3 ms·

For reference, X has 611 million active users as of April 2024. So Bluesky is almost 2% as large.

by SeanAnderson 2y ago

terminalbraid 2y ago
Are bots considered "active users" in your statistic?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
parasti 2y ago
Where is that number from?
mrtksn 2y ago
I see very low engagement and half of my followers are obvious fakes. Although I previously said that Twitter as a product has improved, the content has become horrendous and I wouldn't be surprised if it shuts down after the US elections. I even subscribed to to premium, but only to use Grok. It's not only alright for most task, its also the only LLM integrated with the current events feed(which is twitter) and its actually very useful to get informed about recent events. Also, the app still has most of the interesting people but it feels like wandering into the most disgusting part of the town just to go to this cool club and I kind of feel like people wish those people move somewhere else. I don't know, maybe Elon should just put a pop-ups with the few talking points that he keeps pushing for so I can accept and hide those from my timeline? Something like "I agree that the following people are horrible: ..." then "I agree that only Trump can save us from those" and be done with it. It's just boring, the same BS over and over again just so I can keep up with a few interesting people and current events.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  An ML algorithm with a news feed attached seems kind of interesting, like if it was going to try and make predictions about what’s going on and about to happen, it would be able to use the actual events later that day as a cost function, or something like that, haha.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    AFAIK its one of its kind, Perplexity doesn't appear to have access to most recent stuff. The prediction engine is interesting idea.
- notnullorvoid 2y ago
  > the content has become horrendous Do you attribute this to bots? I agree that content has gone down hill quite a bit. Though personally I don't think it has anything to do with bots. People I used to follow and respect have devolved into posting memes and engagement bait. When there is discussion it usually ends up as 2 sides taking past eachother. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with social media feeds in general, information overload, and providing means of fast gratification. It really does feel like social media is making people stupider, myself included. At the same time it's also providing me some sense of interest aligned community aligned that I can't really get elsewhere. I'm sure others feel the same. It's possible that I'm wrong about social media making us stupid, and very possible that it's just illuminating the stupidity that was always there. Either way I wish it were reversed and trending towards increase in highlighting smart discussion. (Side note, I've also tried Mastodon and found that there was equal or greater stupidity in the communities there)
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    No, I don’t attribute it to bots. IMHO it’s the algorithm that optimizes for the most outrageous stuff and the Elon’s politics. I’ve also seen that people I follow because I enjoy their stuff also start getting much less views and engagements and I attribute that to not tweeting on the topics the algorithm is pushing for. It almost feels like the site has an idea on what the content should be and those providing the “correct” content are awarded.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  > I even subscribed to to premium, but only to use Grok. It's not only alright for most task, its also the only LLM integrated with the current events feed(which is twitter) and its actually very useful to get informed about recent events. In April of this year Grok hallucinated a missile attack https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-ai-chatbot-grok-fake-news-trending-explore?test_uuid=01iI2GpryXngy77uIpA3Y4B&test_variant=a https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-ai-chatbot-...
ck2 2y ago
yes but imagine +1% per week growth, even if 1% per month that is a serious chunk twitter had the advantage of nothing else like it in the SMS days and at least half of those 600 million are bots, I don't think anyone disagrees I'm actually impressed so far how Bluesky works right out of the box, it's like oldschool twitter and I didn't even have to break out any adblock rules or stylus modifications I think people and outlets just need to start cross-posting and see how the traction goes, there is nothing to lose unless Musk orders automated scans to ban people.
- elashri 2y ago
  > and at least half of those 600 million are bots, I don't think anyone disagrees Not that I disagree (or agree) but I would like to know (out of curiosity) how would you (or the source of this information) got the number > 300M bot accounts. Do this include inactive accounts? Does this include people with multiple accounts? And how would you determine that without access to the database? Is there a tools that can help you derive this number based on some statistical analysis? I would be very interested in the details. Hint: I am not trying to start a debate around X policies or Musk. I just find that it could be interesting the way we can get into this number if it is supported by any rigorous methodology.
  - ck2 2y ago
    there have been several serious studies over the years trying to determine the bot count but of course the api lockout by Musk now makes it impossible * https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/04/09/bots-in-the-twittersphere/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/04/09/bots-in-the-... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter-bots-republican-primary-debate-tweets-increase https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter... * https://www.google.com/search?q=study+of+bots+on+twitter https://www.google.com/search?q=study+of+bots+on+twitter but it is clear the signal-to-noise ratio on twitter is now unmanageable especially after tools like blocking are taken away
    - elashri 2y ago
      That's interesting although from a quick skimming it seems that these studies are focused on the activity of the bot accounts. This might give a hint on their relevance but due to the fact that their activity is probably above average it doesn't tell much about their percentage of accounts (in absolute numbers). So I am not sure if there is a studies that shows that something near 50% of accounts would be bots. The number is huge and that's why it is interesting for me to see if it is true and how could we determine that. But I also don't think that the blocking change here would affect signal to noise ratio. You still cannot engage with accounts who blocked you but can see their public posts which you could do by logging out (before X required account to show tweets) and create alt account for that. Blocking access to the already public posts/tweets didn't make sense anyway. And I don't think this is even restricted to X or any particular website.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gitaarik 2y ago
What is considered an "active" user? From a lot of people I understand they still have their Xitter account, but aren't engaging much in it anymore, sometimes checking in, but generally on a declining trend.
EasyMark 2y ago
From my experience, at least 2/3 of them are bots or propaganda accounts, at least the ones in the firehouse stream and the ones that comment under “news” posts

