20 ms·

Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login

291 points by redsolver 3y ago

TobyTheDog123 3y ago
Wow! Im amazed at how fast and pretty Bluesky is compared to other web applications, especially Twitter's.
- solardev 3y ago
  Really? It feels so slow... interface took a couple seconds to load, and then the actual posts another 3-4 seconds. This is on gigabit too. Overloaded right now?
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  I was greeted with a spinner..
photonbeam 3y ago
They should have done this long ago, they missed the boat
- deleted 3y ago
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blueridge 3y ago
It's basically Twitter.
- deleted 3y ago
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cfr2023 3y ago
Good precedent, more please.
afavour 3y ago
Too late, IMO. The invite-only system meant that the "leave Twitter" crowd split between Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. IMO none of them have ended up being great replacements.
- dt3ft 3y ago
  Judging by the traffic traces (number of comments on popular posts), I’d have to agree.
- soperj 3y ago
  Does anyone actually use threads? Everyone seemed to go check it out, but I don't know anyone actively using it.
  - addicted 3y ago
    Threads has picked up quite a bit of steam in a lot of communities recently. Not sure how widespread it is but it seems to be doing fairly well.
  - vitorgrs 3y ago
    It has like, 30x more users than Mastodon lol For now, it's the most viable alternative for Twitter - for now. But this is in part because Mastodon UX is very complicated for beginners, and BlueSky is slow as hell to make improvements. It still doesn't support sending videos...
    - Zak 3y ago
      I'm really curious as to what will happen when Threads turns on ActivityPub federation for everyone. At that point, Threads and Mastodon will be the same network, aside from servers that have preemptively blocked Threads.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    There are well over 100m MAU so a lot of people are using it. And it has reached the #1 position in most of the App Stores around the world.
mattl 3y ago
If anyone from Twitter I know is reading this and wants an invite code ask me via Mastodon DM or email.
- andygeorge 3y ago
  bsky-social-awgll-rrqmu bsky-social-wvq77-dxsur bsky-social-jb2xl-7pqzg bsky-social-6hxxo-3ccaw bsky-social-mnbtp-xctsx
  - wg0 3y ago
    All gone :(
    - andygeorge 3y ago
      Seriously? Says they're all still unused in my view in the app. Dang.
      - lopatin 3y ago
        It's pretty fun seeing "create scarcity" in motion. I wonder if it's a viral strategy or a way for slow, sustainable growth.
        andygeorge 3y ago
        I assume the former, heh
        wg0 3y ago
        I guess more of the later. But yes, its impressive, clean and feels much responsive than the now Twitter.
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      a few more: bsky-social-z4lje-plsaa bsky-social-scxbw-ckemr bsky-social-cuvie-p5hqn bsky-social-yo6ut-wewvm bsky-social-xes62-4cer4
noarchy 3y ago
They've been far too slow to respond to Twitter/X's missteps to be able to take advantage. Threads won that race by a wide margin, even if it is still relatively lacking in features.
- deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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gpjanik 3y ago
They totally missed 4-5 events of mass interest in leaving Twitter and now have to scramble for any interest.
solardev 3y ago
What's Bluesky? This just looks like a Twitter clone?
- passwordoops 3y ago
  "Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation." https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/what-is-bluesky-everything-to-know-about-the-app-trying-to-replace-twitter/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/what-is-bluesky-everything...
brundolf 3y ago
It's lost the initial momentum but it's not dead yet. I'm still holding my breath that the critical mass makes the leap eventually; "it's just twitter but you can write and use custom clients and feed algorithms" is a compelling proposition For me and a lot of others, it's the only twitter alternative we ever signed up for. A few never came back to twitter, but most did mostly for social reasons. But twitter as a platform gets worse each day, and if it ever truly breaks or dies, bsky will be the schelling point for a whole bunch of people
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Most of my people seemed to have landed on bsky. Discussions there get shares and likes, unlike mastodon where for me it's just a few void-shouts per day. Threads appears to be 100% mid celebrities who I am sure Facebook is paying to hang around.
  - brundolf 3y ago
    Yeah, I haven't even bothered trying Threads (and don't plan to) Mastodon puts too much onus on the user to pick a home server Bluesky got it right by saying "we're going to be exactly familiar to people who like twitter, just open and better". The concepts are an almost exact drop-in replacement, for practical purposes, other than which one your friends are active on I don't use it much right now because most of my people did switch back for now. But I check in periodically, and I'm rooting for it to succeed
    - bordercases 3y ago
      A nice migration story would probably help for Mastodon no? Sign-up on an "index" server, then one button to end up somewhere else?
      - h0l0cube 3y ago
        The problem with that is coordination. All the Mastodon servers would need to align, agree, and implement this new process. The whole point of Mastodon is that it is federated, and so consensus will ensure progress is limited to the lowest common denominator.
darklycan51 3y ago
Brosky sold twitter and before he sold it it went from the best to the worst social media, why on earth would I go back there? Elon might be cringe but Twitter is legitimately less neurotic nowadays than it was before he sold it.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  Yeah I've been enjoying Twitter quite a bit since Elon took over, truthfully I'm not even sure what he changed to cause the effect but it seems to be working.
drexlspivey 3y ago
Is Bluesky and Threads basically Twitter with different moderation policies? I can see why someone might leave Twitter for Mastodon but why would you leave for one of those 2? Just block people you don't want to see stuff from.
- data-ottawa 3y ago
  At this point the ownership of Twitter is the problem for a lot of people, and then there's the change to the system itself, neither of which can be resolved by blocking.
  - drexlspivey 3y ago
    Why would you care which billionaire owns the platform? If he annoys you just block him.
    - 01100011 3y ago
      And block their ads. I use X with Firefox+uBO on Android and it's great.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Many of the people that some of us want to follow have now left X. Often this all gets framed as a "freedom of speech" issue. But I know first hand of women who in recent months on X have been harassed with death threats. When they've reported it has been ignored because the company simply lacks the resources/will to enforce those policies. And so even if Threads is nothing more than a better-staffed clone that is enough for them.
  - dfgfek 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - sneak 3y ago
    How are illegal threats made by users the fault of the communications platform? We don’t vilify the phone company when someone uses a phone to make a bomb threat. Why is this different? You don’t report crime to the communications service provider. If someone makes a bomb threat you aren’t dialing 0 to tell the phone company.
baby 3y ago
I got the app but still can’t browse anything without an account. So I don’t use it :| this is user acquisition 101, if you’re behind a login page people won’t use your stuff.
caseyavila 3y ago
How does Bluesky compare to Mastodon?
- riffic 3y ago
  Mastodon uses ActivityPub for interoperability with a wide ecosystem of apps
- epaulson 3y ago
  Bluesky is a different protocol than Mastodon, but conceptually I think it's fair to say they're similar. I think Bluesky would clean up if it could also interop with Mastodon - people want to leave Twitter but it sucks having to choose between Mastodon and Bluesky and so I think some folks are just in a holding pattern waiting to see what wins. Bluesky feels more like Twitter so I think it would get a lot of folks, but I think people hesitate to bet on it just yet.
- mal-2 3y ago
  Bluesky has a 300 character limit, Mastodon has 500, non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers have a configurable limit. Mastodon can render markdown, has subject lines which are commonly used as content warning tags, can translate posts. It supports custom emoji and non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers support custom emoji reactions. Bluesky has more discovery features like community-curated lists and algorithmic suggestions of who to follow.
