12 ms·

Bluesky has launched RSS feeds

324 points by kieto 3y ago

Mortiffer 3y ago
[flagged]
- codetrotter 3y ago
  OP link or the Bluesky RSS feed? OP blog post loads for me. Edit: OP article seems to be unstable for some. Read a copy of it here instead if it doesn’t load for you: https://archive.is/DiT6I https://archive.is/DiT6I
gumby 3y ago
Wish posts that require a login would at least appear in the feed. That would be like RSS feeds from a site with a paywall. If I logged into BS from my RSS reader I'd be able to see them.
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  Now that you mention it Bluesky might actually find some adoption if they allowed monetizing private feeds (Is twitter doing this? I know you can monetize via subscriptions but AFAIK it's not a paywall, more of a tip). They'd compete for marketshare with patreon, substack and onlyfans combined.
  - brundolf 3y ago
    The Bluesky protocol doesn't really allow non-public posts (which is why blocking doesn't work the way some people would like it to, and why there can't be features like Circles) I believe Twitter does support paid private posts that you can subscribe to, but I've never seen anyone I follow use it
  - ivanmontillam 3y ago
    There are Telegram bots that do paywall private channels, a few examples I can mention: - InviteMember (accepts most payment methods, including Stripe) - CanalFans (accepts only USDT, and it's only available in Spanish, South American focused) The way they work is that you add them to your private channel and the bot executes the sale, invites the member and kicks them out if they don't renew their subscription. Of course they take a commission on the sales.
    - mananaysiempre 3y ago
      On a small scale, it’s probably also quite straightforward to roll your own using Telegram’s built-in bot payments API (which acts as a gateway to a number of processors including Stripe). Not sure if one should, but it’s a possibility.
      - ivanmontillam 3y ago
        I've looked into it from the technical side, and it's not that straightforward. I mean, yes, it's on the scope of a toy project, but it's definitely not on the scope of a weekend project. My software development estimation looks like at least 2-3 months with at least 3 hours daily on the IDE (on the Subscription Management side, ignoring the payment gateway, that as you mentioned: it's on Telegram already).
  - gumby 3y ago
    Substack has this working. I have some paid substack blogs in my RSS feed. Some give you part of the post in the feed and then you have to click on the post to see the rest (in you’re a subscriber, else not). Others just say “click here to read” and again, if you are a subscriber (I am) you see the post.
    - atdrummond 3y ago
      I’m surprised they don’t just use private RSS feeds for posts like they do for podcasts.
      - gumby 3y ago
        This approach acts like a sales tool, which I think is better all around.
- consumer451 3y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of janky. Because in Bsky, there is a user setting to ~"ask clients to respect login required." However, there are things like firesky.tv which access AT Protocol directly and I believe don't respect that setting. You can make a user RSS feed from firesky by using Filter and setting a user handle. At least I think I am responding to your issue...
kevincox 3y ago
The fact that links are broken is a pretty serious flaw. But hopefully that will be fixed soon.
- EMCymatics 3y ago
  Yikes. Who knows when I'll remember to look them up again.
asdfqwertzxcv 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
stevebmark 3y ago
This doesn't really matter. The Bluesky app has very few features, it's still invite only which limits the number of users, and engagement and active users are low. It's on a trajectory to death right now. The core of Bluesky, relay/BGS, still isn't proven. Over a year after launch there hasn't been significant progress in these areas.
- olah_1 3y ago
  I said 8 months ago that the invite system would be the death of BlueSky[1]. I think that’s true. Just like clubhouse, but the time they actually open it up, hype is gone. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35754628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35754628
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    Letting in the eternal September from Twitter would be its death. Threads can be about hype.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Why do they still have it? They are super late to the "twitter replacement" game. The only thing carrying them is jack Dorsey's name and that's slowly slipping into irrelevance.
    - Retr0id 3y ago
      The invite system is ostensibly rate limiter and moderation tool, rather than a hype machine. They've mentioned getting rid of it soon. Maybe they "missed the boat" in some sense, but I'd rather see steady and sustainable growth. Dorsey hasn't been doing them any favours for a long time, he's all but publicly disavowed it, deleting his account to focus on nostr. He's still on the board of directors last I heard, but if his public statements are anything to go by, he's not actively involved.
      - xmprt 3y ago
        With a social network, steady and sustainable is usually not an option. If they don't have a strong launch when they remove the restrictions they'll fade into irrelevance within a few weeks. Threads had a surprisingly strong launch and it still has an uphill battle to climb if it wants to challenge Twitter and that's in spite of all the ways Twitter is attempting to self-sabotage.
gtirloni 3y ago
Like every Mastodon user apparently: https://www.rssboard.org/news/211/every-mastodon-user-has-rss-feed https://www.rssboard.org/news/211/every-mastodon-user-has-rs...
- panzi 3y ago
  Yeah, would be even better if it where atom feeds with pagination, IMO.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
