Seriously i have zero idea what is going on with bluesky. I never used it. Why are people saying it’s centralised? I also heard that a lot of people are joining it.
Centalised as in not federated. Which means we’ve basically set a timer until it starts acting like Google or Facebook, or even “X” if a crazy person buys it out.
That being said, I welcome any kind of actual competition.
Nothing is wrong with it. Fediverse bros are just salty that it’s getting all the traffic instead of mastodon.
I mean, as long as Twitter goes down, who exactly gets to do the killing blow among all the individual blows doesn’t truly matter now, does it?
Depends on your perspective. Would it be fine for Meta Threads to replace it? Threads supports ActivityPub, so in some ways it likely interacts better with the fediverse.
If we agree that Threads isn’t a suitable replacement, then clearly there’s some criteria a replacement should meet. A lot of the things that make Threads unpalatable are also true of Bluesky, particularly if your concern relates to the platform being under the control of a corporation.
On the other hand, from the perspective of “Twitter 2.0 is now a toxic, alt-right cesspool where productive conversations can’t be had,” then both Threads and Bluesky are huge improvements.
Supporting ActivityPub doesn’t excuse being owned and operated by META.
Will Bsky eventually shit itself like Twitter did? Sure, maybe. That seems to be the normal path nowadays. And when it does, I’ve still got my Masto account that I try to keep active as well. But at the very least, Bsky is a different company. I can have a bsky account without being dragged into an entire META ecosystem designed to put their chosen content in front of my eyes.
Even at it’s worst, the fact that Bsky is it’s own thing and not owned by a mega corporation puts it automatically about Threads, regardless of ActivityPub.
If it needs a server to talk to others, that’s already bad. If it needs a server, but it can be my server, it’s palatable. That’s all the criteria you need.
Plus is gets the idea into people’s heads that you aren’t married to a platform.
I wish, but I wager most people will immediately get married to Bluesky.
It absolutely does. What happened to twitter could happen to a successor. The successor matters.
Sure, but as you cannot know the future, it’s a bit tricky to pick a successor you want to support based on that, instead of absolutely right-now-essential things such as “Where people actually are”.
It’s also important to keep in mind how long Twitter’s run was: It was originally founded 18 years ago. I’d be okay if every 10-15 years I have to get a new Twitter, tbh. I buy a new phone every 4-5 years, a new car every 15-20, I’m alright. It’s cheap to go onto a new Twitter, I’m far less resistant to change with that.
That is to say: Sure, maaaybe (again, can’t truly know) Mastodon is superior on a technical level. But not only is that absolutely not how social media operates, and second it really doesn’t matter if a sucessor also goes down in 10+ years. People won’t be able to care any less if a successor lasts that long, and considering how quickly Mastodon has turned into a semi-ghost-town once Bluesky got big, I kinda know what I’d put my money onto.
Of course all of this ignores a central problem with the entire category of services: They don’t conduct conversations well, even stuff like Misskey or Mastodon.
Well, there are some things wrong with it though?
It’s possible to criticize both Mastodon and Bluesky for their respective issues
The issue is that BlueSky is a for-profit company.
B-Corp. But as long as they don’t show any kind of sustainable business model compared to their costs, ye the result doesn’t differ much
what? so there’s nothing wrong with centralized commercial services? please explain what’s good about ANY centralized commercial service.
….She said on Lemmy, a platform provided for free and free of ads by volunteers.
Every day I’m more persuaded that in the main, Lemmy got the dregs of Reddit during the exodus, who are the nastiest most argumentative, most poorly informed shitheads the internet has to offer.
The most recent and largest exodus was people protesting their apps going away. Imagine a person for whom site moderation leading to embracing Russophobic snuff films, excusing Nazi tattoos, genocide denial re: Palestine, and general censorship of the left were not reasons to leave but “my apps and app freedoms” moved them.
So yes these are people obstinately fighting over something they just made up but it sounds right to them and matches the vibes of their parasocial bubble. They might literally die if they spoke casually and acknowledged faults.
If you move from twitter thinking it’ll not end up like twitter you’re wrong. It’ll go through the same growing pains process and you’ll end up right back where you started with nothing to show for it.
It has some flaw, but overall it’s actually usable.
There’s nothing from a user experience currently that makes bluesky bad, it’s just that since it doesn’t seem to actually support decentralization, there’s nothing to stop it from eventually getting just as bad as twitter over time due to profit incentive. Misskey/mastodin are the only microblogging platforms that are truly immune from corporate manipulation and enshittification, which would mean it’s a long term solution (that while imperfect, can only get better).
I enjoy it, but I am fully aware that history could repeat itself, and I am ready to pack up and move if/when that time comes. For now, it’s big enough that I can follow communities I enjoy being a part of without worrying about the constant influx of racists/fascists.
Those people are of course present, but they’re easy to block and move on.
