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So I get that there's (yet again) a big debate going on about AI on Bluesky. I am turning off replies to this post because I don't want to have notifications flooded one way or the other on this one. I just want to share what I've heard multiple times in just the past two weeks.

Multiple people I know have told me that they love the idea of Bluesky, and want it to succeed, but have abandoned it for X because the use agentic tools in their work and find them incredibly useful, and feel that any mention of their usage here leads to hate and ridicule.

I wouldn't bring this up if it was just one person, but it was multiple people since the beginning of August who mentioned in passing something to the effect of either "I'd spend more time on Bluesky if people weren't so anti-AI" *or* "As much as I hate to be there all the useful AI talk is on X."

I'm not saying it's anyone's responsibility to praise AI usage. I agree with much of the criticism of the tool. But for many, many people, it is a useful tech (I have talked about the ways I find it extraordinarily useful, only to have people here mock me, insisting my lived experience is a lie).

I am just noting that for all the people here who say that people should get off X and spend more time here, the reason I keep hearing from people in various circles who would *like* to do that, but don't, is the vociferous belief of many here that there are no possible positive uses of AI.

I'm not telling anyone what to do or what tech to use or what to like or not like. I'm just relaying that the reputation this place now has is one that a large segment of the population who are NOT fascists, saying they don't feel comfortable here because a main area of their interest is...

... considered worthy of being mocked and attacked. And even as I've explained that I've been able to have positive conversations about productive AI usage here with many of you, the reputation of the community here as insisting their own lived experience can't possibly be real has driven them away.

And the thing that tipped me over the edge to posting this here is that three of the people who told me things along these lines are all working on very real solutions to some of the problems of AI (i.e., building more decentralized, user-controlled options that *should* resonate here).

What they're working on should be perfectly 100% aligned with the goals of ATproto and user empowerment. Yet, they feel that they have to spend time on X because people here will simply yell at them, rather than engage with them on what they're working on.