6 ms·

Unnecessary, pointless, expensive features are precisely how you define the inverse of the original Twitter vision. Bare minimum but fast message passing as a

by elif 3y ago

Unnecessary, pointless, expensive features are precisely how you define the inverse of the original Twitter vision. Bare minimum but fast message passing as a social communication layer. If all of these new platforms are trying to become a better or more bloated version of what Twitter has become, then they will never catch on like the viral tool that Twitter originally was. None of them learned the lesson of google wave, it seems. (i.e. look at these really cool features and extensions, this is what you want right?)

belugacat 3y ago
Engineers and designers and PMs are so smart and experienced and so eager to show each other how good at their job they are. Thorough, complex, expansive feature sets are where those skillsets can shine; no glory in building something simple, to the point, and limited in scope. Most products suck because people just cannot help themselves. It takes insane focus and control to override those tendencies when hundreds or thousands of people are working on a product (miss you Steve).
- netheril96 3y ago
  > limited in scope. These three words evoke PTSD in me as hearing it means promotion is no-go again.
dkh 3y ago
Actually, bluesky has supported custom domains since the very beginning (the Namecheap deal is the part of this story that is actually new/noteworthy) and it is very widely-used. I am unsure what % of active users are using their own domain, but it is not insignificant. The domain feature hasn't blocked dev on more important things. In fact this deal is (according to bluesky) their first attempt at something to generate some revenue, with the goal being to never have to use advertising, something that the users would in fact be grateful for and consider to be important.
- anderspitman 3y ago
  See here: https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial
- mcv 3y ago
  Yeah, using your own domain name is an interesting solution to the nomadic identity problem. I still want to look at how Mike Macgirvin from Hubzilla/Zot is handling it, because he seems to be obsessed with solving this particular issue. I was still naively thinking in terms of redirects from your old instance to your new one, but that's not going to help you if your old instance vanishes in thin air.
devjab 3y ago
Identity management is the biggest issue with social media. I'm on mastodon, but my "identity" is tied directly to the server instance that I'm on. If something happens to that server instance then I'm basically losing my "identity". If my "identity" was tied to a domain I owned then keeping it would be as simple as changing a few DNS settings. I don't know enough about Bluesky to say if it's actually going to be an interesting decentralized platform, or if it's another social media run by a tech billionaire, but having domain names be the basis for your "identity" seems like the biggest revolution in that space. I think that we absolutely need more of this as this gives the users ownership over their identity. Right now, if the New York Times wants to get verified on social media they rely on the platform to do so. With this it would be their own choice.
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago
  For the record, no registries or TLD holders allow you to own the domain. You are always leasing it, and if the registry decide to jack the price, remove your domain or give it to someone else they can (usually with some level of self-imposed rules). The ruls vary between gTLDs and ccTLDs, but believing you "own" a domain can be a dangerous assumption.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Except of course when for whaetever reason you won't be able to pay your DNS provider for some time, and you'll lose your identity to someone else. DNS is really not a good platform to build personal identity on.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Conversely it is a good - or at least adequate - platform for businesses to build their identity on. But I don't know if this is being imagined as "how businesses will communicate on our platform" or it is being treated as "regular users will totally manage their own DNS".
  - anderspitman 3y ago
    While there's some truth to this, it's more of an incidental problem with DNS than an intrinsic one. There's nothing preventing registrars from simplifying their UX to target average customers, including multi-year registrations and ample warning systems.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I wouldn't say it's unnecessary. Owning your identity is the worst problem in modern social networking. You have one identity. You. The idea you need to keep registering, providing emails, phones to everyone, picking usernames (often different) which can be impersonated, in order to create account which then can be banned at whim by private company moderators and so on... this is not the way. I don't know if domains are the way either, but at least they're a name reservation system that's established and works. At the current price of a domain, it comes down to $1 a month, which is a great value if you can use it to identify yourself with, authenticate, authorize and own your own digital identity. It can also be cheaper, because if this is a mass service for every person out there, scale will reduce some of the cost.
- dingaling 3y ago
  > The idea you need to keep registering, providing emails, phones to everyone, picking usernames ... The great advantage of this workflow is that it minimises damage in event of service shutdown or malicious actors. By maintaining discrete identities for each service you are compartmentalising and building resilience. It also provides a first layer of privacy, since it becomes more difficult for a malicious actor to correlate identities across services.
manojlds 3y ago
You can set your domain as your username on Bluesky / ATP. Probably you didn't have that context? Lot of feedback originally was common people won't bother to buy domain and integrate with BlueSky, so this is great that they are doing this.

