why are people frothing over Bluesky? this is just Twitter but owned by a different oligarch
Yeah, why would I use BlueSky when I could just use my favorite platform named Threads?
Tap for spoiler
Just kidding
No clue. Never found those platforms to be useful, just toxic.
Same here… even when Twitter was not even in the sights of fElon I found it to be super toxic. I signed up because “it was the best way to get the news” and left in about 4 days
Because it isn’t just Twitter. Nobody can buy the network, the same way nobody can buy email.
- Anyone can host a server.
- Anyone can make an app.
- Anyone can make an algorithm.
- Anyone can make a moderation service. Users can freely pick a server, app, algorithm, and moderation service.
They have an addiction to that kind of socials.
Because they learned nothing
Good with some competition. We need much more in that area.
Bluesky is like Twitter but with about 1/10th the idiots, and no mechanism that the idiots can elevate their racist, moronic hot takes above other comments.
Bluesky will follow the same enshittification trajectory Twitter did, it is just the beginning of the rollercoaster where the coaster is slowly brought up to the top to be launched… and everyone is exclaiming “wow I haven’t even thrown up yet!” as if that was any indicator of how much they were about to throw up…
Maybe it will, but for the time being it hasn’t. The experience is so vastly better than Twitter, that it’s a no brainer to jump over. It also helps to have a decent competing platform that people like to suck users and influence away from the platform that Musk turned into a cesspit.
I don’t think it will go down the same path as Twitter, since Bluesky is open source and available on Github other devs will have the possibility to improve it or create a better version of it but with the more users joining it might necessary to monetize it to better cover the costs. I would love to see everyone switching to the Fediverse but it’s not very intuitive for the average end user with the instances and the fact that you need to target a user and an instance to follow it
To anyone bemoaning BlueSky’s lack of federation, check out Free Our Feeds.
It’s a campaign to create a public interest foundation independent from the Bluesky team (although the Bluesky team has said they support them) that will build independent infrastructure, like a secondary “relay” as an alternative to Bluesky’s that can still communicate across the same protocol (The “AT Protocol”) while also doing developer grants for the development of further social applications built on open protocols like the AT Protocol or ActivityPub.
They have the support of an existing 501c(3), and their open letter has been signed by people you might find interesting, such as Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia).
Ah yes, “free our feeds” where millionaire VCs are asking for donations
This is such a half-assed dog and pony show.
They have millions in investment, why do they need someone else to fund this? Why don’t the bluesky team directly and materially support them?
This is a core aspect of Bluesky’s marketing and they asking other volunteers to help make them rich.
Until there’s overt advertising its unlikely to enshittify the normal way. That doesn’t mean it won’t, just that a different capital process is at work. Wikipedia has outlived most of “web2.0” because its funded by donations and run by volunteers.
Until there’s overt advertising its unlikely to enshittify the normal way.
Trust me we will be deep into that territory so fast it is going to make your head spin.
Wikipedia has outlived most of “web2.0” because its funded by donations and run by volunteers.
Private equity and VC funding can’t directly buy Wikipedia and dissect it because it is an at least somewhat functional non-profit organization. That is the only reason.
What would a comparable example be?
Twitter
deleted by creator
Twitter was ad driven and was enshittifying before musk bought it, and sold because they were a public company.
Jay Graber will likely get bored and sell it off or monetize eventually but twitter is definitely not the model here.
The only thing the Fediverse is missing is way to migrate from 1 instance to another
It actually does exist, at least on Mastodon, but is still very janky (e.g. old posts aren’t moved over due to “technical limitations”)
Automatically makes people unfollow your old account and re-follow your new account, then makes your old instance’s link redirect to your new instance’s one.
I feel like the reason the reason why it’s taking off so much is because it’s not federated.
It’s like people hear the term federation and they get afraid. I know it’s not that simple but still.
In other words, people don’t know what they actually need.
I don’t think 99% of people who have joined bluesky have any clue what federation is or means. They do know what “not twitter” is however.
I don’t personally think it’s because of that. Sure, federation as a concept outside of email has a bit of a messaging problem for explaining it to newbies, but… everyone uses email, and knows how that works. This is identical, just with it being posts instead of emails. Users aren’t averse to federation, in concept or practice.
