#MicroblogMondays: Blue skies

I recently signed up for Bluesky, the much saner (so far, anyway...) alternative to the cesspool that has become Twitter/X.  So far, so good!  and many of the people I follow over on X have similarly made the move. (I haven't deleted my Twitter/X account yet, but rarely visit these days, and likely will delete soon. I want to check my "following" list there vs Bluesky and make sure I won't be missing out on any favourites before I cut the cord!)  

One of the few things I find I don't like about Bluesky, though, is that your profile is completely public: unlike Twitter/X or Threads or other social media platforms, there is no ability to accept or refuse/delete new followers. You just get a notification that you're being followed.  

I don't have a huge amount of followers -- 56 at the time of writing -- but of those 56, 44 (almost 80%!) are complete strangers to me -- most of them men. (eyeroll)  (Just 12 are people I know, from online or "in real life.")  I haven't posted anything original there yet (and likely won't do that too often, if at all), but I have "liked," "shared" and (very occasionally) replied to others' posts (generally people I know). It's one thing to know that anything I reply to is up there for all to see, but quite another to know that my profile and all my activity is completely open for total strangers to peruse. I'm not a public figure;  why they would want to follow me (and how they found my profile) is a mystery to me. (Yeah, I know  -- they're hoping I'll follow them back -- and a lot of them are likely bots, right?) 

(As I was writing this, I got another notification of a new follower:  Elon Musk. On Bluesky. Yeah, right...  THAT was an immediate block!  lol)  

You do have the ability to block people on Bluesky, and while I haven't blocked anyone yet, I'm considering doing so. I figure that someone who's following a couple thousand other accounts won't miss me if I block their ability to see my stuff in their feeds. (I doubt they're really interested in what I'm sharing there anyway;  as I said above, they probably just hoping I'll follow them back to boost their follower numbers. And I'm certainly not doing that.)  

Thoughts? 

(I realize this concern about privacy sounds completely irrational when I've been spilling my guts here in this blog for the past 17 years to all and sundry (albeit semi-anonymously)...!  lol  But I don't expect too many people are hanging out here if they don't have some connection to pregnancy loss, infertility and/or childlessness themselves.)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.