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Bluesky Reaches 10M Accounts
- ColinWright 2y agoThe Mastodon User Count account suggests there are 15M accounts on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/113143345340883118 https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/11314334534088311... Mastodon Users @mastodonusercount@mastodon.social 15,438,893 accounts +209 in the last hour +2,542 in the last day +20,162 in the last week Sep 15, 2024, 21:00 Of course there are differences ... I would be pleased to hear first hand descriptions of them EDIT: I hereby withdraw everything I said about BSky. Based on the replies, clearly I'm completely wrong. I apologise for all inaccuracies.
- Kye 2y agoThis is nonsense. Bluesky is not a big shouting match. If you don't like the default algorithms you can pick your own, including chronological. If this is sincerely your actual, real experience with Bluesky then you use it in a very different way from all the people who are happy with it.
- BryantD 2y agoTo be completely fair, feed algorithms can be somewhat opaque. On the other hand, most of the feeds I follow are just picking up on keywords/emojis or include all posts from a specific list of people. So it depends to some degree on your choices.
- Kye 2y agoThat's true. I do wish the Discover algorithm were open, but I understand that can open it up to abuse. So far it mostly just shows me nice things. There was no point with Twitter's algorithmic feed when I could say that. I can't speak to any secret motivations but it seems like the folks running it care about making a nice place for people to hang out. We've seen how a desire to not be evil can clash with a desire to make money, but I remain optimistic.
- bschmidt1 2y ago> the folks running it care about making a nice place for people to hang out This is actually what I didn't like about bsky. I don't want the developer of software to inject their personal social biases into the platform, and thought one of the main points of decentralization was to mitigate this.
- timeon 2y agoOne thing I do not understand about @mastodonusercount stats is: while total number of accounts significantly increased in last year or two, 'thousand toots per hour' is still oscillating in the same range.
- Kye 2y agoMastodon seems to have a retention problem, but still has a healthy daily new user count. I noticed this back when it hit close to 2m active then slid down to 600k. If they can figure out how to fix retention then it might start growing meaningfully again. https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon
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- BadHumans 2y ago> Bluesky is one big shouting match with opaque algorithms partly deciding what you will see, whereas Mastodon-the-Platform is a loose alliance of multiple communities, where what you say will only be seen by people in your community Bsky feed is chronological with optional algorithmic feeds you can choose from so this doesn't sound true. Mastodon is also chronological with trending post on the homepage. I imagine the internals of both platforms are more similar than you might imagine.
- riffic 2y agoMastodon is not just Mastodon alone. The network consists of something more fundamental: ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
- verdverm 2y agoSimilarly for Bluesky and ATProto https://atproto.com/ https://atproto.com/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BryantD 2y agoIf you don't subscribe to any feeds, Bluesky is also a place where what you say will only be seen by people who follow you and people who follow those who repost your posts. Whether or not either of them is a shouting match depends a lot on your choice of who to follow. This is not to say there aren't significant differences, many generated by the federation choices Mastodon (and Bluesky) have made, as you also noted.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoRather than misinformed dick-measuring between the two, we should be glad that the next generation of social media traffic is distributed among many services and not centralized on one that would inevitably devolve into Twitter-like patterns.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cpncrunch 2y agoWow, so low. That explains why its still a ghost own compared to xitter.
- cpncrunch 2y agoWhy downvote facts?
- Diti 2y agoFor context (if you’re wondering why that post is written in both English and Brazilian Portuguese), Twitter/X is currently blocked in Brazil [1], which prompted users to massively flock to Bluesky’s main frontend, bsky.app. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil
- neilv 2y agoDid they also flock to the Fediverse? If not, why not?
- l72 2y agoIt seems weird to me that a media organizations like the New York times doesn’t set up a mastodon server for their journalists. Governments would also be a good option. You obviously wouldn’t let people outside the organization register an account, but anyone can read, and if you want to comment or follow, sign up to any of the free federated servers.
- znkynz 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoIt’s a valid point. Renting servers sucks, setting up mastodon sucks. When do we see “Hosted mastodon AAS”?
- skybrian 2y agoIt would be nice to also know seven-day actives on BlueSky, but I don’t know where to look or where to ask.
- Kye 2y ago3.2 million https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/bluesky-day.html https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/bluesky-day.html
- verdverm 2y agoMore stats sites https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://clearsky.app/ https://clearsky.app/
- skybrian 2y agoThank you! Edit: how do you find out about such things?
- Kye 2y ago>> "Edit: how do you find out about such things?" Being there when the deep magics are written. These kinds of tools come up if you follow the developers and people interested in decentralized social media.
- openrisk 2y agoAt some point some "serious" accounts need to take these emerging new decentralized social media seriously and setup shop there. You cant claim any sort of moral integrity when you engage with your audience on platforms that treat them as product.