Bluesky was directly created as a very close clone of Twitter’s UI, co-governed and subsequently pushed by the founder of Twitter himself, who will obviously have more reach than randoms promoting something like Mastodon, and, in my opinion, kind of just had better branding.
“Bluesky” feels like a breath of fresh air, while “Mastodon” just sounds like… well, a Mastodon, whatever that makes the average person think of at first.
So when you compare Bluesky, with a familiar UI, nice name, and consistent branding, not to mention algorithms, which Mastodon lacks, all funded by large sums of money, to Mastodon, with unfamiliar branding, minimal funding, and substantially less reach from promoters, which one will win out, regardless of the technology involved?
Its also, honestly, just really hard to find people on Mastodon.
Exactly, it’s just packaged in a way that consumers are more familiar with with the backing of major celebs
People are not afraid of the term “Federation.“ They literally have no clue what it is.
It’s the instance concept I find consistently to be an issue. It’s an extra layer/barrier to entry. You don’t just create an account. You have to understand what an instance is and then determine which one you’re joining and what that means for your moment to moment usage of the platform.
Yeah I was confused on if it was connected, if I was explaining it to myself id say that the fediverse has interconnected forums that all serve the same content and can be accessed by making accounts on different websites or apps.
Lemmy, mbin, piefed, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected forum/threads side of the fediverse.
Mastodon, sharkey, plaroma, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected microblogging slide of the fediverse.
They all have different features, like mbin has account reputation, piefed has topics which let you sub to multiple related communities at once, etc., but the content is shared between those that serve the same type of content.
Since they’re all built ontop of the same protocol ppl can always come in and build on top of it or make hybrids while still letting everyone access the same content. Like mbin having both microblogging (tweets) and threads, letting you post and view both from the same account/website.
And it legit takes 5 minutes to sign up for 5 instances and see the differences, mine showed the same content for the most part, only lemmy.world was missing the piracy community, other than that it was all the same and any nervousness I had about it went away after seeing the feeds being the same.
Yeah but people don’t want to set up 5 accounts to understand alt-reddit. They want to download a clean app that takes seconds to set up and just go. Friction is friction.
Not everyone likes to tinker and poke and prod
Not only do I don’t mind multiple instances, I welcome it. It’s a feature for me, not a bug. But having to create multiple accounts is a no-no and what keeps people away. People say you only need one but that’s not true if you want to be active in multiple instances.
If the fediverse had a way to unify account creation, that would be a game changer. It’s pretty much what’s holding the fediverse down, be it Lemmy, Pixelfed, PeerTube, etc. It’s frustrating because without that limitation I could see the corpos being given a run for their money.
I think maybe I mis-conveyed my point. I love the way this is all structured. The problem is that it is not accessible to laymen at first glance. I tried the “it’s like email” approach and people’s eyes still just glaze over. They want to download an app, create their account, and jump into the action. Anything beyond that requires a lot of buy-in unless they are already somewhat technically inclined.
As I said in another comment, I find the simplest thing to do is just set up the account for them, pick out an instance for them and tell them what it is, and then once they’ve stuck it out and get their bearings then open the door a little wider and explain Federation, the nature of different instances, etc. My only goal is just to get them on at all.
they should understand by the 2nd one, I just wasnt sure where I wanted to commit, it became fun by the 2nd one to pick an instance like a club
there really isnt much friction either if you dont cate about piracy otherwise id have stayed on lemmyworld when vyjr reccomended it, they really just need to try it, I complained until I tried it
But even then you have to explain the whole subscribed vs local vs all situation. Then defederation, so they know that there is stuff they can’t access without creating another account on another instance.
No matter how much we simplify it it’s simply not that simple. At least not compared to traditional social media. And we can sit here and call them lazy for not learning how it works or we can do more to try to meet people where they’re at.
What I’ve been doing lately is pointing people a good app like Voyager, tell them not even to think about an instance and just join the one I tell them to join (For instance I tell my queer friends to join blahaj), then as they poke around I started explain explaining more things.
It’s kind of like Linux. People obsess over their first distro and then they realize it’s really easy to swap distro’s. So usually I just tell people to get something very simple like mint or pop and just dive in until they learn what they actually want.
Is this 30 million accounts created? Active user numbers would be a lot more meaningful.