For reference, X has 611 million active users as of April 2024. So Bluesky is almost 2% as large.

terminalbraid 2y ago

Are bots considered "active users" in your statistic?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

parasti 2y ago

Where is that number from?

mrtksn 2y ago

I see very low engagement and half of my followers are obvious fakes. Although I previously said that Twitter as a product has improved, the content has become horrendous and I wouldn't be surprised if it shuts down after the US elections. I even subscribed to to premium, but only to use Grok. It's not only alright for most task, its also the only LLM integrated with the current events feed(which is twitter) and its actually very useful to get informed about recent events. Also, the app still has most of the interesting people but it feels like wandering into the most disgusting part of the town just to go to this cool club and I kind of feel like people wish those people move somewhere else. I don't know, maybe Elon should just put a pop-ups with the few talking points that he keeps pushing for so I can accept and hide those from my timeline? Something like "I agree that the following people are horrible: ..." then "I agree that only Trump can save us from those" and be done with it. It's just boring, the same BS over and over again just so I can keep up with a few interesting people and current events.

bee_rider 2y ago
An ML algorithm with a news feed attached seems kind of interesting, like if it was going to try and make predictions about what’s going on and about to happen, it would be able to use the actual events later that day as a cost function, or something like that, haha.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  AFAIK its one of its kind, Perplexity doesn't appear to have access to most recent stuff. The prediction engine is interesting idea.
notnullorvoid 2y ago
> the content has become horrendous Do you attribute this to bots? I agree that content has gone down hill quite a bit. Though personally I don't think it has anything to do with bots. People I used to follow and respect have devolved into posting memes and engagement bait. When there is discussion it usually ends up as 2 sides taking past eachother. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with social media feeds in general, information overload, and providing means of fast gratification. It really does feel like social media is making people stupider, myself included. At the same time it's also providing me some sense of interest aligned community aligned that I can't really get elsewhere. I'm sure others feel the same. It's possible that I'm wrong about social media making us stupid, and very possible that it's just illuminating the stupidity that was always there. Either way I wish it were reversed and trending towards increase in highlighting smart discussion. (Side note, I've also tried Mastodon and found that there was equal or greater stupidity in the communities there)
- mrtksn 2y ago
  No, I don’t attribute it to bots. IMHO it’s the algorithm that optimizes for the most outrageous stuff and the Elon’s politics. I’ve also seen that people I follow because I enjoy their stuff also start getting much less views and engagements and I attribute that to not tweeting on the topics the algorithm is pushing for. It almost feels like the site has an idea on what the content should be and those providing the “correct” content are awarded.
jrflowers 2y ago
> I even subscribed to to premium, but only to use Grok. It's not only alright for most task, its also the only LLM integrated with the current events feed(which is twitter) and its actually very useful to get informed about recent events. In April of this year Grok hallucinated a missile attack https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-ai-chatbot-grok-fake-news-trending-explore?test_uuid=01iI2GpryXngy77uIpA3Y4B&test_variant=a https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-ai-chatbot-...

ck2 2y ago

yes but imagine +1% per week growth, even if 1% per month that is a serious chunk twitter had the advantage of nothing else like it in the SMS days and at least half of those 600 million are bots, I don't think anyone disagrees I'm actually impressed so far how Bluesky works right out of the box, it's like oldschool twitter and I didn't even have to break out any adblock rules or stylus modifications I think people and outlets just need to start cross-posting and see how the traction goes, there is nothing to lose unless Musk orders automated scans to ban people.

elashri 2y ago
> and at least half of those 600 million are bots, I don't think anyone disagrees Not that I disagree (or agree) but I would like to know (out of curiosity) how would you (or the source of this information) got the number > 300M bot accounts. Do this include inactive accounts? Does this include people with multiple accounts? And how would you determine that without access to the database? Is there a tools that can help you derive this number based on some statistical analysis? I would be very interested in the details. Hint: I am not trying to start a debate around X policies or Musk. I just find that it could be interesting the way we can get into this number if it is supported by any rigorous methodology.
- ck2 2y ago
  there have been several serious studies over the years trying to determine the bot count but of course the api lockout by Musk now makes it impossible * https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/04/09/bots-in-the-twittersphere/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/04/09/bots-in-the-... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter-bots-republican-primary-debate-tweets-increase https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter... * https://www.google.com/search?q=study+of+bots+on+twitter https://www.google.com/search?q=study+of+bots+on+twitter but it is clear the signal-to-noise ratio on twitter is now unmanageable especially after tools like blocking are taken away
  - elashri 2y ago
    That's interesting although from a quick skimming it seems that these studies are focused on the activity of the bot accounts. This might give a hint on their relevance but due to the fact that their activity is probably above average it doesn't tell much about their percentage of accounts (in absolute numbers). So I am not sure if there is a studies that shows that something near 50% of accounts would be bots. The number is huge and that's why it is interesting for me to see if it is true and how could we determine that. But I also don't think that the blocking change here would affect signal to noise ratio. You still cannot engage with accounts who blocked you but can see their public posts which you could do by logging out (before X required account to show tweets) and create alt account for that. Blocking access to the already public posts/tweets didn't make sense anyway. And I don't think this is even restricted to X or any particular website.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gitaarik 2y ago

What is considered an "active" user? From a lot of people I understand they still have their Xitter account, but aren't engaging much in it anymore, sometimes checking in, but generally on a declining trend.

EasyMark 2y ago

From my experience, at least 2/3 of them are bots or propaganda accounts, at least the ones in the firehouse stream and the ones that comment under “news” posts