keyle 3y ago
[flagged]
- Retr0id 3y ago
  You're worried about RSS getting extinguished?
  - captn3m0 3y ago
    Twitter used to have RSS feeds as well, long time ago.
    - Retr0id 3y ago
      Did it harm RSS as a whole, when they stopped?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  It's a small dev team and they're very responsive and frank about their limitations/capacity/priorities. It's a web 1.0 community feel although thre's about 3m users.
christiangenco 3y ago
[flagged]
- consumer451 3y ago
  Initially, I had some No True Scotsman type interactions which I didn't enjoy one bit, but I stuck with it, and now it's where I spend a decent amount of my time. There is a good representation of scientists, journalists, and other groups which I enjoy. It's now >3M users, where as when it was the hot new thing, I think it was <1M fwiw.
  - PKop 3y ago
    What is it about journalists that you enjoy? It's hard for me to think of a group I'd like to hear less from. They don't seem all that impressive or interesting. In any case, based on what OP describes, and the groups you mentioned, is it fair to say it's a hothouse of left wing political discourse?
    - consumer451 3y ago
      > What is it about journalists that you enjoy? Their job is to seek the truth, many fail, but the goal is admirable. I actually push myself to read views that I don't entirely agree with, within reason. > In any case, based on what OP describes, and the groups you mentioned, is it fair to say it's a hothouse of left wing political discourse? Compared to X? Oh, yes. Personally, I am a non-US centrist, which I think makes me pretty-left on most issues from a 2024 US political POV. Lots of gay and trans people who are not being attacked as well, so that's nice. There is a large pro-EU/anti-authoritarian contingent, which I very much enjoy more than anything.
- tptacek 3y ago
  That's a question that's hard to ask without pattern matching with a lot of tedious, dark stuff, and nobody on social networks is thinking carefully or applying even a fraction of the energy the HN guidelines ask, so you're just getting pattern matched. There's not much to do about it. Complaining isn't going to change it. It works in similar ways in all communities --- even here, though the specific patterns might occasionally be different. I'm not rooting for Mastodon (I think Mastodon has the better story, and, for me, much better apps). And it is the most cliquish of the three major alternatives in the space. But this specific criticism isn't very probative. Mastodon > Bluesky > Twitter.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
[flagged]
- djur 3y ago
  Bluesky doesn't have ads.
  - Fabricio20 3y ago
    Yet.
    - Retr0id 3y ago
      It is plausible that they'd put ads in the (open-source) official client, but the way the protocol works, it'd be hard for them to force out 3rd party clients (a la reddit).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rodgerd 3y ago
  > Jack is all aware of That's great, but he's not a director of bsky or involved in management, nor does he post.
  - greyface- 3y ago
    This is underselling his lack of involvement - he completely deleted his account last year.
    - adaboese 3y ago
      Who is running the show?
      - greyface- 3y ago
        Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky Social, PBC.
anticorporate 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
panzi 3y ago
I for one don't understand why one would switch to yet another corporate controlled social network. Have people learned nothing?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- agoodusername63 3y ago
  Because "user first" orgs like cohost have learned the hard way that the money math doesn't work out when your service gets even a few users. Lots of hidden costs to running social media. Then you have the other end, mastodon and federation. At the very least, solves the user culture problem somewhat but does not solve the hidden costs of hosting and moderation at all. Especially if you get a sudden influx of users. IMO VC money, corporate money, whatever you want to call it, is more or less required to run social media at scale.
panzi 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
greyface- 3y ago
I noticed this shortly after the loginwall came down, and am subscribed to a few feeds. The post mentions the lack of links, but what I find more frustrating is the lack of embedded media (or indication thereof) on posts where it's present. This is also a problem with Mastodon feeds.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Check it out: https://bsky.app/settings/external-embeds https://bsky.app/settings/external-embeds
  - greyface- 3y ago
    Thanks! I didn't know about this, have toggled some of them on, and will see how it changes things. I think this is limited to the web client, though - I don't see how it could impact RSS feed generation, since those are being fetched logged-out by my RSS reader. Mostly I'm frustrated by the lack of <img>s in RSS <description>s on posts that contain photos.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      It is very new. And yeah that does sound frustrating, maybe file a bug?
      - pfraze 3y ago
        yeah please do https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/
- anotherevan 3y ago
  I'm using https://bluestream.deno.dev/ https://bluestream.deno.dev/ which does include embedded media. I've one test user I'm following where I have an RSS feed from Bluestream and one directly with Bluesky. When they reach parity I'll swap over.
- bad_user 3y ago
joanne123 3y ago
[dead]
PaulHoule 3y ago