  - anotherevan 3y ago
    The character limit depends on which Mastodon instance you're on. 500 does seem to be the norm. The one I use is 3000.
    - mal-2 3y ago
      Partially true, but vanilla Mastodon does hardcode it at 500. Some forks make it configurable (I believe glitch-soc does), and some admins have edited the hardcoded value manually.
- 3y ago
vitorgrs 3y ago
Since the Threads launch, I barely used BlueSky anymore. Now with the new logo, I opened again for the first time in 4 months or so, thinking that well, there was improvements? No. You still can't send videos and gifs. That's just, so basic for a social network. Let alone all the other missing things, and how awful the apps are. They are basically the worst example to show React Native. The app here on Android takes 15 seconds to open (an improvement, it took 30 seconds before). It's sluggy, no animations, etc. Feels like Alpha.
- 01100011 3y ago
  I can understand not supporting video yet.. that's a huge amount of data. But GIFS? Wow...
  - Eduard 3y ago
    Gifs require way more data than mp4 videos.
  - edavis 3y ago
    Most of the "GIFs" you encounter on social media these days are actually autoplay videos without sound. So it's not that crazy. I think they're waiting until they have a robust solution figured out for video support before they land "GIF" support. One of the alternative clients (Graysky) supports GIFs through some integration tenor.com, I believe.
  - mattl 3y ago
    You can post GIFs but animated GIFs don’t work. They get converted at upload.
  - raincole 3y ago
    If you don't convert GIFs on server side it would take much more data than videos. I mean much, much more. GIFs are more or less a long seqeunce of 8-bit images.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Maybe they don't see reaction gifs a useful feature of a social media?
mminer237 3y ago
It still doesn't seem to have a public feed though, so you can only view individual posts. I will say as someone has an invite: you're not missing out on anything. It definitely has far less activity than either Twitter or Threads, but somehow it also just has worse content. You would think they were invite-only to keep the quality high, but everything is either furry porn or hate-filled rage bait, neither of which I am personally a fan of at all. I keep telling trying to tell it as much, but I honestly don't think I've seen one post I truly wanted to see. I tried to do it for like a week hoping it would get better, but honestly it seems like there's just nothing worthwhile on the whole site. Personally, the only way I can see me ever using Bluesky is if they manage to totally invert their userbase. You need to just start over when you somehow get a crowd worse than either version of Twitter, in my opinion.
- rconti 3y ago
  I get that this rage bait works on some percent of the population. 20%? 50%? 75%? What that leaves unanswered is, why aren't these platforms smart enough to adapt to what actual individuals react to? Sure, they picked the most successful single formula, but you'd think they'd want to increase the platform's engagement at the margins rather than just milking one approach for all it's worth.
  - k12sosse 3y ago
    I suspect these megalithic corpos are actually in it to make a dollar, no matter the cost to reputation or society. You'd think reputation would matter but it turns out once you reach the point of no return ("I keep Facebook so I can share with my grandma"), you'll come back even if there are rats chewing on your toes
    - rconti 3y ago
      But my point was they could make more money if they had algos that worked on more people.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    My vague impression was that Threads clamped down on the rage bait, and as a result it did not get adopted. Is that correct?
tatrajim 3y ago
Personally I have been pleasantly surprised by how useful Grok is for getting a quick read on events around the world captured in tweets, e.g. protests in Argentina or the shooting in Prague. The spotty coverage of global news by US media leaves a huge opportunity for X to exploit.
edavis 3y ago
I played a small role in the RSS part of this release, nudging them to go with title-less items in the feed. If anybody wants a Bluesky invite code, I have a handful available. DM me at @edavis@hachyderm.io or at https://t.me/ejd215 https://t.me/ejd215. First come, first served!
michalu 3y ago
Just dug up my old invite code to find this is pretty bad. Basically an app for the small obscure minority who left Twitter in protest including a bunch of ex users you'd only know from memes. Curious to see what this evolves into.
janvdberg 3y ago
Does it have j/k navigation yet?
Levitz 3y ago
If nothing else, there is one good thing of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, and it's that it has made the case for making social media outlets responsible for their content evidently clear. For better or worse, when management changed, the narratives and atmosphere in Twitter changed. Its content changed. This would be absurd if social media communities were organic or independent in how they spread ideas, but they are very much not. Either before or after the acquisition (I have no dog in this race, really) the platform controlled its content, and as such it ought to be responsible for it. If Twitter decides which among the millions of messages it decides to publish they are as responsible for that as I am when I choose which among the combinations of characters I output from my keyboard. Any corporation that pretends they are only doing the proper thing by controlling speech within its platform should be called out for what they are doing: media manipulation.
- worsethndetroit 3y ago
  > If nothing else, there is one good thing of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, and it's that it has made the case for making social media outlets responsible for their content evidently clear. Agreed. He showed that they were engaging in widespread editorializing of conservative content while lying about being neutral. They should never have been allowed to do that, even under the existing laws at the time. Reddit is even worse.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > He showed that they were engaging in widespread editorializing of conservative content while lying about being neutral. A 2021 study¹ found the opposite, which is that Twitter algorithms amplified right-wing posts more than left-wing posts. You're parroting Musk's claims, which are feelings-based. Now, of course, X is basically Parler. ¹ https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/company/2021/rml/Algorithmic-Amplification-of-Politics-on-Twitter.pdf https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter...
    - worsethndetroit 3y ago
sneak 3y ago
Bluesky’s ability to federate was touted, but doesn’t meaningfully exist (otherwise I’d be running a node). It’s still got centralized censorship, same as Twitter or Facebook.
wnevets 3y ago
It feels like Bluesky missed their chance to be the twitter alternative after how well Threads has been going. I'm sure zuck will find a way to ruin it but its gonna be a long road a head for Bluesky.
- joshuaturner 3y ago
  As popular as it is among specific groups, I can't help but feel the decentralized push is going to hurt adoption. Maybe not as badly as it hurt Mastodon because they do supply a "default" server to join, but most people in my experience, don't want a decentralized platform and enjoy the benefits of a centralized platform quite a bit. I suppose time will tell.
  - jackson1442 3y ago
    Bluesky has the advantage that it doesn’t “feel” decentralized. It just feels like Twitter: you make an account (with an additional screen confirming you want to create the account on bsky.app or whatever the main instance is) and it works as smoothly as twitter does with some extra goodies in the backend that come from it being decentralized. I do like how usernames are domain names, which gives them a portability similar to email.
- deleted 3y ago
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- wsatb 3y ago
  Threads still doesn’t have a very good search function, which in my opinion was always Twitter’s greatest asset. Your feed always had a ton of randomness, but if you wanted to talk about something specific that was going on at the moment, you searched for it. Threads just gives a bunch of random results, some in the last hour, followed by 5 months ago, and then another from 15 minutes ago.
hobo_mark 3y ago
BlueSky is the only place where I have ever received death threats, the only place where I ended in multiple blocklists for upsetting god knows whom, and the only place where I had to block hundreds of accounts to avoid getting porn and questionable furry stuff in the main timeline, even with moderation on. But it seems to work fine for a particular brand of extremely online people.
- deleted 3y ago
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- fullshark 3y ago