As an illustration, if you have a platform that’s gaining 100,000 users each month and losing 100,000 other users each month, it’s basically going nowhere. But it will eventually reach this “30 million users” milestone too if all it means is account creations.
I wonder how many of the 30 million accounts are bots.
Active user numbers is probably less than 1 million, but still, 30 million accounts created is quite likely pretty good.
It’s something, but there’s really no frame of reference to know if it’s good or how good. Because companies rarely talk about this number. Twitter might have billions of accounts created if we look at all time.
Actives are what count.
As a former mastodon believer, Bluesky is so much better. I’m sorry but the kind of content I wanted on mastodon was never there. Bluesky feels good. Things change, for sure. For now though? This is the best we have for a replacement for Twitter.
I never actually used Twitter, but recently made accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed.
Pixelfed has been my favorite of the three so far… I’m finding that the image-based focus means my feed is mostly fun stuff, that leaves me feeling happy, not gloom and doom of news, snark, etc.
I’m not sure how long I’ll use Mastodon, but I’ve been finding hashtags and users that I’m interested in following and interacting with, and the keyword filters have allowed me to limit (but not eliminate) the depressing stuff.
Bluesky pissed me the fuck off since I couldn’t find a way to follow hashtags, only users, and the Lists thing was just not what I wanted either. Bluesky’s filter is disappointing compares to Mastodon’s too, since Mastodon allows you to hide filtered words behind a content warning or hide them completely, while Bluesky seems to only hide them completely.
Bluesky has the network effect, at least for some domains of content. Mastodon has about 50% coverage of my domain of interests, but that’s probably way less for many people.
Mastodon has the guaranteed lack of enshittification via decentralisation. Bluesky is promising it, but it seems far from guaranteed, and if it doesn’t happen, I’m betting it’ll enshittify about 4 times faster than twitter, because everything does these days…
So Bluesky is probably a better bet in the short term for general users… I’m glad people are escaping twitter at least. But I’m sticking with Mastodon, 'cause fuck going through all that again in a couple of years.
I dont like either, but then again I couldn’t get into twitter. The microblogging is not for me. I made accounts on mastodon, bluesky, pixelfed et al just to improve the numbers
I tried to figure out Mastodon a few months ago. I’m with you.
Someone asked me to follow them on Mastodon. I couldn’t find them in the app. He sent me the direct link and it opened up a browser on my phone, refusing to recognize the app.
I finally added them directly from a browser by by remembering which server I was in, log into that, visiting their link again, adding them from my logged in server, and then it finally appeared in the app.
And if I’m dealing with thet level of monkeying around, how many others are? How the hell are we supposed to contribute and add content and find social circles when we’re fighting with the UI?
Lemmy seems to have figured out how to not make a sucky experience with multiple servers.
On Mastodon I have no trouble interacting with other users there. I have 2 accounts running on different instances - one global and one local. No trouble at all finding an account on either of them.
Yep, if even tech-savvy folks struggle with following people via links, the average user is going to feel totally lost. It’s these minor UX issues that keep holding federated platforms back.
I find Lemmy to be a better reddit alternative than Mastodon is a twitter alternative.
The lack of an infinitely scrollable algorithmic feed in Mastodon is definitely better societally, but let’s be real, the algorithmic feed is just way more fun to scroll in blue sky.
I think I might use both
6 more months before it monetizes…
Then a rapid decent into profit maximisation at the expense of user experience.
Man does not learn
Activitypub or gtfo
I tried Mastodon two times in the past. I love the idea of federation and really want it to work. There’s just too much friction though.
First you have to choose an instance. If there isn’t a sensible default preselected when you download an app you already lost almost all non-technical people.
But I’m a technical, motivated individual, so I managed. Next I wanted to follow some creators I know. I couldn’t just look them up, I had to find them on twitter or other places and manually copy their name@instance or whatever into mastodon.
Cool. Now I can press follow and it’ll follow, right? Wrong. I press follow and nothing happens. I find out It’s pending? I’m guessing both instances have to accept federation between them?
Let’s follow some more creators I know. What do you mean I can’t follow someone because their instance is straight up blocked by my instance because their instance mods think everything anime-related is for pedos? So I can’t follow creators from both instances because they don’t like each other? So I need to find an instance which isn’t blocked by anyone, doesn’t block anyone? Or host my own one person instance and hope other instances accept my federation?