It beats Facebook's plans to integrate w/ ActivityPub because they actually did it but I will point out some advantages of ActivityPub over RSS because polling with RSS is terribly inefficient as you have to keep polling a file over and over again asking for changes whereas ActivityPub lets you ask for what you haven't read already.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Threads has already started testing bi-directional follows with ActivityPub. And the plan is to rollout a "mixed Fediverse and Threads experience where you will be able to follow Mastodon users within Threads, and reply to them and like them" by late 2024. http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/01/how-threads-will-integrate-with-the-fediverse/ http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/01/how-threads-will-inte...
loceng 3y ago
What's Bluesky's revenue stream? Ads?
- abhibeckert 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's "we will figure that out later".
  - methodical 3y ago
    A bit presumptive but the answer to that is likely ads. Unless they try the whole premium subscription model like Twitter (X) and realize nobody cares that much to pay $5/mo for social media.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  it's a Jack Dorsey initiative so I'm sure it is "cross-subsidization through Square's investors and balance sheet"
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Jack doesn't own the company, the employees do. He is on the board though.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    > Bluesky’s business model must be fundamentally different — we are a public social network and our code is all open source, so we have no “moat” when it comes to data. That's such a bullshit claim. The entity that runs the servers where the data is stored always has a moat. They can aggressively rate limit scraping and simply refuse to provide dumps, and suddenly, they are the gatekeepers to everything that actually matters. Open source has nothing to do with this.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
p-e-w 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly—for example with the flamebait in your last sentence here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
heavyset_go 3y ago
I love RSS, but I predict that these will be removed at some point. With RSS, you can't gauge impressions and engagement with content, and you can't force all sorts of ads into people's feeds.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- petercooper 3y ago
  I suspect that's why they're not including links in the feed content. You're forced to go to their site to click through.
evbogue 3y ago
Bluesky launching RSS feeds is a direct result of Bluesky not being a distributed protocol. Yes, I know, it's aiming to be federated. But there are fundamental issues with the protocol they decided to go with that is keeping them from creating a social network that actually has self-authenticating posts. And all of this starts with their DIDs being a substring of the hash of your first post? It just doesn't make sense. In these kinds of systems you hash the data and sign the hash, then you can send a message that can be authenticated anywhere. And thus, RSS is one answer I guess. No one ever asked for an RSS feed of a Scuttlebot log back before that network was scuttled. Why? because you could authenticate the sender and the posts on your own computer.
- whyrusleeping 3y ago
  While individual posts are not self-authenticating (largely because it makes deletion much more complicated) all of a users posts are in a merkle-tree that it itself self-authenticating. A Post and the merkle-proof to the root its a complete verifiable entity.
  - evbogue 3y ago
    Our community can have the best of both worlds here. We can have the users sign their posts with a keypair on their own computer, and allow faux delete, and authenticate a merkle-tree back to the root. Delete can't be real because someone will always have their phone out there ready to screenshot your post. Imagine the @ protocol was ```<ed25519 Public Key><Signature>``` and that opened to ``` <timestamp><ed25519 Public Key><Previous Post Hash><Data Hash> ``` And the previous post hash could point to a post before a delete if we consider deletes to be real. The hashes are used to lookup the post content, which we could also send with the message for the sake of convenience. For key rotation we just need to sign a message pointing to our new keypair, no federated servers required! "My new key is EVxe89AeRwmTT0hfrT7sHe0wAuzvH9Yvg9TFUgqPh4M="
    - holmesworcester 3y ago
      The fact that someone can screenshot something does not make deletion not real. Deletion is still valuable for many threat models and day-to-day situations humans run into. As someone working on a p2p app that has done a lot of user research, I see it as a really good sign when a federated/p2p systems prioritize deletion, because I know based on my own research that it's something users care about and ask for.
konart 3y ago
Logged into BS after getting an invite and immediately realised what X (twitter) users from the US where talking about when they mention political "dispute" being a big driver of the social network. Goodbye BS! Even looking at the endless stream of xxx-coint posts on nostr is not that exuasting.
- ilikehurdles 3y ago
  [flagged]
ulrischa 3y ago
The title displayed is not good At the moment: https://bsky.app/profile/ulrischa.bsky.social/post/3khanuwleii2k https://bsky.app/profile/ulrischa.bsky.social/post/3khanuwle... But all in all a nice feature
renegat0x0 3y ago
This is a little bit off topic, but Openrss page information about how to obtain RSS link is poor. "To find the RSS Feed for a website, just navigate to the website and the RSS feed for it is usually located at the domain of the website followed by /rss.xml, /rss or /atom.xml". Recently on HN there were infos that pages provide meta links to atom. This is cleaner solution than guessing. There was also Firefox extension 'want my rss', etc etc. This should be better explained on RSS site.
- jraph 3y ago