- verdverm 2y agoA number of people have already increased their social platform presence by adding Threads and Bluesky. The moral integrity comes when they leave their large following as the platform diverges from their values
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoSo the migration is starting. You have quite a few journalists and news feeds that post on bluesky. Phil Lewis and Aaron Rupar (two fairly notable US liberal journalists that have substantial followings on twitter) are on bluesky and now that video has started rolling out they have become more active again. And not a "serious" set of accounts by any means but the consensus from the vtuber community (which is to be honest one of the massive communities on twitter) is that they'd start moving over to bluesky once video support and some degree of moderation were in place. I suspect a lot of the other fairly cohesive niches on twitter will start looking at bluesky now for the same reasons.
- Kye 2y agoSignificant portions of Brazil's government and media are on there as well, including the president and one of the top news programs in the country. The latter caused a huge spike of growth all on its own by putting its handle in broadcasts. https://bsky.app/profile/lula.com.br https://bsky.app/profile/lula.com.br https://bsky.app/profile/jnoficial.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/jnoficial.bsky.social And the most important: Duolingo. https://bsky.app/profile/duolingobrasil.com.br https://bsky.app/profile/duolingobrasil.com.br
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoHow many bots?
- nunobrito 2y agoAdvertisement disclaimer. Bluesky is a VC-funded corporate network that expects return on investment while saying it is open. Up until the present date that same company made it difficult for anyone to run their own server, only permitting to self-host their own data rather than the promoted decentralized open data: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080334/bluesky-self-hosting-servers-data-federated https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080334/bluesky-self-hos... It also restricts anyone from adding their algorithms or even create new clients to access the data. It is a _defacto_ walled garden that somehow gets promoted on mainstream media. The same media that largely ignored open platforms, or when mentioning them has adopted a negative tone. That media has forgot that the same brazilian person they called names is now living in a country under effective control with walled gardens: https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-fiatjaf-nostr-donation-2024-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-fiatjaf-nostr-do... The same ignored Nostr counts today with +700 volunteer-based servers that are decentralized and permit anyone, anywhere, to publish their own texts: https://nostr.watch/relays/find https://nostr.watch/relays/find HN, it is time to make a stand if you want to keep the internet free.
- Kye 2y agoAnyone can make a feed (algorithm). There are multiple independent projects that can access and put stuff on PDSes. There are lots of clients. They just added OAuth to make it easier for them. https://docs.bsky.app/showcase https://docs.bsky.app/showcase I have no idea where you got your information but you should treat that source as unreliable.
- mrinfinitiesx 2y agoAgreed. Make a stand. Open and free internet is the last bastion. Look at everything. We're not the god damned product. We're not advertisement data. I'm not a fucking ROI. We're human beings, and we enjoy the internet, hacker culture. We're visionaries. We tinker. We build. We share. Seeing what the internet grew to from the 90s to now, is ...well you see it.
- bschmidt1 2y agoIt went from being a potentially infinite public creative/informational space to a privately owned strip mall with a few boring shops where you have to show your ID to get in. Same thing happens with any neat physical location too - gets commercialized to hell, becomes totally ruined and boring by last-movers, commandeered by academics who act like they invented it, and productized by capitalists who want to turn any/all freely available blessings into expensive yet shoddy products (plus ads). What once presented a true and superior alternative to the mainstream firehose of advertising and propaganda became "Fox News Presents The Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign Show (Sponsored by SquareSpace), With Your Hosts Kim Kardashian and Jake Paul!" just like the radio, film, etc. - it gets commercialized/ruined. We need a new thing, bsky aint it.
- datavirtue 2y agoBefore it could load I hit back. Honest feedback.
- mightypirate 2y ago[dead]
- nickpeterson 2y agoMaybe I should use this instead of Threads. I had an account there, 'deepsleepcountsheep' and then it randomly got banned/turned off and it keeps asking me to prove my identify. I submitted my state drivers license but apparently they can't use that? Insane honestly, not really sure what triggered it, maybe the icloud private relay? Anyways, I think I'll try either this or mastodon.
- bhhaskin 2y agoMastodon is the way, and it federates with Threads.
- renewedrebecca 2y agoOnly if you're on the right (or wrong) server.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fsflover 2y agoWhich is your own choice.
- guessmyname 2y ago> I submitted my state drivers license […] Wait what? Why did you willingly give Facebook a copy of your driver license?! That makes no sense at all. There is absolutely no social account in existence that is so important to follow Facebook’s requirements (or any other social network for what is worth). No the president’s account, not the vice-president, not the bishop of Rome, no one’s account is that important to hand over your private information.
- perihelions 2y ago- "No the president’s account, not the vice-president, not the bishop of Rome, no one’s account is that important" What about your friends'?
- ggm 2y agoI think it's interesting how people do sometimes complain about the echo chamber, tumbleweeds of moving from one 'so big it's infinity' space, to another one which is a smaller 'so big it's infinity' yet still immeasurably larger than your normal circuit. Yes, your favourite filmstar you follow isn't there. Yes, nor are 10 people you know. But you know what? nine million, nine hundred thousand, nine hundred and eighty-eight other people are there. If you're bored, why not reach out and say hello to every one of them? (not yourself: that would be wierd) I had a brief period 3 decades ago where on some electronic fabric (I forget which) I was contacted by random coders in Peru, to try and help debug a problem. I have no idea who these guys were, but we established a basis to communicate for a while. I think thats a lot cooler than Justin Bieber's latest tattoo drop. I think it's like "but is he the one" -the belief there is only one, only one group, only one fabric to talk to people, only one way, is .. well it's silly. There are lots of ways to talk to people.
