Humans Are More Than Clicks and Metrics

Ever since I discovered social media bots, I've had a healthy distrust of social media. What was once an organic metric of validity and newsworthiness was manipulated into a mess of inflated numbers and empty clout. Accounts selling business shills or offering endless pictures of food began dominating my feeds with junk content and hollow engagement. Then, I learned about algorithms, and things started making even less sense. Likes, shares, and views weren't just natural endorsements anymore. These numbers became meaningless to me but not to social media companies. This system was curated to keep us scrolling, clicking, and, ultimately, spending. Social media has become a house of mirrors, reflecting only what it wants us to see. And seeing is no longer believing, especially when our society is filtered through corporate interests, highest bidders, and delusional ketamine addicts.

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Platforms like Facebook and Twitter (I refuse to get with the times; they'll get over it) have reshaped how we consume information and, more importantly, how we understand each other. These platforms have eroded our relationships and molested the social side of being human. Their algorithms only care about maximizing engagement, which means sensationalism takes priority over substance and authentic human connection. The drive for clicks turns people into metrics, stripping away the depth of our experiences and reducing us to reactions—likes, shares, and comments. What was once an opportunity to connect with friends, family, and people around the world has become an endless loop of monkey-brained validation that diminishes our capacity for empathy and understanding. Sprinkle in some dis/misinformation, which is much more likely to be shared than facts due to stronger emotional reactions, feeding on our vulnerabilities and reducing our delicate humanity to extremes. Why use logic and reasoning when you can own the libs?

Doomscroll.

When algorithms push content to keep us hooked, it murders authenticity. These softwares amplify misinformation and distort our sense of reality, making genuine human connection harder to achieve and fragmenting our shared understanding, which, being a social creature yourself, poisons our societal well-being. Our sense of belonging, unity, progress, and happiness crumble.

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And for the modern-day replicants—bots—faceless entities that imitate humans. During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, there was a significant spike in AI-driven bot activity on social media platforms, with many of those bots dedicated to spreading misinformation. These bots create artificial trends, inflate the perceived popularity of specific viewpoints, and manipulate public perception. They blended in with human discourse, making it harder to differentiate between what is real and what is not. The scariest part is that these bots have the power to turn genuine human interactions into automated scripts, taking our genuine interactions and warping our human words into AI-created misinformation, false concerns, and propaganda.

Rinse and Repeat.

Disinformation campaigns do love them some social deficiencies. Organized social media manipulation is not just a glitch; it has become a strategy used by governments and political players to shape narratives, manipulate opinions, and erode our democratic norms. Beyond attacking democracy, this manipulation attacks our humanity. It conditions us to distrust one another, building walls of isolation between individuals with differing perspectives. When trust is fractured, empathy fades, and we become more susceptible to manipulation. The result is a society that is increasingly divided, disconnected, and unable to engage in meaningful dialogue. It breaks us down to seem, or even truly become, powerless to govern ourselves effectively.

Yeah, yeah, where does Bluesky come in?

Bluesky is an initiative focused on developing a decentralized social media protocol. Its goal is simple but ambitious: to free us from centralized platforms that control how we see the world, engage with each other, and define ourselves. It envisions an open ecosystem where users have autonomy over what they see and how they experience their online world. This decentralization is inherently democratic and gives power back to the people. Its approach empowers the many rather than concentrating power in the hands of a few corporate giants. It offers the potential for a more equitable distribution of influence, where each participant has a voice and collective decisions are made transparently. In this way, decentralization challenges the monopolistic grip of centralized platforms over our social discourse, promoting a more community-focused governance model. And I really hope they succeed in this mission.

Bluesky could be a significant first step in reclaiming our humanity. Decentralization holds the promise of transparency and user empowerment. An environment where we choose what content enriches our lives, where we control our experiences rather than being controlled by algorithms or any central entity. Instead of prioritizing what keeps us glued to the screen for ad revenue, we could prioritize what connects us as people.

However, seeing many forms of social media come and go over the years, keeping a healthy amount of skepticism is more than warranted. Doomscrolling and social media addiction are not problems that decentralization alone can solve. Endlessly scrolling through social media is a deeply ingrained behavior that extends beyond the platform's structure. Even with Bluesky, we would need conscious efforts to address these addictive tendencies and ensure people engage with other people and the technology healthily. Seriously, engage with people. Don't just post to the void for attention or numbers. Reclaiming our humanity requires active participation from you and others. Though Bluesky provides a significant opportunity for change, we must use it effectively and wisely.

Decentralization could give us insight into—and influence over—how our feeds are shaped. Breaking the echo chamber and rethinking how we engage with each other, understand diverse perspectives, and restore trust in our collective humanity. That said, there have been critiques, particularly from some corners of the political right, who claim that Bluesky is another echo chamber. These concerns often come without substantial evidence, and it appears to me they are mostly upset about their bot's ineffectiveness and misinformation spread stats. Still, they highlight the challenges that any platform—decentralized or not—faces when balancing freedom of speech and community health. Recognizing that such claims are unfounded until proven otherwise is essential; we can still acknowledge the risk of insularity in social networks. It's nothing that genuine human conversation can't address in time.

This decentralization of social media offers a way to combat bots threatening genuine interaction. In a distributed system, there's no central point of failure to exploit, and community-driven moderation and solutions could protect authenticity. Putting humanity back in control—letting real people, not scripts, decide the direction of our conversations.

Decentralization does come with risks, however. Fragmentation is a real concern. Without oversight, users could still curate their own echo chamber through excess blocking and muting, reinforcing their beliefs without exposure to new viewpoints. The user experience also matters. For Bluesky to succeed, it needs to be intuitive and accessible. People won't adopt a platform that feels cumbersome or unfamiliar. This technology has the potential to be liberating. Still, it has to be user-friendly and easy for everyone to engage with if it is truly going to restore our ability to connect as humans. Decentralized systems are known to develop slowly, but I don't believe this will be an issue since its main features are mostly fleshed out already.

Despite these challenges, I'm hopeful. I don't expect the platform to change everything overnight, of course. Still, the cracks in our centralized social media platforms are too obvious to ignore. If we can take even a small step toward reclaiming our humanity, that means something. By supporting projects like Bluesky, we can shape what's next—to create a space that values authenticity, empathy, and natural human connection over algorithms and profit margins.

We are not just data points, nor are we defined by likes or engagement rates. We are people capable of empathy, connection, and profound change. The real question is whether we can create a space that amplifies the best parts of ourselves digitally or whether we will continue to let centralized sources manipulate and define who we are. With so much at stake, it's a step worth taking.

Thanks for reading. Stay Human.

Sources:

• Brookings Institute, 2024
• Technical.ly, 2024
• FastCompany, 2024
• Arxiv.org, 2024
• RAND Corporation, 2024