  Indeed. WordPress runs a big part of the web and is probably more likely for blogs, which is what you are likely to want to follow with RSS, and it's located at /feed. At this point, I just use CTRL+U and search "rss" and "atom", hoping to find a the corresponding <meta /> tag. It's a shame Firefox does not automatically display a feed icon anymore, it would be much better if I want to tell non technical people about RSS. Installing an extension is workable but it's also an additional step.
- vintagedave 3y ago
  Yes. It's common practice for them to be called rss.xml and atom.xml but they can be anything you want. I use a `link` tag on my site -- I am not an expert here, but it seems applicable[1], RSS etc readers find it, and `meta` is documented only for use for cases that elements like `link` cannot represent.[2] So I'm confident enough this is correct-ish enough to write in a comment on HN :) <link href="https://example.com/rss.xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for example.com" type="application/rss+xml"/> <link href="https://example.com/atom.xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for example.com" type="application/atom+xml"/> [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/li... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/meta https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/me...
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Back in the day, browsers would have native RSS support. Somewhere around the URL bar of the favourites bar you'd have a little RSS button that would take you to the RSS feed of your choice, as configured by the <link> tags in the HTML. Most browsers have removed RSS, so now you need to either read the HTML (which sucks even if you're familiar with it) or just guess. If you want to instruct the general audience on how to get RSS feeds these days, and you don't want to link to browser extensions (because only a few mobile browsers support them), then "just add /atom.xml" seems like the most foolproof solution to me.
_teyd 3y ago
I finally tried it and as a new member literally every recommended post was US culture wars stuff. Is that the normal experience, or am I getting some kind of bias based on who I received an invite from?
- jddj 3y ago
  It was billed as a twitter alternative
- GaggiX 3y ago
  Finally a real Twitter competitor.
- MoSattler 3y ago
  I am so tired of it. I wish there was an AI filter for social media that let me block out this stuff.
  - finnjohnsen2 3y ago
    When USA reelect Trump my willingness to pay for such a service is infinite
- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  Thanks for the warning
- unpopularopp 3y ago
  And unfortunately I see the same shit on Mastodon as well 24/7…
  - scopeh 3y ago
    I don't think there is any algorithm magic in mastodon. your feed is who you follow and who they boost. maybe its time for you to have a clean up.
    - 3y ago
Moldoteck 3y ago
After registering, almost every post was related to nazi substack drama... I don't get it. I've also used Threads and it's a much more chilled app...
- 0xEF 3y ago
  My wife and I get IG ads for threads that are full of racist, bigoted posts by its users. We have no idea why, since we never click on those sorts of post, and our IG accounts are 100% hobby centric between our own posts and follows. As such, I have not touched Threads and keep telling IG the ads are not relevant to my interests. Presumably that is not your experience with it. It's wild how easily an algorithm can skew our perception.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    I suppose IG ads are not recommended based on your interests, rather on what's more popular in some circles. I get some ads too and these are totally unrelated to my classic Threads feed. In the feed I mostly get travel-photo posts, some posts related to renewables, some related to uk brexit(lol why, I'm not in uk) and some from my country, but most of them are photography/travel related
- consumer451 3y ago
  > nazi substack drama. That's because there are a decent amount of indie journalists there and a lot of them are moving away.
renegade-otter 3y ago
After being addicted to Twitter to a point where I could not focus on anything (as someone who was born in Ukraine, all I did was doom scrolling), I've decided that the only winning move is not to play. No Threads or BlueSky for me. I am OUT.
- leokennis 3y ago
  There was a happy time around 2018 or so, where I followed a limited group of about 50 Twitter accounts. Using Tweetbot, I could keep up with the timeline in about ~20 minutes per day. I would see interesting conversations and links, some humor and almost no anger. It all went downhill since then.
- askonomm 3y ago
  I have come to the same conclusion. I still feel a bit out of place every now and then without any social media, but if I need to chat - I just open up whatsapp and talk to my actual friends instead.
- croisillon 3y ago
  i have been addicted too, trying to quit several times, and went cold turkey when musk took over
  - kome 3y ago
    I suggest a strategy to reduce Twitter addiction: limit yourself to following no more than 100 accounts and avoid using the "For You" tab.
    - coldpie 3y ago
      A better strategy: just delete your account. I promise you won't miss it after a week.
      - Snow_Falls 3y ago
        Delete your account, remove the apps. Block it on the network level if you need to. Just add any friction you can to using it.
huhtenberg 3y ago
Signed up a couple of months ago and it was barren. Went back yesterday and it's still that way. There's literally nothing to read and nobody interesting to follow there.
- hocuspocus 3y ago
  Yeah I don't really get the invite-only strategy during the height of Twitter's self-inflicted woes. Very dumb move. Threads is already much better overall despite the delayed launch in Europe.