At this point you already lost 99.9% of people. I want mastodon to work, but it straight up sucks.
Time for the fediverse to reflect on this lamentable failure to capture the zeitgeist. The future could have been glorious. Instead we have infighting, defederation, owner class privilege with their delegates (moderators) as the first class citizen. And of course, hiding the structures of power has already begun in the name of harmony, so no, you can’t have frictionless account migration. Don’t step out of line if you don’t want to lose your fediverse relationships and history…
Time for the fediverse to reflect on this lamentable failure to capture the zeitgeist
We haven’t failed, the wise ones among us understand companies like bluesky grow cancerously, and that cancerous growth is neither desirable nor emulatable (especially in pace) in a healthy system.
10s of millions if twitter refugees and how many came here?
It could very well be another decade before these people are sold out again.
I agree that defederation is vastly overused, and simple account migration should be a priority.
What… are you talking about?
I’ve come to realize that bluesky already had all lot of what I’m happy to not see on masto. Good that there is a place for it to exist without me.
That content is also probably what the majority of people like about it.
I never had a twitter account, not because of political beliefs but because the core of that social network is bullshit and the internet should be better than that.
It’s literally just Shower Thoughts: The Website.
I really don’t understand the appeal.
I only use bluesky to follow a couple of ukraine war news accounts. It’s very good for that purpose. I don’t interact at all or read comments, twitter was always an absolute cesspool and I assume bkuesky is as well, or will be if it ever replaces twitter
It is a decent format for businesses, organizations, musicians/comedians/touring acts etc. to announce events and goings on to the general public. For discourse, it’s complete garbagepuke.
Which of those are not “advertising” of one sort or another? Twitter was a dumb idea to start and I still just don’t see any appeal.
FB had my friends (now is a stupid cesspool of echo chamber idiocy.
Insta was photo-based FB Lite.
Fark>Slashdot>Digg>Reddit>Lemmy was/is about community and sharing of ideas and thoughts. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses, but the anonymity gave everyone an equal opportunity to participate.
The early days of Twitter seemed to be 10,000 people yelling in a room and nobody listening. Then celebrities took over and companies followed. Enshittifying it early on in the process.
At some point I’m not averse to advertising. I’m fine with Burger King having signs on their buildings.
My water bill comes with a one page flyer from the town every month which announces things like planned road construction, the obligatory “as we enter [whatever] season, remember that it probably presents a fire hazard somehow” from the fire department (seriously I’m surprised they didn’t warn against knocking candles over during Valentine’s Day fucking) and a list of events that the town library, community college and other such organizations are putting on open to the public.
I see a place or even a need for a similar platform that operates at a national or global scale.
I’m reminded of the Bloody Board, which if I understand the story correctly was a Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan site whose owner was kind of misusing a forum engine as an announcement board, so if you didn’t know that bit of context it looked like someone going completely insane. A writer for Cracked.com didn’t know that bit of context, and wrote an article about how someone was apparently going completely insane, and Cracked’s audience took that at face value and basically broke it. Having a Twitter account, or a Mastodon account, that does the same thing, posting about a TV show (quotes, memorable scenes, interviews with cast and crew, appearances at conventions and stuff, fan meet and greets etc) would seem perfectly normal.
The thing I’m envisioning might be closer to an RSS feed except it’s a platform.
Something similar is going to happen with lemmy if reddit keeps caving in to Elon
Na, we are a reduct… it’s a miracle we are on indexed web*
*/j
What annoys me is that people are buying the idea that BlueSky is federated.
Not only is it not federated, the very architecture they designed means that it’s probably not federateable, at least not by normal users.
The way they designed it, a relay is required to collect and forward every single BlueSky post. That means, as the service grows, it becomes more and more impossible for anybody but a company to run a relay. Someone did some calculations back in November when it was a significantly smaller network, and they calculated that at a minimum it costs a few hundred dollars, possibly as much as 1000 bucks a month just to handle the disk storage needs for a relay on a leased server. The more the network grows, the more those costs skyrocket.
What good does it do to have a network that theoretically can be federated, but practically costs so much to run a single node that nobody except a for-profit company can manage it?
And that’s the kicker. Bluesky can never be meaningfully decentralized.
