For the past few days, my Bluesky feed has been increasingly filled with mysterious posts about waffles.<\/p>\n
The back-and-forth seems to have started with a tongue-in-cheek post<\/a> by Jerry Chen lampooning a form of social media sanctimoniousness that\u2019s become all too recognizable on Bluesky<\/a>: \u201c(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??\u201d<\/p>\n Bluesky CEO Jay Graber quoted this approvingly<\/a>, adding, \u201cToo real. We\u2019re going to try to fix this. Social media doesn\u2019t have to be this way.\u201d\u00a0 Another user then asked, \u201chave y\u2019all banned Jesse Singal yet or\u201d to which Graber simply replied<\/a>, \u201cWAFFLES!\u201d<\/p>\n Singal\u2019s presence on Bluesky was a flashpoint last year<\/a> \u2014 while Bluesky built an early reputation as a haven for trans users, Singal has been widely criticized for his writing on trans issues<\/a>. A Change.org<\/a> petition arguing that Singal violated the social network\u2019s community guidelines<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a follow-up post<\/a>, Graber wrote, \u201cHarassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.\u201d She also alluded to the controversy by posting a nudge-nudge wink-wink photo of waffles<\/a>, as did Singal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Users continued to criticize her, with Graber firing back \u2014 when one compared the criticism to a customer threatening to cancel their service, she asked<\/a>, \u201cAre you paying us? Where?\u201d When another suggested that she should apologize, Graber said<\/a>, \u201cYou could try a poster\u2019s strike. I hear that works.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cclanker\u201d is a slur<\/a>.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Or maybe, as one satirical account suggested<\/a>, there\u2019s just been \u201ca week-long gas leak at Bluesky HQ.\u201d<\/p>\n But the controversy also underlines ongoing tensions between the company and some of its most vocal users. It\u2019s a tension that could be seen last month in skeptical responses to the company\u2019s updated community guidelines<\/a>, and in recurring complaints that Bluesky has been too quick to ban Palestinian and trans users, while offering leniency to big accounts like Singal\u2019s.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>: If you think it\u2019s Bluesky\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n One user who posts under the name Katie Tightpussy speculated<\/a> that Bluesky leadership has come to loathe \u201chaving a large social media app that they never wanted\u201d and suggested that they spin it off so they can return \u201cto Protocol Land where they never have to think about the opinions of plebeians ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, when Graber isn\u2019t responding to criticism with posts about waffles, she\u2019s resisted identifying Bluesky with any specific group or political leaning<\/a>, instead emphasizing the decentralized protocol that allows users to build their own alternatives.<\/p>\n Amidst the current controversy, she posted about \u201cdecentralization acceleration<\/a>\u201d and wrote<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re system architects at core. We built a decentralized network so you could run your own moderation,\u201d then suggested that the company\u2019s \u201cupcoming healthy discourse project is taking some swings at the interaction model that drives these dynamics on Bluesky.\u201d<\/p>\n Graber may even have foreseen some version of this conflict when Bluesky was starting out with vision of a decentralized system that allows users to migrate elsewhere if they\u2019re unhappy with company leadership. As she reportedly wrote in Bluesky\u2019s founding documents<\/a>, \u201cThe company is a future adversary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-05-at-3.36.51PM.png?w=680\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n