324 points by kieto 3y ago

Mortiffer 3y ago

[flagged]

codetrotter 3y ago
OP link or the Bluesky RSS feed? OP blog post loads for me. Edit: OP article seems to be unstable for some. Read a copy of it here instead if it doesn’t load for you: https://archive.is/DiT6I https://archive.is/DiT6I

gumby 3y ago

Wish posts that require a login would at least appear in the feed. That would be like RSS feeds from a site with a paywall. If I logged into BS from my RSS reader I'd be able to see them.

jazzyjackson 3y ago
Now that you mention it Bluesky might actually find some adoption if they allowed monetizing private feeds (Is twitter doing this? I know you can monetize via subscriptions but AFAIK it's not a paywall, more of a tip). They'd compete for marketshare with patreon, substack and onlyfans combined.
- brundolf 3y ago
  The Bluesky protocol doesn't really allow non-public posts (which is why blocking doesn't work the way some people would like it to, and why there can't be features like Circles) I believe Twitter does support paid private posts that you can subscribe to, but I've never seen anyone I follow use it
- ivanmontillam 3y ago
  There are Telegram bots that do paywall private channels, a few examples I can mention: - InviteMember (accepts most payment methods, including Stripe) - CanalFans (accepts only USDT, and it's only available in Spanish, South American focused) The way they work is that you add them to your private channel and the bot executes the sale, invites the member and kicks them out if they don't renew their subscription. Of course they take a commission on the sales.
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    On a small scale, it’s probably also quite straightforward to roll your own using Telegram’s built-in bot payments API (which acts as a gateway to a number of processors including Stripe). Not sure if one should, but it’s a possibility.
    - ivanmontillam 3y ago
      I've looked into it from the technical side, and it's not that straightforward. I mean, yes, it's on the scope of a toy project, but it's definitely not on the scope of a weekend project. My software development estimation looks like at least 2-3 months with at least 3 hours daily on the IDE (on the Subscription Management side, ignoring the payment gateway, that as you mentioned: it's on Telegram already).
- gumby 3y ago
  Substack has this working. I have some paid substack blogs in my RSS feed. Some give you part of the post in the feed and then you have to click on the post to see the rest (in you’re a subscriber, else not). Others just say “click here to read” and again, if you are a subscriber (I am) you see the post.
  - atdrummond 3y ago
    I’m surprised they don’t just use private RSS feeds for posts like they do for podcasts.
    - gumby 3y ago
      This approach acts like a sales tool, which I think is better all around.
consumer451 3y ago
Yeah, that's kind of janky. Because in Bsky, there is a user setting to ~"ask clients to respect login required." However, there are things like firesky.tv which access AT Protocol directly and I believe don't respect that setting. You can make a user RSS feed from firesky by using Filter and setting a user handle. At least I think I am responding to your issue...

kevincox 3y ago

The fact that links are broken is a pretty serious flaw. But hopefully that will be fixed soon.

EMCymatics 3y ago
Yikes. Who knows when I'll remember to look them up again.

asdfqwertzxcv 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

stevebmark 3y ago

This doesn't really matter. The Bluesky app has very few features, it's still invite only which limits the number of users, and engagement and active users are low. It's on a trajectory to death right now. The core of Bluesky, relay/BGS, still isn't proven. Over a year after launch there hasn't been significant progress in these areas.

olah_1 3y ago
I said 8 months ago that the invite system would be the death of BlueSky[1]. I think that’s true. Just like clubhouse, but the time they actually open it up, hype is gone. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35754628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35754628
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Letting in the eternal September from Twitter would be its death. Threads can be about hype.
- cogman10 3y ago
  Why do they still have it? They are super late to the "twitter replacement" game. The only thing carrying them is jack Dorsey's name and that's slowly slipping into irrelevance.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    The invite system is ostensibly rate limiter and moderation tool, rather than a hype machine. They've mentioned getting rid of it soon. Maybe they "missed the boat" in some sense, but I'd rather see steady and sustainable growth. Dorsey hasn't been doing them any favours for a long time, he's all but publicly disavowed it, deleting his account to focus on nostr. He's still on the board of directors last I heard, but if his public statements are anything to go by, he's not actively involved.
    - xmprt 3y ago
      With a social network, steady and sustainable is usually not an option. If they don't have a strong launch when they remove the restrictions they'll fade into irrelevance within a few weeks. Threads had a surprisingly strong launch and it still has an uphill battle to climb if it wants to challenge Twitter and that's in spite of all the ways Twitter is attempting to self-sabotage.

gtirloni 3y ago

Like every Mastodon user apparently: https://www.rssboard.org/news/211/every-mastodon-user-has-rss-feed https://www.rssboard.org/news/211/every-mastodon-user-has-rs...