  No one wants to talk to everyone on the planet at once except extremely online people anymore, that initial burst of enthusiasm from normies 10-15 years ago was borne from naivety and will never happen again. Also every platform will get a burst of extremely online people trying to build an audience at the initial stages of its lifecycle. Discord seems to be the only place that doesn't fall into this trap because it's basically private clubs, and not about seeking attention at all times.
- caslon 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, what action on your part caused the death threats?
  - hobo_mark 3y ago
    Complaining about porn (mostly gay/trans/furry stuff, although even the straight kind is NOT something I want on my phone when idly scrolling on a bus or a train in public, or ever really) routinely ending in the default timeline, which is apparently a capital offense threatening the livelihood of sex workers and furry "artists".
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      I hate it when I manually opt in to adult content and then adult content shows up on my timeline. The fact that only way to avoid it is to just use the app as it is out of the box is a design flaw
duxup 3y ago
I've tried a few twitter alternatives (including Bluesky) as someone who hardly ever uses twitter anyway. I was a little disappointed how it just felt like ... more twitter. I'm browsing around finding mostly memes or outrage that doesn't have context to me. I fairly quickly get exhausted trying to find / curate content. I guess I should have expected it, but I hoped that somewhere a different network would have a different style or flavor. However, the content patterns that get engagement and etc seem ingrained in the participants no matter where you go. Personally I can't help but feel both left out, and not wanting to be a part of whatever these style of social media apps are. Having said that there's a lot of talk about twitter clones missing features, but for me I wonder if the content is the same, why would a significant number of people move anyway?
- npunt 3y ago
  Twitter clones thus far have all been cover bands with a different (speaker) stack. Focus seems to be entirely on the backend protocol side - important for decentralization but fixing only part of the problem. I haven't seen much in the way of innovation on the UX itself, which is what I'm really interested in. I guess its a mix of a) why mess with success, twitter-like design is proven to work, b) a lack of experimental startup product culture that's willing to try new things, c) not having good ideas, and d) just not enough time because they're focused on basics.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > which is what I'm really interested in. Whenever I see comments like these, my immediate thought is "How interested are you, if you had to put a dollar figure on it?" Also, you are missing alternative (e): availability bias. Maybe you haven't seen a lot of innovation around UX not because people are not trying, but because those who tried to experiment with different UX were aiming at such a niche that completely failed as social network?
    - duxup 3y ago
      >failed as social network Is that the case? Serious question, I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Is the market just messed up? Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)?
arthurcolle 3y ago
Literally so crazy I can't just get an invite, it's so stupid
- epistasis 3y ago
  Just emailed you one. I can't give them away... I have also decided to give up all social media like this until at least February, and the past week has been a big improvement for me
  - arthurcolle 3y ago
    Que cute Sergio, thank you so much! Per our favorite chatcompletion model, Boas festas / Feliz Navidad!!! New social media profile, new me: https://bsky.app/profile/arthurcolle.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/arthurcolle.bsky.social
mullingitover 3y ago
Bluesky's big selling point is that it's an open protocol, but it's their own homegrown protocol that nobody else is using. Meanwhile Threads has working ActivityPub[1]. You can see threads posts on Mastodon. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-ac...
- paulmd 3y ago
  Bluesky considers lack of activitypub a feature. They don’t want push-content, they want local organic communities.
- teamspirit 3y ago
  I remember so many people who said, “yeah right, Threads will never connect to Mastodon,” and yet here we are. What a time to be alive?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    oh boy. if we're marking "what a time to be alive" by having access to a social media platforms version of another social media platform accessible by a 3rd party wannabe social platform, then sheesh, give me the blue pill. i'd rather be part of the matrix.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  In all fairness, while yes Bluesky so far has not yet lived up to their promise of decentralisation/federation, it’s still under development. It just hasn’t been built yet. Though, the whole blue sky stack is significantly more complicated than ActivityPub so I’m doubtful as many would actually set up “instances”.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    > it’s still under development. It just hasn’t been built yet. Someone else was already first to market. Launching as an alternative that is half baked seems like really strange idea to me. Maybe they were trying to gain traction during the surge in Twitter hate, but if the thing you are asking them to jump ship to is a lesser product, only a tiny minority of them are going to stay. Half baked launches into a very well established market just seems like you'd be better off taking your investor's money and having grand ol' time in Vegas.
mikpanko 3y ago
Why is it taking Bluesky so long to launch basic features and allow more traffic? Are there some complexities related to using an open protocol?
- cfiggers 3y ago
  They seem to be an extremely small team.
- mattl 3y ago
  Basic features like what?
  - raincole 3y ago
    Like signing up without an invitation.
jez 3y ago
After reading this post, I can't see the new Bluesky logo any other way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013
- deleted 3y ago
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brcmthrowaway 3y ago
This reminds me of Diaspora.. am I that old?
autoexec 3y ago
>JavaScript Required This is a heavily interactive web application, and JavaScript is required. Simple HTML interfaces are possible, but that is not what this is. Not for me I guess. When there's a nitter for bluesky (nuesky?) maybe I'll check that out. It looks like at least some of the text from the post is still visible maybe > ( 1.60 is rolling out now (2/5) Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login! You can finally share your quality posts with the group chat or in articles. If you don’t want the Bluesky app to show your posts to logged-out users, opt out in the Moderation tab. 2023-12-22T18:59:01.633Z)
- deleted 3y ago
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notnullorvoid 3y ago
Until I see what Bluesky's AT protocol federation looks like in practice, I'm not interested. Without federation it's basically Twitter with less users. And even after federation it might be Mastodon/ActivityPub with less users. Very disappointed in the direction they took to launch. Exclusive beta, no focus on decentralization despite that being the major selling point.
- deleted 3y ago
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- jakebsky 3y ago
  The Bluesky federation sandbox network is up and running as of months ago, which works exactly how the production network will work. The production network is also federated internally (i.e. Bluesky already runs 10 Personal Data Servers) to prove that it operates as expected. Quite a bit of the app itself is also federated: custom algorithms (feeds) are being operated by many third-party devs on their own servers, domain handles have been in use for a long time, and the API is completely open (all posts/likes, etc can be streamed from `wss://bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.subscribeRepos` in a permissionless way, see atproto.com[1] for details) It's possible to run a PDS (Personal Data Server)[2] in the dev sandbox. Federation for the production network is planned for early 2024. ASAP. 1. https://atproto.com https://atproto.com 2. https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/SANDBOX.md https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/SANDBOX.md
farhanhubble 3y ago
Don't know if I'm the only one but from a branding perspective Bluesky seems a very bland name.
- Underphil 3y ago
  It feels corporate to me. Probably because of that awful "blue sky thinking" doublespeak.
KomoD 3y ago
That took way too long, but I already consider Bluesky dead, they had the chance but the stupid "invite-only" system killed it (in my opinion) and then when invites actually started getting sent out I just didn't bother anymore and went back to Twitter
