The Editor's Post: Bluesky thinking after reflections on Trump 2.0

Since Donald Trump’s victory in this month’s US presidential election was confirmed, the Pioneers Post team has been talking to our contacts in the impact community about how they feel, and how they believe ‘Trump 2.0’ will affect their work.

It’s clear that there was an initial sense of despair (we’ve yet to find anyone who was celebrating – if you’re out there, get in touch and share your story), but – as we can always guarantee with our network – there are multiple viewpoints, and not all of them are bleak. Just hours after the election result, our associate editor Anna Patton was talking to delegates at the Partners for a New Economy conference in Brussels, Belgium, gathering both pessimistic and optimistic takes on the situation. Since then, our reporter Laura Joffre has canvassed views from across the world. Her analysis, published this week, reveals not only concerns, but also insights into how Trump’s policies on everything from Ukraine to Latin America, from women’s rights to global trade deals, could affect impact investors and social entrepreneurs in the years to come. Most importantly, there’s a powerful call to unite against divisive and discriminatory rhetoric and push forward with the campaign for a fairer, greener world. 

One of the other outcomes of the US election result has been a massive exodus from the social network X, and an influx of millions of new users to one of the newer kids on the social network block, Bluesky.

Media organisations and journalists are in a constant love-hate relationship with social networks. They can help amplify our stories and connect with our audiences but, at the same time, we’re always playing catch-up in an attempt to rise to the top of people’s feeds thanks to their constantly changing, mysterious algorithms.

For us at Pioneers Post, X has become much less useful than it used to be. Many people now find it a difficult place to be online, and recently UK-based news organisation the Guardian called it a “toxic media platform” and silenced its accounts. For now, we will maintain our presence on X, but we will be a lot less active than we were in the past.

This week, we joined the hoards heading on to Bluesky (we’re here) to see if it is indeed the sunny, positive online paradise that many believe. Alongside some odd graphics depicting futuristic cities with vegetation-clad skyscrapers and floating wind-power generators from the CEO Jay Graber (entitled “This is the future I want for us”), it feels a lot like the old-style Twitter. And, while we didn’t see many representatives of the impact investment and social enterprise communities there when we peeked around the door a few weeks ago, suddenly more and more are piling in. 

Interestingly, Bluesky is registered as a public benefit corporation with a mission to “develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralised public conversation”. Bluesky explains that “the public benefit corporation status allows us to pursue our mission above profit”, although, like OpenAI, it is registered in Delaware, USA, where the legislation appears to be particularly lenient and which some experts have pointed to as potentially problematic. You can read about this in our reporter David Lyons’s analysis here. 

We’ve created what Bluesky calls a “starter pack” – a list of accounts that our audience might like to follow, to help you all connect with one another. If you join and seek us out, I hope you’ll enjoy being part of this small but growing community: do say hello!

Impact Week in Bilbao

Next week, I’m taking the train from where I live in Catalunya to the north coast of Spain to join Impact Europe’s Impact Week, which is being hosted in the beautiful Basque city of Bilbao. As well as reporting on the event, I’ll be taking part in a discussion about the role of journalism in the impact economy, hosted by Torino Social Impact on Wednesday afternoon. I’d love to see you there where we have the opportunity to dive into themes such as how we can raise the voices of social entrepreneurs and the communities they support, how the solutions journalism approach (as practised by the team at Pioneers Post) can be useful and, even perhaps, the role that journalists such as myself could or should be playing to help you achieve your goals more effectively. See you then!  

This week's top stories

What Trump 2.0 means for the global impact community

Opinion: Why we must unlock the potential of community-led energy

Kieron Boyle: ‘It’s a really hard job – but I’m in my happy place’

The Impact World This Week: 21 November 2024

Top image: Freepik.