by elif 3y ago

belugacat 3y ago

Engineers and designers and PMs are so smart and experienced and so eager to show each other how good at their job they are. Thorough, complex, expansive feature sets are where those skillsets can shine; no glory in building something simple, to the point, and limited in scope. Most products suck because people just cannot help themselves. It takes insane focus and control to override those tendencies when hundreds or thousands of people are working on a product (miss you Steve).

netheril96 3y ago
> limited in scope. These three words evoke PTSD in me as hearing it means promotion is no-go again.

dkh 3y ago

Actually, bluesky has supported custom domains since the very beginning (the Namecheap deal is the part of this story that is actually new/noteworthy) and it is very widely-used. I am unsure what % of active users are using their own domain, but it is not insignificant. The domain feature hasn't blocked dev on more important things. In fact this deal is (according to bluesky) their first attempt at something to generate some revenue, with the goal being to never have to use advertising, something that the users would in fact be grateful for and consider to be important.

anderspitman 3y ago
See here: https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial
mcv 3y ago
Yeah, using your own domain name is an interesting solution to the nomadic identity problem. I still want to look at how Mike Macgirvin from Hubzilla/Zot is handling it, because he seems to be obsessed with solving this particular issue. I was still naively thinking in terms of redirects from your old instance to your new one, but that's not going to help you if your old instance vanishes in thin air.

devjab 3y ago

Identity management is the biggest issue with social media. I'm on mastodon, but my "identity" is tied directly to the server instance that I'm on. If something happens to that server instance then I'm basically losing my "identity". If my "identity" was tied to a domain I owned then keeping it would be as simple as changing a few DNS settings. I don't know enough about Bluesky to say if it's actually going to be an interesting decentralized platform, or if it's another social media run by a tech billionaire, but having domain names be the basis for your "identity" seems like the biggest revolution in that space. I think that we absolutely need more of this as this gives the users ownership over their identity. Right now, if the New York Times wants to get verified on social media they rely on the platform to do so. With this it would be their own choice.

TheHappyOddish 3y ago
For the record, no registries or TLD holders allow you to own the domain. You are always leasing it, and if the registry decide to jack the price, remove your domain or give it to someone else they can (usually with some level of self-imposed rules). The ruls vary between gTLDs and ccTLDs, but believing you "own" a domain can be a dangerous assumption.
tsimionescu 3y ago
Except of course when for whaetever reason you won't be able to pay your DNS provider for some time, and you'll lose your identity to someone else. DNS is really not a good platform to build personal identity on.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Conversely it is a good - or at least adequate - platform for businesses to build their identity on. But I don't know if this is being imagined as "how businesses will communicate on our platform" or it is being treated as "regular users will totally manage their own DNS".
- anderspitman 3y ago
  While there's some truth to this, it's more of an incidental problem with DNS than an intrinsic one. There's nothing preventing registrars from simplifying their UX to target average customers, including multi-year registrations and ample warning systems.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

I wouldn't say it's unnecessary. Owning your identity is the worst problem in modern social networking. You have one identity. You. The idea you need to keep registering, providing emails, phones to everyone, picking usernames (often different) which can be impersonated, in order to create account which then can be banned at whim by private company moderators and so on... this is not the way. I don't know if domains are the way either, but at least they're a name reservation system that's established and works. At the current price of a domain, it comes down to $1 a month, which is a great value if you can use it to identify yourself with, authenticate, authorize and own your own digital identity. It can also be cheaper, because if this is a mass service for every person out there, scale will reduce some of the cost.

dingaling 3y ago
> The idea you need to keep registering, providing emails, phones to everyone, picking usernames ... The great advantage of this workflow is that it minimises damage in event of service shutdown or malicious actors. By maintaining discrete identities for each service you are compartmentalising and building resilience. It also provides a first layer of privacy, since it becomes more difficult for a malicious actor to correlate identities across services.

manojlds 3y ago

You can set your domain as your username on Bluesky / ATP. Probably you didn't have that context? Lot of feedback originally was common people won't bother to buy domain and integrate with BlueSky, so this is great that they are doing this.