There's more British people there. It's still very American over there, like it is here. But if I search for posts about the local elections (like seeing other people celebrating the Tories getting a kicking at the polls), while it's not quite at the numbers I would have routinely found on British Twitter, it's still many, many more people than on here.
And some of the better, more hopeful things are going on on Bluesky, that used to happen on Twitter - like the dogs at polling stations hashtag, which has always been a small joy to see on election days. Some of the familiar mobilising hashtags are in place there too, like GTTO.
There are also larger numbers of people routinely posting in different languages there than here. In settings you can pick what languages you want to see in algorithmic feeds. Notably, I see Japanese, German, French, etc, fairly often, even though I don't necessarily have all those languages selected. So I would guess that while you wind up with the usual American majority in English-language posting, it's much easier to find diversity in the number of posters from different countries, using different languages too.
That can make a difference to the cultural feel of the place. Sometimes I get tired at the way I am expected to be conversant in American politics (and am fairly conversant that way), but Americans are often ignorant about the politics of other countries. It's not a uniquely American thing. When I moved between Singapore and Britain (as a child, then as a young adult), a striking difference was always news coverage dedicated to other nations.
In Singapore there was routinely a lot more international news in the news. Not necessarily in-depth reporting, plus the government maintains a tight control over the media. But there's more routine coverage of international news to be found. Probably from being a former British colony, a geographically small country in SE Asia with a strong, historical reliance on international trade, a large diaspora population, a need to understand what's happening in the region, plus a strong cultural emphasis on education, and most people being routinely multilingual.
In Britain, there is much less coverage of other countries' news than in Singapore. If there has been coverage it's skewed European and American. But at least there are those types of news too. I get almost no news about Singapore or other SE Asian countries from local news outlets.
In the brief times I've been in America, I've seen very little coverage of international-type news at all, though I was in the US when the results of the Brexit referendum broke, and that was a big enough piece of news to get reported on there - but that's another story, for another time.
It feels very different talking about local news and politics with other locals, not least because we have skin in the game. It's different if you're a tourist looking in, than being a local trying to figure out how to survive.
Over on Bluesky I shared the same link I shared over here to the DWP's consultation on PIP, and that's been shared many more times there than here, because there's a larger number of British disabled folks and carers over there than here, all searching for info on the ways changes to PIP might be orchestrated, all hoping those can be headed off.
That tells me that if I were a disabled British person, or a carer for a disabled British person, looking for solidarity, mutual support and news that directly affects my life, I probably would be able to more easily find it there than here.
Right around now, all the non-Brits are about to ask: "What is the DWP? What is PIP?" And that's the kind of thing I mean about a difference in what the majority expects you to be conversant in, as opposed to what the majority is expected to understand of others.
Like if the Americans mention "Jan 6th", or they say: "students at the GWU encampment heckled Lauren Boebert with chants of 'Beetlejuice'", I am expected to understand all those references without any unpacking or further contextualisation. And for the most part I do. It's relatively easy to keep up with American news when you wind up with a predominance of Americans on your feed, talking about their lives on a daily basis. I don't even always have to look up American news articles for greater clarity. It's just that over time, all the cultural and political references predominate in the daily lives of those posters, and so I pick up a lot contexutally.
But the majority always pick up much less from minoritites unless they make a concerted effort to follow minority posters, look up related news articles, etc. Which most people don't do.
This place probably leans more leftist in general than Bluesky (though almost all the Brits I found posting about the local elections on Bluesky were also celebrating the Tories getting battered at the polls.) But it's less diverse in a variety of ways. And I feel like every week I figure out a bit more about that by the things I miss finding here, and the things I am happily surprised to find elsewhere - not least, many more photos of dogs outside polling stations on election days!
this is exactly why every cohost user should follow me for random news about croatian politics. it’s a shit show over here
