Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.
The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).
It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).
This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.
Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.
In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.
There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.
As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).
I just go where the japanese artists go, and they are going to either blue sky or misskey, mostly blue sky since it has a bigger reach, misskey closed account creation for outsiders, and the way mastodon works I bet it’s defederated from a lot of the popular instances like baraag.
Misskey is like mastodon so you can just go to another misskey instance.
But if you’re talking about the misskey.io instance, it’s not that defederated from my experience (the 3 instances I’m on aren’t defederated from it).
The instance simply follows Japanese law so whatever Japan allows they allow and whatever Japan forbids they forbid (which is why censoring genitals is also mandatory in that instance lol). It’s not like it’s some nazi cesspool or anything like that.
Japan is weird as fuck. I just saw a Japanese disc store collaborate with an incest sleep rape game.
I don’t know how to see how much an instance is defederated, I just concluded it must be in the same rate of baraag because both misskey.io and it allows loli art. I know that baraag is on some default block list for administrators for example.
Baraag is way more permissive than misskey.io and it gained a pretty bad reputation in the past because of that, plus it essentially advertises itself as a safe haven for lolicon art and primarily focuses on that, so that’s why it’s on many block lists.
misskey.io is just a generalist Japanese instance (which is why many Japanese artists easily hop on it). It’s also the biggest misskey instance and is run by the main developer, so it’s usually not blocked by default because most people use it.
Defederating from misskey.io would be like defederating from mastodon.social. Some will do it but it’s not the default stance afaik.
Pussy. Ass. Bitch.
How do we know this bluesky isn’t just the same shit run by different assholes?
We know that it is run by the same assholes. Bluesky is VC backed and Twitter was also. There is no way that Bluesky won’t go the same route as every other VC backed social network. Sometime in the future they will start to meddle with your feed to push ads and sell your data to everyone.
This makes me wonder so hard why people don’t switch to Mastodon instead. Like… You have literally seen this before! Why are you doing it again?
I’ve been on the platform for about a year, it’s more community driven than other sites.
we already know bluesky is run by former twitter assholes. but it’s the same with everything. people disappointed in new facebook policies move to band…
there are better alternatives, guaranteed not to turn into a heap of shit because of designed safeguards - but people don’t like those things; they always opt for the devil they already know.
Although it also helps that places like BlueSky have less of a barrier to entry.
Alternatives like Mastodon are a bit more confusing, compared to a centralised site, where everything is linked in through the one interface.
We can’t, but at least there is a chance it is not.
With Xitter, we know for certain.
We don’t. It probably is. Mastodon is the way, but they need to fix a few things themselves.
How do we know mastadon isn’t just owned by Musk too?
It can’t be.
Because it’s federated and FOSS.
Opt out is such a shitty practice. Especially for AI generation
Bluesky is pretty great once you learn how to use it. I plan to slowly back off twitter.
Bluesky is the promise of Mastodon with none of the failsafes of Mastodon.
Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.
Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.
There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides. It is also full of “liberal” sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.
Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.
That type of social media just isn’t really for me. But why would one want to choose Bluesky over Mastadon?
When I did try Twitter I somehow ended up following and be followed by a bunch of folks from Ghana… that was pretty neat. Although I did miss out because my Akan/Pidgin is basically non existent. Although I was introduced to the word “bomboclaat” which was interesting… lol
Because users value usability over privacy.
The major thing that make Mastodon unusable is lack of users. That and lack of algorithmic feeds.
I’m mostly still on Twitter because I follow a lot of Japanese artists and bands. Now plenty of them are jumping out BlueSky so off I go.
That’s how Facebook went for me the last time I tried to use it with a new account… I was immediately swamped with friend requests from people in eastern and central Africa. I accepted some out of curiosity so of course FB decided that’s what I was really into. I’m not sure if these people just send out random requests or why they want to add Americans… I didn’t get hit up for scams or anything, it was just people posting and sharing photos of their lives as normal FB users.
That’s how it was for me too. I was never targeted or anything… although there was some discussion of some ridiculous scams others were supposedly doing. It was just normal conversation for them, for me it was kind of like a riveting soap opera. Too bad I forgot the password/it got bought out by an asshole.
1 reason for me, the algorithm. I can never find a lot of new thing to discover or new people to follow on Mastodon when I first started, which makes me not use it very much even now.
I heard the struggle with recommendations is because it doesn’t track you. One of the suggestions was to use tags to find content based on your interests.
That’s a good point. The original question was why would someone pick blenny Bluesky over mastodon? You just hit the nail on the head.
It’s because the vast majority of users value features and usability much higher than privacy.
Social media like Twitter preys on people’s fear of missing out.
Manufactured Problem - not being up to date on internet bullshit. Marketed solution - be on twitter. Supply and demand died a long time ago. Now it’s all about manufactured problems, and conveniently marketed solutions.