anotherevan 3y ago
RSS feeds of user accounts was another addition. They're a bit average though in that they don't have media (i.e., images) in the feed. I'll keep using https://bluestream.deno.dev/ https://bluestream.deno.dev/ for now.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Then just make it an MRSS feed. Seems very strange not to provide a feed with links to the media. Unless it's a deliberate crippling
  - anotherevan 3y ago
    I assume you mean that Bluesky should make it a media RSS feed. I don't think it is something simple an end-user could do.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      I thought you were saying the Bluesky was making content available via RSS, but crippled without media
      - anotherevan 3y ago
        Yes, they are not as useful without the media included.
franze 3y ago
Tried to sign up for bs. With valid invitation code. Got an error message after the final stage. Again and again and again. Social Media Companies that can't get their sign-up funnel in order have already failed.
- deleted 3y ago
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- jakebsky 3y ago
  Sent you an email, in case you're willing to give some info we can use to investigate this. We're always willing to look into any issues like this. Thanks!
  - AnonC 3y ago
    This is off topic on this point, but I wanted to point out a privacy issue with invites (as these codes are given out on forums like these to random strangers). The invite codes show which account was created with those to the person sending invites. I’d rather this be completely hidden (just saying that the code was used is enough) or give an option to the person signing up if they want to reveal their account to the person who invited them. Would it be possible for you to highlight this to the right people in the team?
    - jakebsky 3y ago
      Typically invites are used by people who are inviting people they know, in which case it's advantageous for them to be able to find each other. But you're right that there's an argument that it could work differently. We're planning to get rid of invites shortly, otherwise we might consider enhancements to the invite system to e.g. make this optional.
- zappb 3y ago
  Try to sign up to Instagram on a desktop browser using an email address. That was completely broken last time I checked.
haunter 3y ago
I follow like 30 accounts on Twitter and it’s a perfectly enclosed little bubble, I really only see what I want. But whenever I try Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads as a brand new account without anyone to follow it’s just same US politics shit. Trump, Trump bad, nazis, AOC, Trump, gender, trans rights, nazis, republicans, Trump, gender etc. This is what I see right now on Bluesky What’s Hot, this is what I see right now on Mastodon Explore. The fact that even Mastodon pushing the rage bait (“ These are posts from across the social web that are gaining traction today”) which is supposed to be the ‘healthy’ and ‘better’ social media site shows how deep problems we have. If really that’s what an average Joe and Jane sees when they just want to try out these services then no one wonder the world is going worse by each passing day.
booleandilemma 3y ago
It's ironic that a service called "Bluesky", a word that Merriam-Webster defines as meaning "characterized by unconstrained optimism or imagination", looks so boring and Twitter-like.
- deleted 3y ago
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gumballindie 3y ago
No followers, not following anyone, yet somehow this showed up on my feed: https://bsky.app/profile/minedoo.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/minedoo.bsky.social Yup. Bluesky is trash.
- Toorkit 3y ago
  Because furries? The last time I looked at the Mastodon federated timeline I was presented with belly fetish posts lol
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Not a fan of mastodon either. It looks as if forums and social networks are dominated by rejects and the fringe of society. Be it child looking anime fans, sexualised animal fetishists, propagandists, corporate shills, and so on. Feels more like a sewage rather than a highway of information.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
I have not paid much attention to Bsky and I doubt I will but from a quick glance it looks nearly identical to X. Is it basically an X clone that will be an alternative Twitter/X? Or is there a lot more magic going on? Why are people excited? (Mind you I dont spend much time on X either, so this is purely from looking at the two and comparing. )
prayze 3y ago
It took so long to get an invite code I unfortunately lost my interest.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Seeing lots of comparisons to Mastodon, Threads, and XTwitter in this thread. I remember in the days of instant messaging, I had a single client (Adium for Mac OS X) which could talk to AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, etc. It gave me a unified buddy list, and a unified interface for messaging any of my friends, regardless of the underlying instant messaging provider. Is anyone working on a similar omniclient for Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky/XTwitter? If we get to the point where most users are using omniclients of this kind, that helps reduce network effects and lock-in. Seems like the Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky teams would have a strong incentive to collaborate on such a client, in order to reduce XTwitter network effects, essentially joining forces in their own unified network. (I imagine that XTwitter will block API access, at least in the short term.)
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Don't forget about https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ either. For Mastodon in particular, people are always talking about the difficulty of getting started. Is there a way to put a porcelain experience on that? Imagine I just enter my credit card info and I have my own instance without having to worry about any sysadmin details. You could monetize the client by charging a small premium above and beyond the baseline server costs. I want an experience so porcelain that in order to create a new account, I enter my username and it automatically checks its availability across dozens of social sites, then registers me in as seamless a manner as possible. Then when I click post, it by default broadcasts that post across all the accounts I registered. I suppose this is probably similar to the existing interface for a product such as Hootsuite, no? Maybe the best starting point is check if there's an open-source Hootsuite competitor, then optimize the interface for end users.
- devinivy 3y ago
  Not exactly what you're describing, but https://brid.gy/ https://brid.gy/ is a pretty neat project in this space.
brycewray 3y ago
Still hoping for an official “Tweetdeck-ish” interface choice on the desktop. In the absence thereof, deck.blue isn’t too bad while skyfeed.app, although it seems more technically robust, isn’t exactly eye candy. I know there are others I haven’t yet tried; just would love to see Bluesky itself have something like Mastodon’s “Advanced Web Interface” option.
nikolay 3y ago
I love it, but there are not DMs, which is a showstopper.
AnonC 3y ago
I got an invite for Bluesky from a kind person on HN, but as someone who didn’t use Twitter, I didn’t have a sense of whom to follow. I discovered some nice artists and comics. Any suggestions on people who post nice stuff or comics or fun stuff would be welcome (I really don’t want to deal with political discussions or arguments that are meant to trigger outrage on a regular basis). Meanwhile, here are some invite codes (I’ll update this list if they’re used within HN’s edit window): bsky-social-xueut-35ahm bsky-social-25tsd-crmqc ~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used) ~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used) Edit: This is my first time handing out invites. I don’t like how the invite system shows me which account on Bluesky was created using my invite code. I’d rather this be hidden from the person sending the invite or at least provide an option to the person signing up if they want their account to be disclosed to the person who invited them. In real life there are usually personal or professional connections with such events, but online these could be (and are) totally random strangers.
- AnonC 3y ago
  Update: all invites above have been used.
renegat0x0 3y ago
This is not a virtue. They have not yet reached enshittification point. It is not a dominant player that wants to protect its contents. They have nothing to protect.
mmcnl 3y ago
I think this is too little, too late. Threads is already filling in the void left by Twitter and has the advantage of the Instagram user base behind it.
slenk 3y ago
I just want an invite. I don't know why they are being so snobbish about it
glub103011 3y ago
[dead]

