The NFL Ordered the Patriots to Delete Their Bluesky Account Because 'It's Not an Approved Platform'

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I'm someone who's old enough to have experienced the world before the internet came along to make human life worth living. (For those you too young to understand, that was sarcasm. You'll never know the simple joy of cutting through the woods with your friends and finding a stash of Playboys. And I pity you.) So I remember when the dream was how all this was going to bring humanity together. It would usher in a New Enlightenment. A knowledge revolution in which we'd all have access to the same information. 

That dream seemed real as my brother Bill exposed me to my first ever website, Jump the Shark, which was a list of every TV show and the exact moment they started to suck, all organized by categories like "Wedding" or "Had a Baby" or "Ted McGinley," who was their Patron Saint.

Other guys I know went a different route. For instance, one whose first experience was typing the words "midget sex" into whatever proto-Google search engine made out of stone knives and bearskins he had available at the time. But I knew that absurdist pop culture shenanigans were going to be the internet for me. And nothing has changed since. 

What I never expected was how divided it was going to be. No expert who was assuring us what a magnificent, utopian age all this connectivity would usher in ever told us we'd all end up in our own information bubbles. Siloed from the rest of the human race. Grouped according to whatever gives us our preferred dopamine rush. All news and information subjective. Self-selected so we hear what we want to hear. I mean, I should've seen it coming; that's human nature. But it's not what we were promised. 

The best hope for something approximating the brave new world they talked about was social media. And that experiment failed almost as soon as started. It brought out the worst of human nature, only hidden behind a made up name and a fake profile pic, which makes everything fair game. We're all basically apes flinging poop at each other, except hidden in a tree two forests away, well beyond normal poop-flinging distance. Which is fine by me. This is who we are. This is the jungle we've chosen. 

And so it was that when Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it to X, there was hope he'd clean up the really seriously dangerous monkey shit, while still letting the primates do their primate thing. Your results of his attempts may vary, but personally, I think what he did, way overpaying for the platform in order to stop anonymous gatekeepers from picking winners and losers and just let everybody say what they want, was nothing less than the most patriotic thing any businessman has ever done.

Not everybody agreed. And when he started supporting the current President of the United States, some other tech billionaires did their patriotic duty for the concept of Free Speech by starting Bluesky as a more left-of-center alternative. Bully for them. Yes, it's further siloing, but have at it. Competition is good for everybody. 

Though not everyone sees it that way. Weirdly, the NFL, which loves to pass itself off as a paragon of progressiveness and inclusion, has told teams they're not allowed to have official team accounts on Bluesky:

Source - The Patriots tried to be social media trailblazers by becoming the first NFL team on Bluesky, a social media app that’s become an alternative to X/Twitter.

 

But the NFL intercepted the Pats’ attempt. 

Fred Kirsch, vice president of content for Kraft Sports & Entertainment, the Patriots’ umbrella company, recently spoke on the Patriots Unfiltered podcast and was asked by a listener if the team has considered creating a Bluesky account. 

“Right now we’re not allowed to,” Kirsch said. “We had an account briefly on Bluesky, but the league asked us to take it down because it’s not an approved social media platform for the NFL yet. … Whenever the league gives us the green light, we’ll get back on Bluesky.” …

Cued up to the 1:00:05 mark:

While prominent journalists and celebrities such as Mark Cuban, Ben Stiller, and Ryan Reynolds have all left X for Bluesky as a result of X owner Elon Musk’s changes to the app and his close involvement with the Trump Administration. Others have created accounts on Bluesky and have operated from both platforms, but sports teams and leagues have been some of the last to follow on that front.

Who knew? So far no one's gotten an explanation from the Patriots or the league. It could be a simple matter of the NFL not having a rights agreement with Bluesky. And since you can pull highlight clips off X almost instantaneously, it could all come down to a "corporate partnership" type of situation. 

Then again, it's hard not to think this might be a nod to Trump, since Bluesky sees itself as the sort of social media Rebel Alliance against him. After all, when he's giving his inaugural address 10 feet away from Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and 11 feet away from Mrs. Bezos' nipples, it's a fair assumption that an operation as careful about not making enemies as the NFL would not want to piss off the guy whose "football" contains the nuclear codes. 

Then again, it might just be as simple as they're betting against Bluesky. It's up to 29 million subscribers, which is impressive. But it could be a passing fad. A lot of indignant voices on the left have made big, dramatic announcements about how they were leaving X for good, but always seem to quietly reappear. Even an audience of 29 million can't compete with Musk's little social experiment. And maybe the NFL's media department is gambling Bluesky ends up in the Platform Cemetery alongside Friendster, iTunes Ping, Yik Yak, Vine, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Plus, and MySpace. 

Whatever their reasoning, it's got to be serious for them to actively tell clubs not to engage with an audience of almost 30 million potential customers. Based on the NFL's track record of being right about such things, my guess is Bluesky is not long for this world.