This sort of psychological manipulation in marketing works. It’s why it’s so hard to get people to leave websites like Twitter, reddit, fb ect. They’ve made their brands synonymous with media trends.
It took long enough, but I’m genuinely happy to see folks wising up and realizing they don’t “need” Twitter. It’s like watching a bunch of people break up with a toxic ex all at the same time.
Not just Twitter. FOMO was what kept me on Reddit far longer than I should have been there.
These mfs will use literally anything except for open source, decentralised social meda
Is bluesky not federated?
It is but from what I understand it doesn’t run on ActivityPub. Rather it runs on AT Protocol
The masses yearn for the corporate boot
Do they drift back though. Bigger accounts seems to struggle to kick the Twitter high .
lol
Just like a real girlfriend, but better. Apart from you having absolutely no sex life and apart from the fact that it has absolutely no emotional attachment or attraction to you whatsoever. And it will also never do anything like buy you dinner or a birthday present. Enjoy throwing money at your robot that you can’t even fuck like a fleshlight.
No, they can sync with toys like fleshlights now.
Fair enough, but I wouldn’t call that having a sex life unless you’re really into fucking tubes and aren’t just using it as a vagina substitute.
How does this blocking thing make sense?
Either the profile is public, which means you can still open it on another account, or it’s private, which means no one can see it anyways if they’re not an accepted follower.
I don’t see how anything changes from Musk’s change…
Is 500,000 actually a lot? Honest question, my sense of scale with these things is shaky.
For Twitter? No
For Bsky? Yes
even tho twitter is ruined by him people will still use it
How do you ruin something that was toxic garbage before.
By making it even worse?
Network effect is a hell of a drug
Just helpful to remember, as all this horseshit persists, Bluesky is Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is former head of Twitter and musk’s good buddy.
It’s all a losing proposition, whatever direction you move - except if you move… Away.
im not sure people wont consider mastodon tbh.
They should
i know. but its our responsability to understand why the corporate shitty options are always preferred by the layman public.
Because we are extremely simple and self obsessed animals in the whole. At the intersection of those two things, we regularly conflate base familiarity with earned trust. A bit of a narcissistic drive to tell ourselves that… if WE know about something, it MUST be good, otherwise we wouldn’t have taken the time to first learn about it!
It’s why your town is currently infested with hands-free signs in every public space. It’s also why incumbents have such large advantages in elections and why dead/convicted politicians (or Last-name sharing family members of those politicians) are often elected after the fact.
what
He left in May.
So he’s completely removed from anything to do with that company and isn’t inherently woven into the DNA as it’s very recent founder?
Mike Masnick is also been added to the bluesky board which gives me some faith Bluesky will less of a Elon / Dorsey vibe
He left the board. As a “public benefit organization” it’s still a for-profit company and he still owns stock.
But he’s left seemingly under a cloud, so unless the leadership changes I doubt he’s influencing decision making.
Let’s be honest these social media platforms will be a rinse and repeat. Just enjoy it whilst it lasts. Move on when the ownership go full Elon.
Jack Dorky got literally laughed off the platform.
I dunno. I’d say it’s more important to see what exactly he’s doing and what Bluesky is.
Right now Bluesky is really good. So until it turns bad I’m sticking to it.
I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.
One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.
Neoliberal guano website is better than Nazi guano website
Idiots users just recreating conditions that created their misery in the first place. Freedom doesn’t happen from the grace of some cult leader and their slightly less immediately hostile app
What sets it apart is that on Bluesky you can create your own algorithm. You can also share this algorithm, if you want, so others can subscribe to it. This means you see only what you want to see, and not what some corporate algorithm wants to see to maximise some kind of engagement.
Moreover, Bluesky is also its own federation. There aren’t many who choose to do so, but you can connect to Bluesky using your own domain, which you have complet control over.
Ok, thanks ! Looks like I was wrong then, I see it is open source under MIT license Frankly I assumed it was another tech bro blitzscale project since it was from Rasputin himself There even is a 3rd party client so possibly it won’t be a open source but problematic, like Signal
Wait this whole article just baselessly assumes that 1 new bluesky account = 1 person leaving twitter. That is so obviously unrealistic. Sure some people were probably curious and wanted to check out something new but that doesn’t mean they will immediately switch platforms.
You can’t just make fun of Those Guys for endlessly believing fake bullshit while unquestionably parroting this garbage.
Getting a 100000 new users when Twitter loses roughly the same amount is a pretty significant correlation.
Twitter is for narcissists, and when they say Mastodon is not as good as twitter they really mean that there’s not as many people watching them as on Twitter. So Bluesky gaining 500,000 new accounts could help in making it “better”.
Mastodon is still pretty rough around the edges. Especially for the regular Twitter Instagram crowd.
What’s rough about it? I’ve never been a twitter guy so can’t really compare, but I have a Mastodon account that I pop into periodically, and it works fine.
The headline directly says half a million users left twatter. As far as I can tell that is literally a lie.