I don’t have strong opinions about BlueSky (I have an account, I prefer activitypub but it’s whatever), but to me I will view it as centralized until someone who is not BlueSky runs a second relay server that is federated with the BlueSky run one.
And based on the writings of one of the creators of activitypub, Christine Lemmer-Webber, there are some hurdles to that happening: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
It’s corporate social media.
You’ll get ads. You’ll get your privacy invaded. You’ll have an algorithm pushing content toward you. Eventually, they’ll open the floodgates to fascists because pissing you off keeps your eyes glued to ads.
BUT, it’s also familiar, and that’s more important to people than having to do leg work, though personally I prefer Mastodon and it’s really not that hard to use once you’ve spent a few days there and gotten used to it.
it works better than twitter
Thats a pretty low bar lol
Works better than mostodon
Define “better”, first.
I’ve been using Mastodon for about 5 years now, and what I’ve seen of bsky, is that it’s not better: It’s centralized, owned by cryptobros, and subject to the exact same problems as twitter is for user safety.
It’s usable. Simple.
Mastodon has been usable, and simple, as well.
I signed up for my tildeverse account once they spun up an instance, and I followed people I saw posting. And now, I’ve collected a fair number of followers and people I follow to see what they say.
Works quite well.
So, what isn’t usable or simple?
Lets take football an example. It’s not niche, it’s quite popular. I searched football on mastadon and couldn’t by find more than one post in the timeline of 4 months. That’s unusable for regular folk.
I agree with what you are saying. But the regular folk just hate the void. They want more interaction and they see centralization as a feature and not as a problem.
Also in terms of UI, discoverability, content, starter-packs, custom feeds etc are all “better”.
People don’t care if ads roll out, I’m also surprised. But they don’t. Even their reasoning for twitter they state the toxicity and never ads.
Just in general, people on the internet are haters. I don’t really have a strong opinion either way, but Bluesky could cure world hunger and make all dogs live 100 years and people on the internet would hate it.
Isn’t it Twitter before musk?
I remember the olden days when people said Twitter was shit and it wasn’t intentionally bad.
It’s slightly more than a green(blue?)washed Twatter.
The fact it’s getting such a stellar rise over Mastodon is imho a bit sus - people behind it have coin & reach (political), I’m sure monies are being pumped into the bluesky sensationalization, like influences & media articles.
Twatter has/had a lot of monetization potential & now is even more of a (really incredibly direct) political-tool, there are bound to be interest groups that would benefit from cutting it a bit. But all of them want more monies, so they ofc won’t help fossy things.
Having used both, here my view on why BlueSky is outstripping Mastadon:
- It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).
- There’s no messing around with instances to negotiate - you go to bsky.app
BlueSky.comand it just works. Hard to overstate how important that is in retaining people who take a look at a new platform. - There are a lot of people on it, it doesn’t feel empty like I have often found Mastadon.
- There are a lot of relatively influential people on it, media people, authors and actors and comedians, who have largely shifted as a single mass (probably due to the three above reasons) - so for non-famous people there’s a sense of being in touch with what’s happening.
- It’s riding a wave of positivity about itself, which Mastadon never had - this touches on your point about media coverage of it, but whether that’s really due to money being paid to news orgs or just due to journalists seeing what they are doing as being important for others to know about is open to question.
I think the various high profile organisational defections to BS have been a big part of it too. I only looked at BS for the first time when I saw the story about the Guardian newspaper quitting Twitter.
I took a look, created an account and was posting and following people within seconds, it was just really, really smooth. Again, that was not the case (for me) with Mastadon, where it took a while to figure some of it out, and it all just felt a bit fiddly and complicated.
Much like Lemmy in fact, after leaving Reddit - but again there was enough of a swell of new people shifting as a mass that it felt like it was worth the hassle.
This is the only take based in reality. Nobody (except us) cares about openness, federation or business models. What matters are ease of use and adoption.
Of course that doesn’t mean that the other takes are missing the mark in terms of history possibly repeating itself in the future. But if it does, that just means that (as is to be expected) the people don’t make momentary decisions with a bigger (collective) picture in mind. Design needs to address individual needs first and foremost especially when it comes to social media.
Nobody joins a platform to beat corporate ownership of people’s digital lives. BlueSky manufactured adoption by starting out as an invite-only cool kids club. Having to pick a fediverse instance is an entry barrier. There will always be a lot less money to throw around when you’re trying to create something under the umbrella of freedom and openness. I don’t see how these movements could ever win, even if they provide an arguably better product.
- It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).
Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.
Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.
- There are a lot of people on it, it doesn’t feel empty like I have often found Mastadon.
Mastodon isn’t empty. People just have to follow folks to actually get any content. Now, Bluesky definitely does the onboarding better in that regard, but this almost certainly comes down to people not knowing that they have to follow accounts to get content.
