This is a follow up to my Why Bluesky is Awesome post from November where I explained the basics of getting started. This post is to answer the most common questions that show up. The first post was about starting and moderating your Bluesky account. This one is about organizing it.

As you can see in November I had 33 followers and I was following 273 with 19 posts. Today all these posts are a lot bigger.

Who to Follow Back?

When I began, I followed back whoever followed me, but now that Bluesky has 30 million people it’s no longer wise to do that.

Many people complain about getting a lot of followers quickly, especially when they are new, because a lot of them are bots or spammers. This is a problem on all social media.

Here’s my rules for following back people that follow me:

Click your own picture (or “Profile”) and click “followers” then click names of followers one at a time, followers don’t come in super quickly unless you are semi famous, so it’s not a chore to keep up.

First thing to look for # of followers, following, and posts. Above 1000 followers is suspicious. Could be they are popular, or could be they are part of a bot farm, or could be active on the site like me since I’m getting up there.

Above 10,000 following is suspicious. More likely to be farming follows than being an actual well rounded person. Less than 10 posts is suspicipus. Could be they are just new, lots and lots of “reposts” worry’s me too.

Second thing, examine the posts they make. Ask yourself, do these posts look like typical human randomness? They are probably human then. Second, and more importantly, is this the kind of content you want to see in your “follow” feed? I only follow back those I can answer “yes” to both.

Don’t worry if people follow you if you choose not to follow back. I know in my case, I generate follows from my games. I follow a lot of game developers, at least half of the 1.8K people I’m following are fellow game developers. I try to stay out of politics (though not completely since a lot is happening) and I try not to offend anyone, but I don’t block many beyond the popular moderation lists.

I get too much crap in my feeds, especially “Discover”, how do I stop it?

“Discover” is an algorithm generated feed of things you indicated you like and don’t like. It’s good for beginners, but eventually you’re going to want to click “More Feeds”, then click “Discover”, then click the tack symbol in the upper right corner to unpin it. You can always see it through the “More Feeds”.

The “discover” algorithm isn’t very smart, no matter how much you click “see less of this” you’re going to see more unless you actually block it.

The better way to control what you see is to click “settings” and “moderation” and control things there. Don’t want porn or nudity, this is the place to disable it. I self label my pictures that contain adult content, so people can hide it if they want, and the automatic filters work, too, but some may still sneak in, so consider Bluesky not a safe place for kids.

More powerful is the “muted words and tags” section. Don’t like lots of politics on your feeds? Use this section to block most of it. Luckily “Trump” and “Musk” are uncommon enough names that blocking them will not block innocent posts.

I also block “gofund.me”, “gofundme.com”, and “onlyfans” because most posts with these words are spam. Yes the situation in Gaza is horrible, but most of these petitions for help are outright scams. Support Red Crescent or Doctors Without Borders if you want to help, not random people online.

I’m not against Go Fund Me or Only Fans websites, they are just a source of unwanted spam on Bluesky, so I mute them. There is also spam from “Patreon”, “Substack”, “Subscribestar” or “ko.fi” too, but I don’t block these as many of the artists and developers I follow have mentions of these in their profile, including me, and it’s not beneficial to block.

I miss a lot of posts from the people I follow

Because all the feeds are chronological, it is easy to miss important stuff you want to see on Bluesky. The fix is LISTS!

One of the biggest complaints on Bluesky, is “too much politics” or “not enough (your favorite) content”. Seeing people you follow is easy, seeing other stuff, is not so easy — unless you use lists.

“Lists” is that button below your avatar on your left, that most people don’t touch because “Why do I need to make a list?” I myself though that List was a certain kind of post, like a “favorite movies” list, that people could see, but nope, it’s much more powerful. I was also under the assumption that you had to “find” pre-made feeds to follow, but that is also wrong. You MAKE lists to make your own feeds. Usually all you need is a few account names and you can click to see what they are talking about. I no longer need “Discovery” to find content I want, I just click on my custom feeds.

“Lists” are list of Bluesky members you can organize to read just their posts in a separate feed, and once you learn how to create them, it makes Bluesky 1000% better.

I started with a personal “friends and family” list so I can see when my friends post stuff. Hit that “list” button on the left, create a “friends and family list” add all my friends and family, and pin it to the right. Now I click there and see what they are posting, and ONLY what they are posting.

That was successful enough, so I made a list of “journalists I like” to follow, added a few names, and now I see a list of all their posts.

Since then, I created a list of funny meme makers like God (@godpod.bsky.social‬) and George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social‬) and put them in a “Meme” list. I don’t actually follow either of them, but I put them on a list to see what they post.

Note these lists and feeds are public, that’s good if you want to share your feeds with others, but not if you want to keep them private.

The AT (@) protocol

Bluesky is the first successful AT protocol social media. There are others out there like Pixelfed which is an art and photo sharing service on the AT protocol, basically an Instagram clone, and Lemmy a link sharing AT protocol service similar to Reddit. And there is a lot of interest brewing for a TikTok clone on the AT protocol. Tech Crunch says that a Brazilian company has the lead with one called Reelo, but it’s going to take a year or so to get out of beta.

Still, I believe this is the future of social media.