Waffles eat Bluesky

For the past few days, my Bluesky feed has been increasingly filled with mysterious posts about waffles.

The back-and-forth seems to have started with a tongue-in-cheek post^[1] by Jerry Chen lampooning a form of social media sanctimoniousness that’s become all too recognizable on Bluesky^[2]: “(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??”

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber quoted this approvingly^[3], adding, “Too real. We’re going to try to fix this. Social media doesn’t have to be this way.”  Another user then asked, “have y’all banned Jesse Singal yet or” to which Graber simply replied^[4], “WAFFLES!”

Singal’s presence on Bluesky was a flashpoint last year^[5] — while Bluesky built an early reputation as a haven for the trans users, Singal has been widely criticized for his writing on trans issues^[6]. A Change.org^[7] petition arguing that Singal violated the social network’s community guidelines^[8] and calling on Bluesky to ban him received more than 28,000 signatures, and he was the most-blocked user on Bluesky until Vice President JD Vance surpassed him^[9].

In a follow-up post^[10], Graber wrote, “Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.” She also alluded to the controversy by posting a nudge-nudge wink-wink photo of waffles^[11], as did Singal^[12].

Users continued to criticize her — when one compared the criticism to a customer threatening to cancel their service, Graber asked^[13], “Are you paying us? Where?” When another suggested that she should apologize, Graber said^[14], “You could try a poster’s strike. I hear that works.”

It might be tempting to dismiss this whole thing as another example of leftist infighting, especially since the Bluesky Discourse has already moved on to the question of whether “clanker” is a slur^[15].

Or maybe, as one satirical account suggested^[16], there’s just been “a week-long gas leak at Bluesky HQ.”

But the controversy also underlines ongoing tensions between the company and some of its most vocal users. It’s a tension that could be seen last month in skeptical responses to the company’s updated community guidelines^[17], and in recurring complaints that Bluesky has been too quick to ban Palestinian and trans users, while offering leniency to big accounts like Singal’s.

It may be simplistic to reduce this tension to a single cause, but I suspect much of it comes from differing visions about what makes Bluesky special^[18]: If you think it’s Bluesky’s community, especially that early community of marginalized users, then it can feel like a betrayal when Bluesky executives seem unwilling to stand up for those users^[19].

One user who posts under the name Katie Tightpussy speculated^[20] that Bluesky leadership has come to loathe “having a large social media app that they never wanted” and suggested that they spin it off so they can return “to Protocol Land where they never have to think about the opinions of plebeians ever again.”

Indeed, when Graber isn’t responding to criticism with posts about waffles, she’s resisted identifying Bluesky with any specific group or political leaning^[21], instead emphasizing the decentralized protocol that allows users to build their own alternatives on top.

Amidst the current controversy, she posted about “decentralization acceleration^[22]” and wrote^[23], “We’re system architects at core. We built a decentralized network so you could run your own moderation,” then suggested that the company’s “upcoming healthy discourse project is taking some swings at the interaction model that drives these dynamics on Bluesky.”

Graber may even have foreseen some of this conflict when Bluesky was starting out and she envisioned a decentralized system that would allow users to migrate elsewhere if they’re unhappy with company leadership. As she reportedly wrote in Bluesky’s founding documents^[24], “The company is a future adversary.”