"Following the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, some of his fellow right-wing media leaders called out a supposedly toxic hub in which liberals and leftists were gathering to celebrate the killing: Bluesky."
"Kirk's killing is an unqualified moral disaster. If indeed a critical mass of left-of-center people were celebrating it in the digital streets of Bluesky, that would be a sign of a political movement's decay and the irredeemability of a social media platform."
"The problem with this story is that it is not true. If you spent your Wednesday absorbing thousands of posts on Bluesky-as I did, for whatever reason-it would be difficult to make an honest case that the platform's users were celebrating en masse. There were indeed a lot of people doing that. Just not close to a majority, let alone "every post." And while overwrought right-wing characterizations of the left-of-center response were egged on by some of the largest accounts in conservative politics, the lefty joking about Kirk's death did not come from movement leaders."
Following Charlie Kirk's fatal shooting, prominent right-wing figures accused Bluesky of hosting mass celebratory reactions from liberals and leftists. High-profile posts claimed that "every post" on the platform was celebrating the assassination and amplified outrage. A review of thousands of Bluesky posts showed a notable but limited set of celebratory and mocking messages, not a widespread consensus. The most extreme reactions came from individuals rather than organized left movement leaders. Broad characterizations that painted Bluesky as uniformly toxic misrepresented the platform's overall response and exaggerated the scale of celebratory commentary.
Read at Slate Magazine
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