panzi 3y ago
Yeah, would be even better if it where atom feeds with pagination, IMO.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

keyle 3y ago

[flagged]

Retr0id 3y ago
You're worried about RSS getting extinguished?
- captn3m0 3y ago
  Twitter used to have RSS feeds as well, long time ago.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    Did it harm RSS as a whole, when they stopped?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 3y ago
It's a small dev team and they're very responsive and frank about their limitations/capacity/priorities. It's a web 1.0 community feel although thre's about 3m users.

christiangenco 3y ago

[flagged]

consumer451 3y ago
Initially, I had some No True Scotsman type interactions which I didn't enjoy one bit, but I stuck with it, and now it's where I spend a decent amount of my time. There is a good representation of scientists, journalists, and other groups which I enjoy. It's now >3M users, where as when it was the hot new thing, I think it was <1M fwiw.
- PKop 3y ago
  What is it about journalists that you enjoy? It's hard for me to think of a group I'd like to hear less from. They don't seem all that impressive or interesting. In any case, based on what OP describes, and the groups you mentioned, is it fair to say it's a hothouse of left wing political discourse?
  - consumer451 3y ago
    > What is it about journalists that you enjoy? Their job is to seek the truth, many fail, but the goal is admirable. I actually push myself to read views that I don't entirely agree with, within reason. > In any case, based on what OP describes, and the groups you mentioned, is it fair to say it's a hothouse of left wing political discourse? Compared to X? Oh, yes. Personally, I am a non-US centrist, which I think makes me pretty-left on most issues from a 2024 US political POV. Lots of gay and trans people who are not being attacked as well, so that's nice. There is a large pro-EU/anti-authoritarian contingent, which I very much enjoy more than anything.
tptacek 3y ago
That's a question that's hard to ask without pattern matching with a lot of tedious, dark stuff, and nobody on social networks is thinking carefully or applying even a fraction of the energy the HN guidelines ask, so you're just getting pattern matched. There's not much to do about it. Complaining isn't going to change it. It works in similar ways in all communities --- even here, though the specific patterns might occasionally be different. I'm not rooting for Mastodon (I think Mastodon has the better story, and, for me, much better apps). And it is the most cliquish of the three major alternatives in the space. But this specific criticism isn't very probative. Mastodon > Bluesky > Twitter.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

[flagged]

djur 3y ago
Bluesky doesn't have ads.
- Fabricio20 3y ago
  Yet.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    It is plausible that they'd put ads in the (open-source) official client, but the way the protocol works, it'd be hard for them to force out 3rd party clients (a la reddit).
deleted 3y ago
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rodgerd 3y ago
> Jack is all aware of That's great, but he's not a director of bsky or involved in management, nor does he post.
- greyface- 3y ago
  This is underselling his lack of involvement - he completely deleted his account last year.
  - adaboese 3y ago
    Who is running the show?
    - greyface- 3y ago
      Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky Social, PBC.

anticorporate 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
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panzi 3y ago

I for one don't understand why one would switch to yet another corporate controlled social network. Have people learned nothing?

deleted 3y ago
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agoodusername63 3y ago
Because "user first" orgs like cohost have learned the hard way that the money math doesn't work out when your service gets even a few users. Lots of hidden costs to running social media. Then you have the other end, mastodon and federation. At the very least, solves the user culture problem somewhat but does not solve the hidden costs of hosting and moderation at all. Especially if you get a sudden influx of users. IMO VC money, corporate money, whatever you want to call it, is more or less required to run social media at scale.

panzi 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
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greyface- 3y ago

I noticed this shortly after the loginwall came down, and am subscribed to a few feeds. The post mentions the lack of links, but what I find more frustrating is the lack of embedded media (or indication thereof) on posts where it's present. This is also a problem with Mastodon feeds.

steveklabnik 3y ago
Check it out: https://bsky.app/settings/external-embeds https://bsky.app/settings/external-embeds
- greyface- 3y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know about this, have toggled some of them on, and will see how it changes things. I think this is limited to the web client, though - I don't see how it could impact RSS feed generation, since those are being fetched logged-out by my RSS reader. Mostly I'm frustrated by the lack of <img>s in RSS <description>s on posts that contain photos.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    It is very new. And yeah that does sound frustrating, maybe file a bug?
    - pfraze 3y ago
      yeah please do https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/ https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/
anotherevan 3y ago
I'm using https://bluestream.deno.dev/ https://bluestream.deno.dev/ which does include embedded media. I've one test user I'm following where I have an RSS feed from Bluestream and one directly with Bluesky. When they reach parity I'll swap over.
bad_user 3y ago

joanne123 3y ago

[dead]