- yowayb 2y agoSince I started to notice the value of my online presence, I’ve been spending a bit more time going down rabbit holes, and frankly I’m not sure we’ve truly lost the magic of the internet/bbs of decades ago.
- OKRainbowKid 2y agoWould you mind elaborating? Specifically what you mean with the "value of your online presence", and perhaps with an example of a rabbit hole in which you found the "old internet"? I've recently been thinking about how much the internet changed since I started using it in the early 2000s and how it mostly lost its magic, so I'm really interested in how/where you still find it.
- doe_eyes 2y agoI think that's a reductionist view. Platforms like Twitter are pretty unique in that unlike most other social media, you don't have well-defined communities organized around topics or locations. On Reddit or Nextdoor, you join to discuss specific interests, and that serves as "social glue" that lets you make new acquittances along the way. The same goes for HN, by the way. But on Twitter / Bluesky / Threads / Mastodon, you probably don't have anything in common with another user picked at random. The most common (non-commercial) motivation for joining is probably to just hang out with the people you already know from elsewhere, and then expand your social network very gradually and conservatively, mostly based on who they know. So it doesn't matter that there's 10M strangers over there if none of your buddies use it.
- joshdavham 2y agoSeeing this submission just reminded me that there are a number of X alternatives growing at the moment. Of the alternatives are there any that you use and recommend?
- Terretta 2y agoSkip Mastodon, BlueSky, or Threads, join cohost by the anti software software club, a software company that hates the software industry: https://cohost.org/rc/welcome https://cohost.org/rc/welcome // On second thought, cohost sign-ups are closed, as it's shutting down end of year. Turns out Twitter alternatives are hard to keep going, even if all you're doing is changing your name from Twitter to X.
- neves 2y agoBlueSky is excellent. I just miss some international commentators. I'd love to have a tool to notify when they enter BlueSky.
- qntmfred 2y agoDoes anybody else at this point want to mostly stop posting on async text-based services anyways? Honestly, I'd rather just hang out on Google Meet all day and chill with a handful of besties. We can still all share our thoughts and other things we find interesting on the web, but if we're gonna all be terminally online, we might as well at least bring as much of the human experience back into it as we can.
- bschmidt1 2y ago> if we're gonna all be terminally online, we might as well at least bring as much of the human experience back into it as we can So Myspace, Foursquare? (Not being witty, I loved that era)
- qntmfred 2y agoI mostly mean talking to each other to our faces with our voices. But I recognize the sentiment you're referring to. I think the stagnation of social media in the last 10 years, combined with the clear societal harms it has caused in some cases, has given many of us who have been around the block a few times reason to reflect on some of the ancient success stories and even yearn for their lost appeals.
- brianpan 2y agoIs it the async part that's a problem? Or is it that chilling with besties is all we ever really wanted? I was pretty happy with Facebook in 2007 when it was posting pictures and making stupid jokes with my actual friends (not the whole world and whatever is trending).
- qntmfred 2y agoAsync has a lot of benefits, but I think if 10x as much of the content we engage with asynchronously was originally live interaction between people we have a personal bond with (or at least can recognize the humanity in from a distance), we would notice a positive difference and want the internet to be more like that.
- 2y ago
- beginning_end 2y agoIt's been really fun seeing the growth over the last year. Tons of people and fun/interesting posts. Feels like the early days of Twitter.
- dangerboysteve 2y agoAnd what are the daily active users ?
- Kye 2y agoStable around 1.6m. https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.dev/bsky_users_total.html https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.d...
- cpoeseethe 2y ago[flagged]
- remon 2y agoNetflix should make a documentary on why people in this modern day and age still gravitate towards Twitter-esque social media platforms. It has been shown over and over that they make people less happy, less productive, more stressed and (ironically) less social.
- viccis 2y agoIt's often just a place to go when your preferred one dies. A lot of tumblr users moved there for this reason in the mid-2010s. I moved there when reddit killed its third party (read: the only usable) apps and went through its own cultural death: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36040282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36040282
- pipeline_peak 2y ago>If you're bored, why not reach out and say hello to every one of them? Because that's not how social media works and you know it. People want to connect with people they know either personally or via media. The majority of Brazilian users aren't using it by choice. Using social media shouldn't be some philanthropic effort, that's how you end up with the desktop Linux. Linux is successful because it made all those commercial Unix vendors obsolete, what does Blue Sky or any of these fediverse things have to offer other than a refugee camp? They don't have important users, therefore they havent made Twitter obsolete.
- lakomen 2y agoHow does it pay its costs?