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bsky is currently the only social network with a woman of colour ceo, which is pretty awesome imo (i hate how people always try to incorrectly say jack dorsey created it when it erases jay’s work)
Great point. And Jay won the power struggle with Jack, which almost nobody gives her credit for.
I love that a Twitter founder founded Bluesky and the logo went from the outline of a white bird on a blue background to the outline of a white butterfly on a similar shade of blue background.
jack didn’t found bluesky he was just on a board which provided some early funding; he had no role in the development.
and the butterfly was partially due to the community. https://bsky.social/about/blog/12-21-2023-butterfly
I’d say mastodon is a better choice, mostly so that you’re not beholden to yet another profit-focused tech corporation. I’m sure Bluesky is fine right now, but once they have their userbase they will shift to monetization - and you may regret letting yourself become entrenched in the world they control. They’re not doing it for your benefit.
That said, I’ve come to understand that a lot of people kind of like having their content feed controlled by others. When they only see what they ask for, they get bored. So I’m expecting Bluesky to always be bigger than Mastodon.
mastodon blew it by attacking people who had legitimate concerns about the service during the first migration.
Yep. And also, like I said in https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/
For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn’t have good experiences … so didn’t stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn’t addressed the reasons why.
Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities … So today, BTS ARMY and millions of Brazilians, and everybody else looking for a Twitter alternative are more likely to have a good experience on Bluesky than Mastodon.
Mastodon isn’t a person. So I don’t know who you are talking about when you say ‘mastodon was attacking people’. I certainly didn’t see anything like that. Perhaps you have an example link for context?
It’s all cyclical anyway. No social media company will reign forever. We’ve already seen a number of them rise and fall. It’s kinda like how different civilizations gained and lost dominance throughout history.
Toys-R-Us fell…nothing is forever.
Go to your favorite content creators and ask them to create a profile on Bluesky. If you don’t ask them, how are they supposed to know?
I’m still on the fence about that…I think it’d make more sense for many to drop social media and opt for their own site with RSS feeds. A lot of social media for some is little more than a noisier RSS reader. Sometimes even literally with those with auto-playing videos. 😬
Y’all are delulu/out of touch with normal people if you think they’re gonna set up an RSS feed
Nah, I get that normal people wouldn’t, but I can dream. It’s so much better than making Yet Another Account. Plus I know in set up we’re talkin’ people pulling the feed into a reader, but also for content creators making sites, loads of sitebuilding software already has RSS baked in, so it’s not even that big an ask from them.
If there’s another more convenient no-sign-up method of keeping up with sites and stuff online, I’d love to know, 'cause I know many aren’t about to use RSS.
But how would the bots reply? That’s what generates foot traffic, which is what brings ads, which is what is not enough to pay for the bills!
Perfect business model, I had a VC review it and got high marks
RSS is kinda a pain to set up though, not everyone wants to go through that.
It can be, yeah. However, similar may be said of responsible social media setup.
Once again, Lemmy vastly overestimates how much hassle people will put up with as far as technology is concerned.
I run a few bots on Bluesky and absently check it occasionally on a personal account. Anecdotally I can say that I’m seeing a lot more engagement even just over the last week.
That’s the same Bluesky that Dorsey abandoned.
dorsey left because he wanted to moderation and for it to be the wild west like twitter though…
I wonder why though
I’m on Bluesky. I have seen a drama increase in followers in the last few days since Twitter let blocked people see content that were blocked from.
It’s a big blow to Twitter that people are finding someplace, anyplace , else to go.
I had to decide if I was going to Mastodon or Bluesky. I picked Bluesky because after reading Mastodon’s integration problems with itself I wanted nothing to do with it. It couldn’t scale unless each instance played nice and in the years since it went live they had refused to do that and showed no signs of even moving in that direction.
Mastodon is scaling fine though? I’ve been using it for years, and it’s great, and still growing. User base is a bit tech focused, could be more general, but I think it’ll get there eventually.
Are instances federated or rag-tag islands?
islands can be good (for unpopular/generally hated content)
I have seen a drama increase in followers
If there’s one thing a social media site loves, its a drama increase.
It’s a big blow to Twitter that people are finding someplace, anyplace , else to go.
Honestly, more than anything, it feels like an indictment of Threads. That was supposed to be the big party spot for creatives, journalists, and D-list celebrities following the burn out of Twitter. But modern Threads just feels like the worst kind of Hype-House crossbred with LinkedIn.
BlueSky feels a lot more like a vintage '00s social media site, which is all people really wanted. Hope it survives its own popularity better than Twitter did. But for now, life is good.
I’m leaving the drama typo. You made it too good to take away
What are the Mastadon Integration problems?
I’m pretty sure they’re referring to the concept of defederation and how that can splinter the platform.