Well possibly - I do follow people Mastadon though, and it still feels quiet to me. I probably need to spend more time finding people to follow.
In order to get a similar experience to Twitter, you need to follow a lot more people on Mastodon than you did on Twitter, because you never get that algorithmic backfill (and, in fairness, because there are fewer people using it).
Bluesky is a platform by and for the most racist liberals.
Let me see the first ten posts in my feed. (I haven’t opened today so let’s see…)
God saying why is radical left an insult?
Space view with a good picture of Pluto.
God talking about centrists and leftists
More space pictures
Someone talking about a free game on stream
Someone talking about how rpg fans love to insist pokemon isn’t rpg
Horror video game protagonist coming across ammo, yeah that isn’t ominous.
Some new video games called Anton
We asked A.I. to generate a peak Seahawks game, these were the results.
And
A picture of the helix nebula.
Yup lots of racism and traits.
Are you familiar with what liberal racism looks like?
Anonymously browsing the feed I rapidly came upon these posts:
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https://bsky.app/profile/lepapillonblue.bsky.social/post/3lcbh7org5c2c - Russophobia and some other brainworms I don’t even want to get into.
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Multiple posts by this guy, one of the many lanyard wearing faces of liberal fascism. In this case, an actual functionary for terrorist groups, including Daesh.
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https://bsky.app/profile/euromaidanpress.bsky.social/post/3lc7vfobvqz2e - more liberals celebrating fascists, this time Azov members.
Bluesky is known in left circles for censoring Palestinian accounts and allowing liberal Zionism.
You’re I guess looking at a feed of everything there is with no anchor to the correct side of politics? Try that with ActivityPub and just ingest the entire ecosystem with no home instance or blocklist and you’ll get lots of this.
But I think you are right that the Bluesky PDS will not refuse to host you for saying things along the lines of “The US should continue to sell all kinds of weapons to Israel”, whereas a lot of Mastodon instances might be expected to kick you off for expressing this stubbornly common opinion.
But I’m not sure it’s quite fair to expect a public service to share exactly the correct Overton window that one has oneself. That sort of enforcement on Bluesky is meant to be at the level of the custom moderation service/labeler, not at the data storage layer, since users more or less are meant to control that themselves.
And if you pick a good labeler it will enforce that only the correct people are allowed in your view.
-
You’ve clearly not been on the platform for any appreciable length of time, if at all.
Try criticizing liberal forms of racism and see how well it goes for you.
Try watching sometime merely being Palestinian and see how it goes for them.
Try looking into who funds and runs the platform.
Seriously all the posters I see and follow are far left and extremely pro-palestinian and are quite quick to criticize liberals, on multiple topics. Maybe you just followed a bunch of the wrong people and decided that was everybody.
Pro-Palestinian or by people who are in Palestine? Because Bluesky has beeen censoring the latter.
I viewed the public trending section and listed some of the racism there in another comment.
I’ve seen plenty of posts by people asserting to be Palestinians.
And what do they say about the people getting banned for fundraising?
Most of the Palestinian posts I see are fundraising posts. Seriously it seems like you’re just out there looking for what you want to complain about. There’s plenty of racism and bigotry on the fediverse if you go looking for it.
Bluesky, as a user feels like Twitter used to be.
Threads is the most enjoyable, I feel.
Mastodon, I don’t get. I’ve been on it awhile but it’s becoming used less and less by me because I don’t see content I’m interested in our want to engage with and I don’t know how to change it.
Essentially, everyone is on bsky now. News organizations FINALLY decided to leave Twitter and are spinning up their bsky accounts.
You need to follow people on mastodon
I assume Mastodon is equally capable of recommending things, but if it’s a common problem that people aren’t patient enough with then it could be fatal. It’s still an open question whether federation as its been used thus far is really there yet. I’m not entirely convinced, I’m glad it’s being tried. I’ll take a stab at it, I’ve worked on P2P distributed key-value storage for years. No huge ambitions though, I don’t really care about this use case. My conception of federation is closer to newsgroups, ideally it’s a global namespace for a topic but the feed is controllable by, effectively, a federated moderator web-of-trust that users can selectively opt into and demote mods as a personal preference. Maybe someone else can do it because I’m so disinterested.
My only problem with it is that it’s boring. Literally Shower Thoughts: The Website (featuring Politics).
Supposedly there are people you can subscribe to to see some actual news and get away from all those boring text posts, but I can’t find them and don’t know where to look. I even used one of those websites that subscribe you to groups of people en-masse to help get you started, but that just made things worse. Now my feed is full of opinions from people I’ve never heard of, know nothing of, and couldn’t care less about.
I’m sorry but I just don’t understand the appeal of this whole Twitter/Twitter clone thing.
“Literally Shower Thoughts: The Website (featuring Politics).”
Wasnt that basically the premise of Twitter anyways?