291 points by redsolver 3y ago

TobyTheDog123 3y ago

Wow! Im amazed at how fast and pretty Bluesky is compared to other web applications, especially Twitter's.

solardev 3y ago
Really? It feels so slow... interface took a couple seconds to load, and then the actual posts another 3-4 seconds. This is on gigabit too. Overloaded right now?
gardenhedge 3y ago
I was greeted with a spinner..

photonbeam 3y ago

They should have done this long ago, they missed the boat

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blueridge 3y ago

It's basically Twitter.

deleted 3y ago
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cfr2023 3y ago

Good precedent, more please.

afavour 3y ago

Too late, IMO. The invite-only system meant that the "leave Twitter" crowd split between Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. IMO none of them have ended up being great replacements.

dt3ft 3y ago
Judging by the traffic traces (number of comments on popular posts), I’d have to agree.
soperj 3y ago
Does anyone actually use threads? Everyone seemed to go check it out, but I don't know anyone actively using it.
- addicted 3y ago
  Threads has picked up quite a bit of steam in a lot of communities recently. Not sure how widespread it is but it seems to be doing fairly well.
- vitorgrs 3y ago
  It has like, 30x more users than Mastodon lol For now, it's the most viable alternative for Twitter - for now. But this is in part because Mastodon UX is very complicated for beginners, and BlueSky is slow as hell to make improvements. It still doesn't support sending videos...
  - Zak 3y ago
    I'm really curious as to what will happen when Threads turns on ActivityPub federation for everyone. At that point, Threads and Mastodon will be the same network, aside from servers that have preemptively blocked Threads.
- threeseed 3y ago
  There are well over 100m MAU so a lot of people are using it. And it has reached the #1 position in most of the App Stores around the world.

mattl 3y ago

If anyone from Twitter I know is reading this and wants an invite code ask me via Mastodon DM or email.

andygeorge 3y ago
bsky-social-awgll-rrqmu bsky-social-wvq77-dxsur bsky-social-jb2xl-7pqzg bsky-social-6hxxo-3ccaw bsky-social-mnbtp-xctsx
- wg0 3y ago
  All gone :(
  - andygeorge 3y ago
    Seriously? Says they're all still unused in my view in the app. Dang.
    - lopatin 3y ago
      It's pretty fun seeing "create scarcity" in motion. I wonder if it's a viral strategy or a way for slow, sustainable growth.
      - andygeorge 3y ago
        I assume the former, heh
      - wg0 3y ago
        I guess more of the later. But yes, its impressive, clean and feels much responsive than the now Twitter.
  - fabrice_d 3y ago
    a few more: bsky-social-z4lje-plsaa bsky-social-scxbw-ckemr bsky-social-cuvie-p5hqn bsky-social-yo6ut-wewvm bsky-social-xes62-4cer4

noarchy 3y ago

They've been far too slow to respond to Twitter/X's missteps to be able to take advantage. Threads won that race by a wide margin, even if it is still relatively lacking in features.

deleted 3y ago
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gpjanik 3y ago

They totally missed 4-5 events of mass interest in leaving Twitter and now have to scramble for any interest.

solardev 3y ago

What's Bluesky? This just looks like a Twitter clone?

passwordoops 3y ago
"Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation." https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/what-is-bluesky-everything-to-know-about-the-app-trying-to-replace-twitter/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/what-is-bluesky-everything...

brundolf 3y ago

It's lost the initial momentum but it's not dead yet. I'm still holding my breath that the critical mass makes the leap eventually; "it's just twitter but you can write and use custom clients and feed algorithms" is a compelling proposition For me and a lot of others, it's the only twitter alternative we ever signed up for. A few never came back to twitter, but most did mostly for social reasons. But twitter as a platform gets worse each day, and if it ever truly breaks or dies, bsky will be the schelling point for a whole bunch of people

jeffbee 3y ago
Most of my people seemed to have landed on bsky. Discussions there get shares and likes, unlike mastodon where for me it's just a few void-shouts per day. Threads appears to be 100% mid celebrities who I am sure Facebook is paying to hang around.
- brundolf 3y ago
  Yeah, I haven't even bothered trying Threads (and don't plan to) Mastodon puts too much onus on the user to pick a home server Bluesky got it right by saying "we're going to be exactly familiar to people who like twitter, just open and better". The concepts are an almost exact drop-in replacement, for practical purposes, other than which one your friends are active on I don't use it much right now because most of my people did switch back for now. But I check in periodically, and I'm rooting for it to succeed
  - bordercases 3y ago
    A nice migration story would probably help for Mastodon no? Sign-up on an "index" server, then one button to end up somewhere else?
    - h0l0cube 3y ago
      The problem with that is coordination. All the Mastodon servers would need to align, agree, and implement this new process. The whole point of Mastodon is that it is federated, and so consensus will ensure progress is limited to the lowest common denominator.

darklycan51 3y ago

Brosky sold twitter and before he sold it it went from the best to the worst social media, why on earth would I go back there? Elon might be cringe but Twitter is legitimately less neurotic nowadays than it was before he sold it.

CSMastermind 3y ago
Yeah I've been enjoying Twitter quite a bit since Elon took over, truthfully I'm not even sure what he changed to cause the effect but it seems to be working.

drexlspivey 3y ago

Is Bluesky and Threads basically Twitter with different moderation policies? I can see why someone might leave Twitter for Mastodon but why would you leave for one of those 2? Just block people you don't want to see stuff from.

data-ottawa 3y ago
At this point the ownership of Twitter is the problem for a lot of people, and then there's the change to the system itself, neither of which can be resolved by blocking.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  Why would you care which billionaire owns the platform? If he annoys you just block him.
  - 01100011 3y ago
    And block their ads. I use X with Firefox+uBO on Android and it's great.
threeseed 3y ago
Many of the people that some of us want to follow have now left X. Often this all gets framed as a "freedom of speech" issue. But I know first hand of women who in recent months on X have been harassed with death threats. When they've reported it has been ignored because the company simply lacks the resources/will to enforce those policies. And so even if Threads is nothing more than a better-staffed clone that is enough for them.
- dfgfek 3y ago
  [flagged]
- sneak 3y ago
  How are illegal threats made by users the fault of the communications platform? We don’t vilify the phone company when someone uses a phone to make a bomb threat. Why is this different? You don’t report crime to the communications service provider. If someone makes a bomb threat you aren’t dialing 0 to tell the phone company.

baby 3y ago

I got the app but still can’t browse anything without an account. So I don’t use it :| this is user acquisition 101, if you’re behind a login page people won’t use your stuff.

caseyavila 3y ago

How does Bluesky compare to Mastodon?

