to understand the community you’re targeting before engaging in outreach. More communities are going to be less tolerant of brands and advertisers in general given current events and over-saturation of advertising in general, so every engagement point matters way more.