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Hoping Bluesky shines, and the cesspool, X, sinks to the bottom
Bluesky, a relatively new platform, is prioritizing sports content to grow its platform.
To refer to X.com as a dumpster fire would be to disrespect dumpster fires.
Elon Musk’s version of the once-useful — and, believe it or not, enjoyable — social media platform formerly known as Twitter make cesspools look like a crystalline lake.
It’s become the online Star Wars bar for right-wing extremists, bots, trolls, and Gerry Callahan.
Under Musk’s “stewardship,” it has restored banned accounts, allowed blocked accounts to see the Tweets of those who blocked them, made links to news sites essentially useless, and has turned into an unmoderated free-for-all that benefits the worst of us.
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And speaking of worst, the worst thing of all happened Tuesday, when Grok, its AI chatbot and Musk’s precious baby, shared a series of anti-Semitic posts and praised Adolf Hitler.
I bring all of this up in a sports media column because the latest confirmation that X.com is reprehensible coincided with Bluesky — a relatively new platform reminiscent of what Twitter was in its innocent beginnings — is prioritizing sports content to grow its platform, which currently has about 37 million participants.
While announcing new notification settings this week, Bluesky used The Athletic — the once-independent sports platform that now doubles as The New York Times sports section — as the example of how the new notifications from preferred news sources work.
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This confirms what Harry Packer, who heads Bluesky’s sports efforts, told the website Awful Announcing in May. “Sports is a top priority, to make that clear, I think it’s probably the top priority for us, to be honest,” he said.“And our ambition there is simply to become the best place for real-time sports discussion.”
Building the sports connection is crucial, because there has been reluctance from many of the media members with the largest followings on X to give Bluesky a shake.
While some prominent and socially conscious media members, among them ESPN’s Mina Kimes and Bill Barnwell, and The Ringer’s Howard Beck, have championed Bluesky and continue to use it frequently, the growth has come incrementally at best.
More frustrating are those that gave it a shot initially, then reverted to X when the engagement — which I’ve found to be worthwhile and steady — wasn’t what they were anticipating.
It’s too bad Twitter has been destroyed. It was a terrific reporting aide for journalists. It was fun. But those days are long gone. Grok confirming the site’s Nazi underpinnings was the last straw for me. I’m done there and not going back.
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Hopefully, sooner rather than later, more sports folks will stop posting through it long enough to recognize the merits of the new place, where the skies are bluer and the worst of us haven’t gotten in the door.
Byers was a friend indeed
During his nine seasons with the Bruins, Lyndon Byers’s fists of iron and gregarious personality made him a popular figure. That personality translated into a long second career in radio, where another characteristic — a heart of gold — became apparent even to those who did not know him personally.
“You told him that you were trying to raise money doing something somewhere, he would show up and he’d hang out for five hours with everybody and have a blast,’’ said Greg Hill, WEEI’s morning host, on Monday’s program while paying homage to his friend Byers, who died July 4 at age 61. “He might be late getting there, but he would have a great excuse. Nobody has a better excuse for missing work than LB.”
Hill and Byers worked together at rock radio station WAAF for 23 years, until Hill moved to WEEI in 2019 and Byers left the station. While Byers’s second career was mostly sports-radio adjacent — he got his start on Glenn Ordway’s “The Big Show’’ on WEEI, but was best known for his long ‘AAF run — he still called in to Hill’s current show from time to time.
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Co-host Courtney Cox captured the essence of Byers’s personality and his ability to connect with just about anyone, noting that she did notknow him personally, but “every time he called in, he made you feel like you’ve known him forever.”
Hill said he had talked to Byers while his former co-host was in the hospital about a month ago.
“It’s always a good lesson about making sure that you’re always, when someone is not feeling great, that you’re always checking in with that person because you just never, never know,” said Hill on Monday’s show. “He was a guy who was drafted in the second round by the Boston Bruins, and came here, and turned into more of a Bostonian than a lot of people who live here.”
Ravech has hope for ESPN, MLB
While chatting on a conference call Thursday regarding ESPN’s Home Run Derby coverage (Monday, 8 p.m.), Karl Ravech reiterated what he told me in March: He remains hopeful that ESPN, which opted out of the final three years of its deal with Major League Baseball in February, will still have some sort of rights partnership with the league come next season. “I went from reading about things that weren’t happening [between MLB and ESPN] to reading about conversations that were going on,’’ said Ravech, a Needham native. “So that certainly would give me hope that there’s a road or path to continuing the relationship. … I’m optimistic until I’m told not to be.” … Turns out the popularity of Caitlin Clark can even positively influence Boston sports radio decision-making.98.5 The Sports Hub has picked up Tuesday’s WNBA matchup between the Connecticut Sun and Clark’s Indiana Fever. Brendan Glasheen and Terrika Foster-Brasby will have the call, with tipoff set for 8 p.m.
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