riffic 3y ago
Mastodon uses ActivityPub for interoperability with a wide ecosystem of apps
epaulson 3y ago
Bluesky is a different protocol than Mastodon, but conceptually I think it's fair to say they're similar. I think Bluesky would clean up if it could also interop with Mastodon - people want to leave Twitter but it sucks having to choose between Mastodon and Bluesky and so I think some folks are just in a holding pattern waiting to see what wins. Bluesky feels more like Twitter so I think it would get a lot of folks, but I think people hesitate to bet on it just yet.
mal-2 3y ago
Bluesky has a 300 character limit, Mastodon has 500, non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers have a configurable limit. Mastodon can render markdown, has subject lines which are commonly used as content warning tags, can translate posts. It supports custom emoji and non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers support custom emoji reactions. Bluesky has more discovery features like community-curated lists and algorithmic suggestions of who to follow.
- anotherevan 3y ago
  The character limit depends on which Mastodon instance you're on. 500 does seem to be the norm. The one I use is 3000.
  - mal-2 3y ago
    Partially true, but vanilla Mastodon does hardcode it at 500. Some forks make it configurable (I believe glitch-soc does), and some admins have edited the hardcoded value manually.
3y ago

vitorgrs 3y ago

Since the Threads launch, I barely used BlueSky anymore. Now with the new logo, I opened again for the first time in 4 months or so, thinking that well, there was improvements? No. You still can't send videos and gifs. That's just, so basic for a social network. Let alone all the other missing things, and how awful the apps are. They are basically the worst example to show React Native. The app here on Android takes 15 seconds to open (an improvement, it took 30 seconds before). It's sluggy, no animations, etc. Feels like Alpha.

01100011 3y ago
I can understand not supporting video yet.. that's a huge amount of data. But GIFS? Wow...
- Eduard 3y ago
  Gifs require way more data than mp4 videos.
- edavis 3y ago
  Most of the "GIFs" you encounter on social media these days are actually autoplay videos without sound. So it's not that crazy. I think they're waiting until they have a robust solution figured out for video support before they land "GIF" support. One of the alternative clients (Graysky) supports GIFs through some integration tenor.com, I believe.
- mattl 3y ago
  You can post GIFs but animated GIFs don’t work. They get converted at upload.
- raincole 3y ago
  If you don't convert GIFs on server side it would take much more data than videos. I mean much, much more. GIFs are more or less a long seqeunce of 8-bit images.
- numpad0 3y ago
  Maybe they don't see reaction gifs a useful feature of a social media?

mminer237 3y ago

It still doesn't seem to have a public feed though, so you can only view individual posts. I will say as someone has an invite: you're not missing out on anything. It definitely has far less activity than either Twitter or Threads, but somehow it also just has worse content. You would think they were invite-only to keep the quality high, but everything is either furry porn or hate-filled rage bait, neither of which I am personally a fan of at all. I keep telling trying to tell it as much, but I honestly don't think I've seen one post I truly wanted to see. I tried to do it for like a week hoping it would get better, but honestly it seems like there's just nothing worthwhile on the whole site. Personally, the only way I can see me ever using Bluesky is if they manage to totally invert their userbase. You need to just start over when you somehow get a crowd worse than either version of Twitter, in my opinion.

rconti 3y ago
I get that this rage bait works on some percent of the population. 20%? 50%? 75%? What that leaves unanswered is, why aren't these platforms smart enough to adapt to what actual individuals react to? Sure, they picked the most successful single formula, but you'd think they'd want to increase the platform's engagement at the margins rather than just milking one approach for all it's worth.
- k12sosse 3y ago
  I suspect these megalithic corpos are actually in it to make a dollar, no matter the cost to reputation or society. You'd think reputation would matter but it turns out once you reach the point of no return ("I keep Facebook so I can share with my grandma"), you'll come back even if there are rats chewing on your toes
  - rconti 3y ago
    But my point was they could make more money if they had algos that worked on more people.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  My vague impression was that Threads clamped down on the rage bait, and as a result it did not get adopted. Is that correct?

tatrajim 3y ago

Personally I have been pleasantly surprised by how useful Grok is for getting a quick read on events around the world captured in tweets, e.g. protests in Argentina or the shooting in Prague. The spotty coverage of global news by US media leaves a huge opportunity for X to exploit.

edavis 3y ago

I played a small role in the RSS part of this release, nudging them to go with title-less items in the feed. If anybody wants a Bluesky invite code, I have a handful available. DM me at @edavis@hachyderm.io or at https://t.me/ejd215 https://t.me/ejd215. First come, first served!

michalu 3y ago

Just dug up my old invite code to find this is pretty bad. Basically an app for the small obscure minority who left Twitter in protest including a bunch of ex users you'd only know from memes. Curious to see what this evolves into.

janvdberg 3y ago

Does it have j/k navigation yet?

Levitz 3y ago

If nothing else, there is one good thing of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, and it's that it has made the case for making social media outlets responsible for their content evidently clear. For better or worse, when management changed, the narratives and atmosphere in Twitter changed. Its content changed. This would be absurd if social media communities were organic or independent in how they spread ideas, but they are very much not. Either before or after the acquisition (I have no dog in this race, really) the platform controlled its content, and as such it ought to be responsible for it. If Twitter decides which among the millions of messages it decides to publish they are as responsible for that as I am when I choose which among the combinations of characters I output from my keyboard. Any corporation that pretends they are only doing the proper thing by controlling speech within its platform should be called out for what they are doing: media manipulation.

worsethndetroit 3y ago
> If nothing else, there is one good thing of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, and it's that it has made the case for making social media outlets responsible for their content evidently clear. Agreed. He showed that they were engaging in widespread editorializing of conservative content while lying about being neutral. They should never have been allowed to do that, even under the existing laws at the time. Reddit is even worse.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > He showed that they were engaging in widespread editorializing of conservative content while lying about being neutral. A 2021 study¹ found the opposite, which is that Twitter algorithms amplified right-wing posts more than left-wing posts. You're parroting Musk's claims, which are feelings-based. Now, of course, X is basically Parler. ¹ https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/company/2021/rml/Algorithmic-Amplification-of-Politics-on-Twitter.pdf https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter...
  - worsethndetroit 3y ago

sneak 3y ago

Bluesky’s ability to federate was touted, but doesn’t meaningfully exist (otherwise I’d be running a node). It’s still got centralized censorship, same as Twitter or Facebook.

wnevets 3y ago

It feels like Bluesky missed their chance to be the twitter alternative after how well Threads has been going. I'm sure zuck will find a way to ruin it but its gonna be a long road a head for Bluesky.

joshuaturner 3y ago
As popular as it is among specific groups, I can't help but feel the decentralized push is going to hurt adoption. Maybe not as badly as it hurt Mastodon because they do supply a "default" server to join, but most people in my experience, don't want a decentralized platform and enjoy the benefits of a centralized platform quite a bit. I suppose time will tell.
- jackson1442 3y ago
  Bluesky has the advantage that it doesn’t “feel” decentralized. It just feels like Twitter: you make an account (with an additional screen confirming you want to create the account on bsky.app or whatever the main instance is) and it works as smoothly as twitter does with some extra goodies in the backend that come from it being decentralized. I do like how usernames are domain names, which gives them a portability similar to email.
deleted 3y ago
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wsatb 3y ago
Threads still doesn’t have a very good search function, which in my opinion was always Twitter’s greatest asset. Your feed always had a ton of randomness, but if you wanted to talk about something specific that was going on at the moment, you searched for it. Threads just gives a bunch of random results, some in the last hour, followed by 5 months ago, and then another from 15 minutes ago.