Bluesky is ““federated”” in largely the same ways as Mastodon, but there’s basically one and only one instance anyone cares about. The federation capability is just lip service to the minority of dorks like us who care.
To the vast majority of Twitter refugees, federation as a concept is not a feature, it’s an irritation.
You could just stay on the biggest mastadon instance and not care about anything. Wouldn’t be too different than just using bluesky.
Preferring handcuffs because it’s more seemless sounds like a terrible mindset
Preferring handcuffs because it’s more seemless
They’re not handcuffs. You can always log off.
But the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.
the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.
The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.
Do we honestly believe there won’t be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on benefiting users?
…or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?
Everything you just said is also true of mastodon.
an irritation
I get it, hearing about federation is the worst part of this site . Y’all sound like coinbros “here’s the most inefficient storage method, lets call it something easy to remember and sell it as a feature!”
Partly. Except the time different Mastodon instances were not federated much or at all. If you wanted to go follow someone on Mastodon you had to know the exact server they were on. In an environment like Reddit and Lemmy where you’re there for the communities instead of the people that isn’t an issue. But if you want to go follow some specific podcaster you need to know the instance because there’s no guarantee that whatever instance you happen upon is going to be joined up with the one there on.
Everyone was busy running their own servers and not trying to tie everything together. It was a thing that could be done but a thing not enough were doing.
That sounds worse than I thought it was. I just assumed Mastodon was like Lemmy, where every instance federates with every other instance basically by default and there’s only some high-profile defed exceptions.
A Fediverse where federations are opt-in instead of opt-out sounds like actual hell. Yeah, more control to instances, hooray, but far less seamless usability for people. The only people you will attract with that model are the ones who think having upwards of seven alts for being in seven different communities isn’t remotely strange or cumbersome. That, and/or self-hosting your own individual instances. Neither of these describe the behavior of the vast majority of Internet users who want to sign up on a platform that just works with one account that can see and interact with everything.
I just assumed Mastodon was like Lemmy, where every instance federates with every other instance basically by default and there’s only some high-profile defed exceptions.
That’s…Not how Lemmy works either. In fact, and someone may correct me if I’m mistaken here, your hell is sort of how it works as I understand it. Instances don’t have any built-in crawlers to seek out others running on ActivityPub with the same software, e.g. Lemmy or Mastodon or the like. That’s genuinely been one of the biggest stumbling blocks with the whole protocol, as discovery is largely a manual affair. The only crawlers we have are the people using the service and following remote people or communities or channels from other instances to let the one we’re on see them.
One of the basic reasons for this that I’ve read is that it’s related to handling scaling, as each instance trying to handle all of the data of all the people on each other instance right away would bog down the servers and probably crash them. It also arguably works out, to a degree, that there’s a good chance not everyone on each instance is of interest to each other anyway, so you may not want or need each server to know about every other server’s people/channels/communities/etc.
But I’m going to stop before I get too much further into the weeds of all this. The irony is that the simplest solution to discovery issues with all of this presently is to invite those you want to have a similar experience to you, or want to connect to with the fewest jumps, to the same instance as you to mitigate any of those issues. Does that tend to undermine many of the benefits of it all? In a lot of ways, yeah, but that’s where many ActivityPub platforms are at currently, at least the more popular ones as I understand them.
My true hell would be instances only federating explicitly through whitelist. If what the other reply I received about Mastodon is correct, and if Lemmy behaves similary, then they operate on an implicit auto-federation with every other instance. Actual transaction of data needs to be triggered by some user on that instance reaching out to the other instance, but there’s no need for the instances involved to whitelist one another first. They just do it. To stop the transfer, they have to explicitly defed, which effectively makes it an opt-out system.
The root comment I initially replied to made it sound, to me, like Mastodon instances choose not to federate with one another. Obviously they aren’t preemptively banning one another, so, I interpreted that to mean Mastodon instances must whitelist one another to connect. But apparently what they actually meant was, “users of Mastodon instances rarely explore outward”? The instances would auto-federate, but in practice, the “crawlers” (the users) aren’t leaving their bubbles often enough to create a critical mass of interconnectedness across the Fediverse?
The fact we have to have this discussion at all is more proof to my original point regardless. Federation is pure faffery to people who just want a platform that has everything in one place.
It sounds like an asocial network - something for me finally, perhaps :)
Is Bluesky federated?
Theoretically, yes. Practically, the way their model is set up, it costs a lot to host a federated server so no one is doing it.
Wait really? I thought cost were relatively low since a lot of people do it themselves
What you see on Bluesky is a lot of people using their own domains for their handles. They are not hosting their own instances though, it’s only their identities. Their connection to the AT protocol still goes through the central Bluesky server.
lot of people using their own domains for their handles. They are not hosting their own instances
This is something the AT Protocol does well. Your identity is portable and can be separate from the instance you use.
