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I’m surprised more people aren’t more skeptical about Bluesky’s “choose your own algorithm” feature.

If there’s something I’ve learned over and over again, it’s that the bulk of social media users don’t like choice.

What they want is to open an app and immediately see something interesting. And they want social media companies to implicitly know what their content preferences are without having to make a choice.

If they want to see something specific, they’ll utilize search. And if they don’t want to keep searching for the same thing again and again, they’ll save their search query as a feed.

Some people compare Bluesky’s “choose your own algorithms” to Zapier or IFTTT. But how many people actually use Zapier or IFTTT? I’m not saying there isn’t an audience for that feature, just that it tends to be niche.

People either want a laidback “don’t make me think” social media experience or they want an active intentional one.

“Choose your own algorithms” is neither passive nor active. It’s in the grey zone. It’s presumably for people too lazy to search but too active for the default Home feed.

It’s a feature that tries to be everything to everyone—and for that reason, it looks to be a feature for no one.

—@atomicpoet