hobo_mark 3y ago

BlueSky is the only place where I have ever received death threats, the only place where I ended in multiple blocklists for upsetting god knows whom, and the only place where I had to block hundreds of accounts to avoid getting porn and questionable furry stuff in the main timeline, even with moderation on. But it seems to work fine for a particular brand of extremely online people.

deleted 3y ago
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fullshark 3y ago
No one wants to talk to everyone on the planet at once except extremely online people anymore, that initial burst of enthusiasm from normies 10-15 years ago was borne from naivety and will never happen again. Also every platform will get a burst of extremely online people trying to build an audience at the initial stages of its lifecycle. Discord seems to be the only place that doesn't fall into this trap because it's basically private clubs, and not about seeking attention at all times.
caslon 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what action on your part caused the death threats?
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  Complaining about porn (mostly gay/trans/furry stuff, although even the straight kind is NOT something I want on my phone when idly scrolling on a bus or a train in public, or ever really) routinely ending in the default timeline, which is apparently a capital offense threatening the livelihood of sex workers and furry "artists".
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    I hate it when I manually opt in to adult content and then adult content shows up on my timeline. The fact that only way to avoid it is to just use the app as it is out of the box is a design flaw

duxup 3y ago

I've tried a few twitter alternatives (including Bluesky) as someone who hardly ever uses twitter anyway. I was a little disappointed how it just felt like ... more twitter. I'm browsing around finding mostly memes or outrage that doesn't have context to me. I fairly quickly get exhausted trying to find / curate content. I guess I should have expected it, but I hoped that somewhere a different network would have a different style or flavor. However, the content patterns that get engagement and etc seem ingrained in the participants no matter where you go. Personally I can't help but feel both left out, and not wanting to be a part of whatever these style of social media apps are. Having said that there's a lot of talk about twitter clones missing features, but for me I wonder if the content is the same, why would a significant number of people move anyway?

npunt 3y ago
Twitter clones thus far have all been cover bands with a different (speaker) stack. Focus seems to be entirely on the backend protocol side - important for decentralization but fixing only part of the problem. I haven't seen much in the way of innovation on the UX itself, which is what I'm really interested in. I guess its a mix of a) why mess with success, twitter-like design is proven to work, b) a lack of experimental startup product culture that's willing to try new things, c) not having good ideas, and d) just not enough time because they're focused on basics.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > which is what I'm really interested in. Whenever I see comments like these, my immediate thought is "How interested are you, if you had to put a dollar figure on it?" Also, you are missing alternative (e): availability bias. Maybe you haven't seen a lot of innovation around UX not because people are not trying, but because those who tried to experiment with different UX were aiming at such a niche that completely failed as social network?
  - duxup 3y ago
    >failed as social network Is that the case? Serious question, I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Is the market just messed up? Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)?

arthurcolle 3y ago

Literally so crazy I can't just get an invite, it's so stupid

epistasis 3y ago
Just emailed you one. I can't give them away... I have also decided to give up all social media like this until at least February, and the past week has been a big improvement for me
- arthurcolle 3y ago
  Que cute Sergio, thank you so much! Per our favorite chatcompletion model, Boas festas / Feliz Navidad!!! New social media profile, new me: https://bsky.app/profile/arthurcolle.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/arthurcolle.bsky.social

mullingitover 3y ago

Bluesky's big selling point is that it's an open protocol, but it's their own homegrown protocol that nobody else is using. Meanwhile Threads has working ActivityPub[1]. You can see threads posts on Mastodon. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-ac...

paulmd 3y ago
Bluesky considers lack of activitypub a feature. They don’t want push-content, they want local organic communities.
teamspirit 3y ago
I remember so many people who said, “yeah right, Threads will never connect to Mastodon,” and yet here we are. What a time to be alive?
- dylan604 3y ago
  oh boy. if we're marking "what a time to be alive" by having access to a social media platforms version of another social media platform accessible by a 3rd party wannabe social platform, then sheesh, give me the blue pill. i'd rather be part of the matrix.
madeofpalk 3y ago
In all fairness, while yes Bluesky so far has not yet lived up to their promise of decentralisation/federation, it’s still under development. It just hasn’t been built yet. Though, the whole blue sky stack is significantly more complicated than ActivityPub so I’m doubtful as many would actually set up “instances”.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > it’s still under development. It just hasn’t been built yet. Someone else was already first to market. Launching as an alternative that is half baked seems like really strange idea to me. Maybe they were trying to gain traction during the surge in Twitter hate, but if the thing you are asking them to jump ship to is a lesser product, only a tiny minority of them are going to stay. Half baked launches into a very well established market just seems like you'd be better off taking your investor's money and having grand ol' time in Vegas.

mikpanko 3y ago

Why is it taking Bluesky so long to launch basic features and allow more traffic? Are there some complexities related to using an open protocol?

cfiggers 3y ago
They seem to be an extremely small team.
mattl 3y ago
Basic features like what?
- raincole 3y ago
  Like signing up without an invitation.

jez 3y ago

After reading this post, I can't see the new Bluesky logo any other way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013

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brcmthrowaway 3y ago

This reminds me of Diaspora.. am I that old?

autoexec 3y ago

>JavaScript Required This is a heavily interactive web application, and JavaScript is required. Simple HTML interfaces are possible, but that is not what this is. Not for me I guess. When there's a nitter for bluesky (nuesky?) maybe I'll check that out. It looks like at least some of the text from the post is still visible maybe > ( 1.60 is rolling out now (2/5) Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login! You can finally share your quality posts with the group chat or in articles. If you don’t want the Bluesky app to show your posts to logged-out users, opt out in the Moderation tab. 2023-12-22T18:59:01.633Z)

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notnullorvoid 3y ago

Until I see what Bluesky's AT protocol federation looks like in practice, I'm not interested. Without federation it's basically Twitter with less users. And even after federation it might be Mastodon/ActivityPub with less users. Very disappointed in the direction they took to launch. Exclusive beta, no focus on decentralization despite that being the major selling point.

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jakebsky 3y ago
The Bluesky federation sandbox network is up and running as of months ago, which works exactly how the production network will work. The production network is also federated internally (i.e. Bluesky already runs 10 Personal Data Servers) to prove that it operates as expected. Quite a bit of the app itself is also federated: custom algorithms (feeds) are being operated by many third-party devs on their own servers, domain handles have been in use for a long time, and the API is completely open (all posts/likes, etc can be streamed from `wss://bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.subscribeRepos` in a permissionless way, see atproto.com[1] for details) It's possible to run a PDS (Personal Data Server)[2] in the dev sandbox. Federation for the production network is planned for early 2024. ASAP. 1. https://atproto.com https://atproto.com 2. https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/SANDBOX.md https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/SANDBOX.md

farhanhubble 3y ago

Don't know if I'm the only one but from a branding perspective Bluesky seems a very bland name.

Underphil 3y ago
It feels corporate to me. Probably because of that awful "blue sky thinking" doublespeak.