In theory, you can move to a different instance but keep your handle the same. There’s no way to do that with ActivityPub. If you move to a new Lemmy or Mastodon server, you have to change your username to one at the instance’s domain.
I remember putting in so much effort into my MySpace page… and then it was replaced by Facebook… and I had to start over. That’s the only reason why people are staying in the shitter…
At the rate we’re going all that will be left on X is EM and his 200 sockpuppets.
Taking a page out of Valves book.
Doing nothing and let the competition drive customers your way.
Not really what Valve did. Valve kept doing cool things that benefit the customer, while the competition actively drove them away.
I don’t follow social media. Is BlueSky feature rich and only getting better?
The biggest thing that valve did that kept them in everyone’s good graces is that steam’s core functionality hasn’t had any major changes in years. Dare I say, more than a decade.
It’s a platform where you buy games, download them, and play them.
In the early days you still had to deal with all the bullshit, including third party launcher installs and crap to get things going, and over time, valve simplified all of that, making it easier than ever to take advantage of the core function of steam: buying, downloading, and playing games.
Literally the only improvement I can absolutely, positively credit them for, is making that entire process, easier, simpler, and quicker, than ever.
Sure, you can chat to people, track achievements, comment on your profile, comment on your friends profiles, buy and sell cosmetics on the market thing, even voice chat and I think they have a way you can stream your game to friends… Not sure on that last one.
It’s like Facebook, FB marketplace, FB messenger, discord, Twitter… And a bunch of other services, all huddled together to make a bastard child with the entire PC video game industry… That’s steam.
But the core mechanic that was always the main reason why steam was great, remains the same.
I think you might be underselling how important things like the steam workshop and steam’s multiplayer support are.
Games like Starbound or Don’t Starve benefit a lot from the workshop.
While insert any party game gains a lot out of steam’s multiplayer support and friend list.
Also, while I don’t use Linux myself, Steam is one of the main reasons why Linux Gaming is a thing.
It’s a lot of art, cats, and big tiddy cartoons. I haven’t found anything too onerous in its UI, the community has a somewhat toxic level of positivity but that’s certainly better than the general toxicity of most of the web these days.
Aw gross tig buddy cartoons yikes.
Can you share those links so I know what sites to avoid?
the community has a somewhat toxic level of positivity
Could you elaborate?
Well if you post something political you’ll get a couple dozen replies telling you to “Leave that stuff at the other place”.
…that sounds amazing. Perhaps I should go investigate Bluesky, heh.
It’s pretty okay. Lots of engagement, also there’s something of a ‘block early and often’ culture that seems to have a way of really reducing the drama and nonsense
Eh, that’s the only way to use the internet at this point anyways. I’m a one-stupid-statement-and-blocked person already and it’s made my life a lot easier.
Don’t do angry replies, just roll my eyes and add them to a blocklist. Much better on the blood pressure.
Its just an opinion piece, I’d take this with a grain of salt
This user is a troll FYI.
Bluesky is decentralized only in its name. And media storage.
This isn’t necessarily true. Just because their architecture is harder and not a simple server host does not strip away its decentralization.
They have decentralized the following:
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App access (can build your own or show openProto posts in your platform
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Algorithms
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Firehouse (backend albeit rumored to be expensive)
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More if you consider the domain name hosting stuff and media storage control. Also moderation is planned to be decentralized.
Relay (backend albeit rumored to be expensive)
Not even rumored, so much as explicitly expected.
The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service. In all likelihood, there may be a few large full-network providers, and then a long tail of partial-network providers.
This doesn’t seem to be that big an issue as PDS’s can just directly communicate with one-another like how ActivityPub works.
They’re supposed to be able to, true, but I’ve not come across any examples of that in action yet. If you know of any I’d be interested in seeing them, as I’ve been trying to keep up with AuthTransfer’s developments.
Isn’t that what Whitewind is doing?
Hmm, if so, it wasn’t clear in the documentation I read. I was of the impression it was still passing posts through the relay to enable others’ discovery & interaction.
Isn’t the only thing that really matters decentralised control?
Open protocols and APIs seem pretty meaningless to me if there’s a single point of control for the brand.
If everyone migrates to bluesky and then bluesky says “of we’re not doing that open thing anymore because of this new embiggened thing we’re doing” everyone will still be on bluesky.
Open protocols and APIs seem pretty meaningless to me if there’s a single point of control for the brand.
You’d need to expand on this more for me to understand you. Yes there’s a single point of control from a moderation standpoint (labeler), as there is on Lemmy instances. But anyone can host their own ATProto relays and the Bluesky relay will federate with each other automatically.
If everyone migrates to bluesky and then bluesky says “of we’re not doing that open thing anymore because of this new embiggened thing we’re doing” everyone will still be on bluesky.