I’m not familiar with Blue sky, do they advertise as federated or how exactly do they claim to differ from a regular platform like original Twitter?
https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-architecture
And reading an article from TechCrunch,
“The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.”
“Is Bluesky decentralized? Yes. Bluesky’s team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol, which Bluesky was built atop.”
“However, the launch of federation will make it work more similarly to Mastodon in that users can pick and choose which servers to join and move their accounts around at will.”
So it definitely is pitching that is it decentralized and federated. Maybe the argument is that it “will be”, but at the moment it is not and at the moment it does not look like it will be an actual possibility.
Now people leaving Twitter is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s possibly just kicking the can down the road. In a few years we’ll likely have articles complaining about missing “Old Bluesky” and how “new Bluesky” has the exact same problems that “Old Twitter” had.
Maybe the argument is that it “will be”, but at the moment it is not
Hey, I have a couch you should buy, it isn’t comfy right now but me a random human promises you on my word that after you buy it one day I will come back and fix it up so it is the comfiest couch ever!
Also maybe like somebody could make a non-profit to add features to the couch my business sold customers on with marketing hype!
Weird, I had a bluesky add-on on my experimental friendica installation and have not noticed any messages other than the ones people I followed participated in.
I have since deleted it, so cannot figure out what they have done differently.
Sounds like the protocol equivalent of regulatory capture.
I guess it could allow multiple funding models. Instance A is ad supported, instance B is a paid service. Not exciting for us self hosters, but there is possibility there.
Im one of them
another trash platform its just matter of a time, use mastodon and fediverse to don’t migrate again in few years
Mastodon and the fediverse are nerd shit with massive usability issues. Even I gave up on Mastodon and I would consider myself far more willing to put up with shit than the average user will ever be. The mass will - never - migrate to the fediverse and in many ways, especially looking at moderation issues, that is probably a good thing.
The masses will either eventually migrate to ActivityPub, or have their entire digital lives consumed by oligarchs. It’s just a fight between finally deciding that maybe ease-of-use doesn’t mean “good,” and losing every ounce of your identity and ability to express your thoughts and feelings.
I love Mastodon. It’s easily my favorite & most-used social media platform right now.
But I’m also a huge damn nerd.
I honestly can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone that isn’t also a huge damn nerd, because they just won’t find stuff they want.
“You want sports? We don’t have much of that, but check out the Proxmox server in this guy’s basement!”
@RxBrad @mostlikelyaperson yeah, feel the same…
Well when I first start using facebook it was the same, the normies follow after if the platform is worth it🤣 I love Mastodon as well… I also have a Proxmox server in my basement.
It’s sad but I agree. Lemmy works well, especially if you use third-party apps such as Voyager, but Mastodon… is so badly thought. I can navigate it because I’m a technical person, but normal people will never be able to understand how to use it, what are instances, why it asks me to type my instance when I want to follow someone, etc.
It’s interesting what a bubble lemmy users are in. There is a reason it is not taking off and did not replace reddit for many people that tried it. It’s way too daunting and confusing for the average user, same with mastodon.
Good, I don’t need the mass. Social media is cancer anyways.
And how many users does Mastodon have?
Roughly 10 million.
I would consider 1/3 a notable contender. Granted, only ~1 million of those users are active daily, but that’s still very significant for a FOSS alternative.
EDIT: Source
About a million active users each month
Edit: Damn, 10 million users, 1 million active daily, see other comment. My source was this, the one from the other comment is certainly more trustworthy https://adamconnell.me/social-media-platforms/#%3A~%3Atext=larger+social+network.-%2CStats%3A%2Cat+the+end+of+2022
which is less than bsky, but more than lemmy.
I think a lot of people get sucked into the idea that more is better. But that isn’t necessarily the case. I don’t think any of us really want to talk to a million different people anyway. We just want to talk to a suitable subset.
But with less people, the chance of you finding the subsets that interests you or fit your interests better is much lower, and that’s one of the main issue.
This is the saddest, most insular cope I’ve read all day.
Federation is too confusing for the average bear. the success of bsky is the best thing for getting people off twitter
It is the path of least resistance because it just goes in circles
Does it have anything to do with crypto and decentralisation? I heard it did but it doesn’t seem like it does at all. Disappointing