KomoD 3y ago

That took way too long, but I already consider Bluesky dead, they had the chance but the stupid "invite-only" system killed it (in my opinion) and then when invites actually started getting sent out I just didn't bother anymore and went back to Twitter

anotherevan 3y ago

RSS feeds of user accounts was another addition. They're a bit average though in that they don't have media (i.e., images) in the feed. I'll keep using https://bluestream.deno.dev/ https://bluestream.deno.dev/ for now.

dylan604 3y ago
Then just make it an MRSS feed. Seems very strange not to provide a feed with links to the media. Unless it's a deliberate crippling
- anotherevan 3y ago
  I assume you mean that Bluesky should make it a media RSS feed. I don't think it is something simple an end-user could do.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I thought you were saying the Bluesky was making content available via RSS, but crippled without media
    - anotherevan 3y ago
      Yes, they are not as useful without the media included.

franze 3y ago

Tried to sign up for bs. With valid invitation code. Got an error message after the final stage. Again and again and again. Social Media Companies that can't get their sign-up funnel in order have already failed.

deleted 3y ago
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jakebsky 3y ago
Sent you an email, in case you're willing to give some info we can use to investigate this. We're always willing to look into any issues like this. Thanks!
- AnonC 3y ago
  This is off topic on this point, but I wanted to point out a privacy issue with invites (as these codes are given out on forums like these to random strangers). The invite codes show which account was created with those to the person sending invites. I’d rather this be completely hidden (just saying that the code was used is enough) or give an option to the person signing up if they want to reveal their account to the person who invited them. Would it be possible for you to highlight this to the right people in the team?
  - jakebsky 3y ago
    Typically invites are used by people who are inviting people they know, in which case it's advantageous for them to be able to find each other. But you're right that there's an argument that it could work differently. We're planning to get rid of invites shortly, otherwise we might consider enhancements to the invite system to e.g. make this optional.
zappb 3y ago
Try to sign up to Instagram on a desktop browser using an email address. That was completely broken last time I checked.

haunter 3y ago

I follow like 30 accounts on Twitter and it’s a perfectly enclosed little bubble, I really only see what I want. But whenever I try Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads as a brand new account without anyone to follow it’s just same US politics shit. Trump, Trump bad, nazis, AOC, Trump, gender, trans rights, nazis, republicans, Trump, gender etc. This is what I see right now on Bluesky What’s Hot, this is what I see right now on Mastodon Explore. The fact that even Mastodon pushing the rage bait (“ These are posts from across the social web that are gaining traction today”) which is supposed to be the ‘healthy’ and ‘better’ social media site shows how deep problems we have. If really that’s what an average Joe and Jane sees when they just want to try out these services then no one wonder the world is going worse by each passing day.

booleandilemma 3y ago

It's ironic that a service called "Bluesky", a word that Merriam-Webster defines as meaning "characterized by unconstrained optimism or imagination", looks so boring and Twitter-like.

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gumballindie 3y ago

No followers, not following anyone, yet somehow this showed up on my feed: https://bsky.app/profile/minedoo.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/minedoo.bsky.social Yup. Bluesky is trash.

Toorkit 3y ago
Because furries? The last time I looked at the Mastodon federated timeline I was presented with belly fetish posts lol
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Not a fan of mastodon either. It looks as if forums and social networks are dominated by rejects and the fringe of society. Be it child looking anime fans, sexualised animal fetishists, propagandists, corporate shills, and so on. Feels more like a sewage rather than a highway of information.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

I have not paid much attention to Bsky and I doubt I will but from a quick glance it looks nearly identical to X. Is it basically an X clone that will be an alternative Twitter/X? Or is there a lot more magic going on? Why are people excited? (Mind you I dont spend much time on X either, so this is purely from looking at the two and comparing. )

prayze 3y ago

It took so long to get an invite code I unfortunately lost my interest.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

Seeing lots of comparisons to Mastodon, Threads, and XTwitter in this thread. I remember in the days of instant messaging, I had a single client (Adium for Mac OS X) which could talk to AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, etc. It gave me a unified buddy list, and a unified interface for messaging any of my friends, regardless of the underlying instant messaging provider. Is anyone working on a similar omniclient for Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky/XTwitter? If we get to the point where most users are using omniclients of this kind, that helps reduce network effects and lock-in. Seems like the Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky teams would have a strong incentive to collaborate on such a client, in order to reduce XTwitter network effects, essentially joining forces in their own unified network. (I imagine that XTwitter will block API access, at least in the short term.)

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Don't forget about https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/ either. For Mastodon in particular, people are always talking about the difficulty of getting started. Is there a way to put a porcelain experience on that? Imagine I just enter my credit card info and I have my own instance without having to worry about any sysadmin details. You could monetize the client by charging a small premium above and beyond the baseline server costs. I want an experience so porcelain that in order to create a new account, I enter my username and it automatically checks its availability across dozens of social sites, then registers me in as seamless a manner as possible. Then when I click post, it by default broadcasts that post across all the accounts I registered. I suppose this is probably similar to the existing interface for a product such as Hootsuite, no? Maybe the best starting point is check if there's an open-source Hootsuite competitor, then optimize the interface for end users.
devinivy 3y ago
Not exactly what you're describing, but https://brid.gy/ https://brid.gy/ is a pretty neat project in this space.

brycewray 3y ago

Still hoping for an official “Tweetdeck-ish” interface choice on the desktop. In the absence thereof, deck.blue isn’t too bad while skyfeed.app, although it seems more technically robust, isn’t exactly eye candy. I know there are others I haven’t yet tried; just would love to see Bluesky itself have something like Mastodon’s “Advanced Web Interface” option.

nikolay 3y ago

I love it, but there are not DMs, which is a showstopper.

AnonC 3y ago

I got an invite for Bluesky from a kind person on HN, but as someone who didn’t use Twitter, I didn’t have a sense of whom to follow. I discovered some nice artists and comics. Any suggestions on people who post nice stuff or comics or fun stuff would be welcome (I really don’t want to deal with political discussions or arguments that are meant to trigger outrage on a regular basis). Meanwhile, here are some invite codes (I’ll update this list if they’re used within HN’s edit window): bsky-social-xueut-35ahm bsky-social-25tsd-crmqc ~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used) ~~~bsky-social-xxxxx-xxxxx~~~ (used) Edit: This is my first time handing out invites. I don’t like how the invite system shows me which account on Bluesky was created using my invite code. I’d rather this be hidden from the person sending the invite or at least provide an option to the person signing up if they want their account to be disclosed to the person who invited them. In real life there are usually personal or professional connections with such events, but online these could be (and are) totally random strangers.

AnonC 3y ago
Update: all invites above have been used.

renegat0x0 3y ago

This is not a virtue. They have not yet reached enshittification point. It is not a dominant player that wants to protect its contents. They have nothing to protect.

mmcnl 3y ago

I think this is too little, too late. Threads is already filling in the void left by Twitter and has the advantage of the Instagram user base behind it.

slenk 3y ago

I just want an invite. I don't know why they are being so snobbish about it

glub103011 3y ago

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