Not necessarily because the accounts are atProto accounts and you can migrate to another platform(albeit another doesn’t exist yet) without data loss. As far as the Bluesky app goes it really just shows you atProto posts and hosts your data (similar to Lemmy instances) they as an entity just also maintain the OSS backend Relay crawler and more.
I really think a lot of people have this perspective that it’s not decentralized just because it truly is a lot more complicated due to there being like 5 different moving pieces of decentralization (PDS, Relay, Appview, tbd labeler, algorithm) and they do a great job at obscuring it for regular users which is a great thing. And nobody has really tinkered around and set-up any sites or integrations with it yet. I’m personally trying to get a two way mastodon integration as it’s possible but nobody has done a solid implementation (just somewhat gnarly bridges between protocols)
Tl;Dr it isn’t decentralized.
If you can build your own or selfhost each of the following to read and push back to all of the atProto protocol:
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App
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Backend Relay
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Moderation
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Algorithm
And you still say that’s not decentralized I’m not sure what you’re looking for nor what your definition of decentralization is.
If I log into BlueSky right now, can I see posts from other instances? This is a legitimate question since the twitter archetype doesn’t appeal to me.
Yes! Actually.
The full atproto up and running with bluesky is only in the last month or so, so people are finally starting to trickle out and set up their own services and hosts.
It’s actually very promising and hopeful.
Instances aren’t necessarily a thing in atProto because an instance usually refers to a single server. But you can see people’s posts from selfhosted PDS/relays yes.
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Oh sure ok. Silly me. I can’t wait to be embraced by the utopia of open standards bluesky is going to inspire.
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Better than the burning garbage inferno that is xitter.
but for how long?
Doesn’t matter, less time on twitter is better, even if bluesky ends up the same way. Something else will be less shit and worth going to then.
I’ve been on Bluesky and Mastodon but I’m seeing people pretty happy with how less toxic it is on Bluesky.
I mean at some point elon will buy bluesky, too
Toxicity drives engagement. Engagement means more ad views.
As long as profits are the motive it’s a flawed design.
How? I’m mostly following mlp-related accounts on mastodon and don’t see any toxicity.
I haven’t seen any toxicity on the server I’m on (https://mastodon.gamedev.place ) either. But I’ve seen people I follow complain about it in the past, and I trust them. Especially considering they left for Bluesky.
I think Mastodon users are more technical and blunt, drawing from the same stereotypes that people have always been (often fairly) thrown at nerdier people. We just need to keep that in mind. And maybe a good ad/explainer, given how many people bounce off the concept of federation and different servers.
Just wait until enough sane people have left Twitter; it’ll then implode and the fascist Nazi shitheads will migrate.
They don’t want an echo chamber- they want to be able to shout their slurs and right-wing bullshit at you while you can’t respond. It’s exactly why places like Voat and that shitty T_D knockoff crashed. Once the ration of right-wingers to non-right-wingers on Twitter hits a critical amount, they’ll start looking for other places to infest.
Just wait
Dude. It’s been 2 years. The people who were going to leave because of Elon already left.
I’m not saying the current twitter userbase 100% fully believe in his views, but I am saying that they’re not leaving the platform over it.
Either they don’t know about bluesky/mastodon, or they don’t care enough to leave.
Uhh, the very existence of this article indicates you’re wrong. Elon removed the block feature and even more users left; how can you say that “the people who were going to leave because of Elon have already left”? Certainly the group who disliked Elon on ideological grounds did, but there are plenty of other users who are leaving because they’re finally deciding the changes Elon is making removes any value they see in remaining on Twitter.
Dude. Isn’t truth worth billions?
I guess you’re mostly right, but the exception is that they need one safe space in which to congratulate each other and wank about NFTs and what not.
You mean Trump’s Twitter clone? Depends on how you define “worth.” The total stock valuation is worth that much, but that’s because stocks are largely bullshit priced based on how buyers feel. Someone keeps buying the stock, so the price reflects that.
If you’re talking about the company itself, it’s not worth dick. They have a six or seven digit revenue compared to eight or nine digit losses- there is absolutely no way the stock price represents the “true” value of the company. Given that Trump owns 60% of the shares it’s absolutely certain that someone is using it as a way to funnel money to Trump outside of campaign finance laws.
Also, they don’t have that many users.
You’re dead right that the company isn’t worth anything in a traditional sense.
However, the existence of truth social directly contradicts your claim that they don’t want an echo chamber.
A daily active user count of under 80,000 is utterly meaningless for a social media site.
The right-wing chuds aren’t flocking to Truth Social because they can’t “own the libs” there. That’s what I mean when I say they don’t want an echo chamber.
At least Blue Sky supports community block lists. You can block every nazi with the click of a button
Yeah bro I wish they would keep to their own echochambers so they can become more and more radicalised and end up causing even more harm in the long run rather than at least having some if minimal exposure to normal fucking people /s
