Ah sorry, bad timing, the handle stopped working a few hours ago, maybe the person has changed it, here is the same link with the handle-agnostic DID in the url: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:by3jhwdqgbtrcc7q4tkkv3cf/post/3l47yhps2xv2c

I haven’t even found anything suggesting one could realistically selfhost it

Check this out, this person self-hosted one for fun

To complete the network, relays are required on ATProto and apparently could be expensive to host, so right now, it appears the only relay is hosted by BlueSky the company. Which makes things slightly centralized.

A number I’ve seen quoted multiple times now is ~$150 per month to host a relay (Source). Which explains why Whitewind, Smokesignal and Frontpage don’t host one, they are mostly still small projects by individual talented devs, but imo if that number is true, it really doesn’t seem too outlandish that someone might go for it.

There is Bridgy Fed, which bridges accounts over to the other side if they follow the respective Bridgy Fed account on their platform. This is opt-ín though, so you can’t just follow anyone, they need to have followed @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. To have your interactions bridged you need to follow @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy.

If the account you want to follow is not bridged and you are okay with just reading their posts, you can also use a service like RSS Parrot as every Bluesky account also serves as an RSS feed.

Such gross weirdo-behavior to call 900k completely normal people looking to socialize online bots, get off your high horse

Nice! I’ve been enjoying the “Quiet Posters” feed, which shows only posts by people I follow that don’t regularly post, so I might miss the rare times that they do! :)

If you want your timeline to be just a chronological timeline, you can also subscribe to that feed and delete all others. Bluesky isn’t Threads, no one is forcing any algorithm on you that you don’t want, this is part of the decentralized nature of Bluesky.

Also, I don’t think there is a clear line between “algorithmic” and “non-algorithmic” social media. If you use Mastodon with the Mammoth app and its “For You” feed, is it algorithmic or non-algorithmic? If I sort my Lemmy timeline by “hot”, do I not use an algorithm?

The algorithms/feeds are easily the best part about Bluesky because they can be custom-made. If you don’t like the feeds provided by Bluesky, you can just make one of your own that displays what you want to see. I use many such feeds.

They give you only so many free articles per month, I had to circumvent a paywall as well

I’m very curious how this will all shake out. I can understand all of you who want to block Threads and the only two instances that I am on myself are going to do exactly that, but it seems tremendously likely that the flagship instance of the fediverse, mastodon.social, will federate and it will have a massive impact on not just the culture, but also on the codebase. For example I wonder what services will go for feature parity and add features like voice notes which Threads added recently. Oh and culture-wise, with POTUS joining Threads, big institutions like the White House will suddenly appear on the fediverse.

Still holding out hope that a bunch of new users and new ideas will rejuvenate the fediverse, in any case 2024 should be a big year for it.

I have big sympathies for FireFish, but I feel like the target audiences so far are very different. Maybe call it the network effect, but it’s difficult for me to imagine a tumblr user who maybe is used to blogging about their SuperWhoLock fandoms moving to FireFish where there probably is no big audience for that. At the same time I would want to see these users and their niches in the Fediverse.

There is a very particular culture that is unique to tumblr which I don’t see moving somewhere else.