PaulHoule 3y ago

It beats Facebook's plans to integrate w/ ActivityPub because they actually did it but I will point out some advantages of ActivityPub over RSS because polling with RSS is terribly inefficient as you have to keep polling a file over and over again asking for changes whereas ActivityPub lets you ask for what you haven't read already.

threeseed 3y ago
Threads has already started testing bi-directional follows with ActivityPub. And the plan is to rollout a "mixed Fediverse and Threads experience where you will be able to follow Mastodon users within Threads, and reply to them and like them" by late 2024. http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/01/how-threads-will-integrate-with-the-fediverse/ http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/01/how-threads-will-inte...

loceng 3y ago

What's Bluesky's revenue stream? Ads?

abhibeckert 3y ago
I'm pretty sure it's "we will figure that out later".
- methodical 3y ago
  A bit presumptive but the answer to that is likely ads. Unless they try the whole premium subscription model like Twitter (X) and realize nobody cares that much to pay $5/mo for social media.
hackernewds 3y ago
it's a Jack Dorsey initiative so I'm sure it is "cross-subsidization through Square's investors and balance sheet"
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Jack doesn't own the company, the employees do. He is on the board though.
steveklabnik 3y ago
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Bluesky’s business model must be fundamentally different — we are a public social network and our code is all open source, so we have no “moat” when it comes to data. That's such a bullshit claim. The entity that runs the servers where the data is stored always has a moat. They can aggressively rate limit scraping and simply refuse to provide dumps, and suddenly, they are the gatekeepers to everything that actually matters. Open source has nothing to do with this.

deleted 3y ago

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p-e-w 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly—for example with the flamebait in your last sentence here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

heavyset_go 3y ago

I love RSS, but I predict that these will be removed at some point. With RSS, you can't gauge impressions and engagement with content, and you can't force all sorts of ads into people's feeds.

deleted 3y ago
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petercooper 3y ago
I suspect that's why they're not including links in the feed content. You're forced to go to their site to click through.

evbogue 3y ago

Bluesky launching RSS feeds is a direct result of Bluesky not being a distributed protocol. Yes, I know, it's aiming to be federated. But there are fundamental issues with the protocol they decided to go with that is keeping them from creating a social network that actually has self-authenticating posts. And all of this starts with their DIDs being a substring of the hash of your first post? It just doesn't make sense. In these kinds of systems you hash the data and sign the hash, then you can send a message that can be authenticated anywhere. And thus, RSS is one answer I guess. No one ever asked for an RSS feed of a Scuttlebot log back before that network was scuttled. Why? because you could authenticate the sender and the posts on your own computer.

whyrusleeping 3y ago
While individual posts are not self-authenticating (largely because it makes deletion much more complicated) all of a users posts are in a merkle-tree that it itself self-authenticating. A Post and the merkle-proof to the root its a complete verifiable entity.
- evbogue 3y ago
  Our community can have the best of both worlds here. We can have the users sign their posts with a keypair on their own computer, and allow faux delete, and authenticate a merkle-tree back to the root. Delete can't be real because someone will always have their phone out there ready to screenshot your post. Imagine the @ protocol was ```<ed25519 Public Key><Signature>``` and that opened to ``` <timestamp><ed25519 Public Key><Previous Post Hash><Data Hash> ``` And the previous post hash could point to a post before a delete if we consider deletes to be real. The hashes are used to lookup the post content, which we could also send with the message for the sake of convenience. For key rotation we just need to sign a message pointing to our new keypair, no federated servers required! "My new key is EVxe89AeRwmTT0hfrT7sHe0wAuzvH9Yvg9TFUgqPh4M="
  - holmesworcester 3y ago
    The fact that someone can screenshot something does not make deletion not real. Deletion is still valuable for many threat models and day-to-day situations humans run into. As someone working on a p2p app that has done a lot of user research, I see it as a really good sign when a federated/p2p systems prioritize deletion, because I know based on my own research that it's something users care about and ask for.

konart 3y ago

Logged into BS after getting an invite and immediately realised what X (twitter) users from the US where talking about when they mention political "dispute" being a big driver of the social network. Goodbye BS! Even looking at the endless stream of xxx-coint posts on nostr is not that exuasting.

ilikehurdles 3y ago
[flagged]

ulrischa 3y ago

The title displayed is not good At the moment: https://bsky.app/profile/ulrischa.bsky.social/post/3khanuwleii2k https://bsky.app/profile/ulrischa.bsky.social/post/3khanuwle... But all in all a nice feature

renegat0x0 3y ago

This is a little bit off topic, but Openrss page information about how to obtain RSS link is poor. "To find the RSS Feed for a website, just navigate to the website and the RSS feed for it is usually located at the domain of the website followed by /rss.xml, /rss or /atom.xml". Recently on HN there were infos that pages provide meta links to atom. This is cleaner solution than guessing. There was also Firefox extension 'want my rss', etc etc. This should be better explained on RSS site.

jraph 3y ago
Indeed. WordPress runs a big part of the web and is probably more likely for blogs, which is what you are likely to want to follow with RSS, and it's located at /feed. At this point, I just use CTRL+U and search "rss" and "atom", hoping to find a the corresponding <meta /> tag. It's a shame Firefox does not automatically display a feed icon anymore, it would be much better if I want to tell non technical people about RSS. Installing an extension is workable but it's also an additional step.
vintagedave 3y ago
Yes. It's common practice for them to be called rss.xml and atom.xml but they can be anything you want. I use a `link` tag on my site -- I am not an expert here, but it seems applicable[1], RSS etc readers find it, and `meta` is documented only for use for cases that elements like `link` cannot represent.[2] So I'm confident enough this is correct-ish enough to write in a comment on HN :) <link href="https://example.com/rss.xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for example.com" type="application/rss+xml"/> <link href="https://example.com/atom.xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for example.com" type="application/atom+xml"/> [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/li... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/meta https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/me...
jeroenhd 3y ago
Back in the day, browsers would have native RSS support. Somewhere around the URL bar of the favourites bar you'd have a little RSS button that would take you to the RSS feed of your choice, as configured by the <link> tags in the HTML. Most browsers have removed RSS, so now you need to either read the HTML (which sucks even if you're familiar with it) or just guess. If you want to instruct the general audience on how to get RSS feeds these days, and you don't want to link to browser extensions (because only a few mobile browsers support them), then "just add /atom.xml" seems like the most foolproof solution to me.

_teyd 3y ago

I finally tried it and as a new member literally every recommended post was US culture wars stuff. Is that the normal experience, or am I getting some kind of bias based on who I received an invite from?

jddj 3y ago
It was billed as a twitter alternative
GaggiX 3y ago
Finally a real Twitter competitor.
MoSattler 3y ago
I am so tired of it. I wish there was an AI filter for social media that let me block out this stuff.
- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  When USA reelect Trump my willingness to pay for such a service is infinite
finnjohnsen2 3y ago
Thanks for the warning
unpopularopp 3y ago
And unfortunately I see the same shit on Mastodon as well 24/7…
- scopeh 3y ago
  I don't think there is any algorithm magic in mastodon. your feed is who you follow and who they boost. maybe its time for you to have a clean up.
  - 3y ago

Moldoteck 3y ago

After registering, almost every post was related to nazi substack drama... I don't get it. I've also used Threads and it's a much more chilled app...

0xEF 3y ago
My wife and I get IG ads for threads that are full of racist, bigoted posts by its users. We have no idea why, since we never click on those sorts of post, and our IG accounts are 100% hobby centric between our own posts and follows. As such, I have not touched Threads and keep telling IG the ads are not relevant to my interests. Presumably that is not your experience with it. It's wild how easily an algorithm can skew our perception.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  I suppose IG ads are not recommended based on your interests, rather on what's more popular in some circles. I get some ads too and these are totally unrelated to my classic Threads feed. In the feed I mostly get travel-photo posts, some posts related to renewables, some related to uk brexit(lol why, I'm not in uk) and some from my country, but most of them are photography/travel related
consumer451 3y ago
> nazi substack drama. That's because there are a decent amount of indie journalists there and a lot of them are moving away.

renegade-otter 3y ago

After being addicted to Twitter to a point where I could not focus on anything (as someone who was born in Ukraine, all I did was doom scrolling), I've decided that the only winning move is not to play. No Threads or BlueSky for me. I am OUT.

leokennis 3y ago
There was a happy time around 2018 or so, where I followed a limited group of about 50 Twitter accounts. Using Tweetbot, I could keep up with the timeline in about ~20 minutes per day. I would see interesting conversations and links, some humor and almost no anger. It all went downhill since then.
askonomm 3y ago
I have come to the same conclusion. I still feel a bit out of place every now and then without any social media, but if I need to chat - I just open up whatsapp and talk to my actual friends instead.
croisillon 3y ago
i have been addicted too, trying to quit several times, and went cold turkey when musk took over
- kome 3y ago
  I suggest a strategy to reduce Twitter addiction: limit yourself to following no more than 100 accounts and avoid using the "For You" tab.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    A better strategy: just delete your account. I promise you won't miss it after a week.
    - Snow_Falls 3y ago
      Delete your account, remove the apps. Block it on the network level if you need to. Just add any friction you can to using it.

huhtenberg 3y ago

Signed up a couple of months ago and it was barren. Went back yesterday and it's still that way. There's literally nothing to read and nobody interesting to follow there.

hocuspocus 3y ago
Yeah I don't really get the invite-only strategy during the height of Twitter's self-inflicted woes. Very dumb move. Threads is already much better overall despite the delayed launch in Europe.