6 ms·

1M people have joined Bluesky in the last day

125 points by davidbarker 2y ago

andrewstuart 2y ago
Why would this be any better or worse than Twitter? Won’t it be the same with fewer but growing number of users?
- Arnt 2y ago
  It's oddly different. I think the reasons are subtle, but exist. I know one technical difference: if someone quote-tweets to dunk on you, you can stop it. There must be more like that, because the effect is readily noticeable.
  - wildpeaks 2y ago
    It doesn't stop the dunking because people will quickly adjust to use screenshots instead of detachable quote-tweets, but you're less likely to stumble on it, everyone remains in their bubble.
    - teamonkey 2y ago
      Although it’s strongly left-leaning at the moment it’s not exclusively that. I’ve seen some conversations where the “bubbles” (as you say) crossed, which would have exploded on both Twitter and Mastodon. Being able to cut out people when they start screaming and being abusive definitely helps to maintain a more chill atmosphere.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      It adds _friction_ to the process, though. Never underestimate the laziness of annoying internet people.
    - Arnt 2y ago
      Whatever's good enough to preserve the atmosphere is good enough.
- yen223 2y ago
  For a side project I created a new account on X and on Bluesky, both before the election. Bluesky asks what my interests are. I said software engineering, science and tech. Bluesky showed a lot of posts of cool space photos. X asks me to follow an account from a list. I chose NASA. Out of curiosity I checked out the "For you" tab on this brand new account. I did not get recommended space photos. X pushed a lot of political posts, some bordering on hate speech (one used the n-word). I don't quite know what explains the differences between the new-account experiences, but I had a much better time on Bluesky. I don't know if this will last, or if Bluesky is destined to follow in Twitter's footsteps once more people start joining, but I think right now Bluesky is in a good spot.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Did you try Mastodon?
    - yen223 2y ago
      No. I should probably give it a go (I have a mastodon account from 2017(!), but there was so little activity back then I think I just forgot it was there.)
- rsynnott 2y ago
  - No pay-for-attention model. - Third party clients available. - Blocklists and other more sophisticated custom moderation available. - Threads and profiles accessible to non-logged-in people (note that you can read the linked post and its replies without being logged in; on Twitter you at minimum couldn't see the replies, and depending on the account/phase of moon might just get an error for the actual post.) - Less deranged leadership (at least now that Dorsey has flounced off). - Blocking works.
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    For now. I was a private alpha tester "when it was cool" but I get the feel they're taking the discord approach of things. I predict that in a year you will soon be charged for uploading videos and or something of the likes. Last week I deleted my account. Now proud to be 99.8% (HN, LinkedIn) social network free.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      Yeah, their plans for monetisation seem to be along those lines, vs Twitter's pay-for-attention thing.
    - chucke1992 2y ago
      I am personally curious into what Linked will devolve eventually.
      - xnorswap 2y ago
        Is linkedin not already in a devolved state?
      - rsynnott 2y ago
        It's hard to imagine it being more off-putting than it already is.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        The only useful part is the Rolodex of past co-workers and bosses to message when you’re looking for a job or looking for someone to hire. As long as they don’t ruin that, it can’t get worse than it already is, because nothing else about it matters.
- _fizz_buzz_ 2y ago
  The owner of bluesky doesn't artifically inject themselves on top of your feed.
- rbits 2y ago
  People can't pay to force themselves to the top of the replies.
satvikpendem 2y ago
When I joined it, just as when I joined Mastodon, most of what I saw was just anti-Twitter and anti-Musk content, which I didn't really care to read about, either for or against both of them. It might just be who I was following but the people I followed were similar in both Twitter and Bluesky / Mastodon, mostly indie hackers and other small time SaaS founders, and even these people started posting a lot of anti-Twitter stuff, more than even talking about their own products. On Twitter, the same types of people just...didn't give a shit about any of the drama and I actually learned a lot about product building from their threads. It seems like if you start a platform mostly as a reaction to another platform, you're gonna get the same sort of social media bubble, only of the opposite variety. That's why I still use Twitter currently, I just don't see the same issue that other people seem to have, and that's likely because I don't engage in politics or respond to trolls on there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 3adawi 2y ago
  it's starting to change now - definitely give it another spin in a week or so - a lot of organic non-musk/twitter content there now
- purplethinking 2y ago
  It will take a lot to break the network effect of X, probably more so than many other platforms, because it's very detrimental to their reach (and income/revenue share) for people with a lot of followers to move. So the important people will mostly stay, and they will attract back the people who leave, we've seen this a couple of cycles. Contrast that to something like Facebook. It had large network effects too, but all it takes is a few of your best friends switching at the same time, and nobody is losing a lot of reach by leaving. So they keep posting to both, but that takes work to keep up.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > the important people will mostly stay, and they will attract back the people who leave Important people on the left (broadly, not just lefties) are starting to leave. I think Kara Swisher just deleted her Twitter and migrated to Threads.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
I don't really do any twitter style social media but just from checking the occasional post I can tell it's taking off because angry right wing trolls have started appearing in the replies. I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site. One thing that Bluesky has over Twitter is the first-party concept of a moderation list; people can maintain lists of accounts, and people who trust those lists can use them to mass-mute/block the people on the lists. This actually used to be a somewhat common user-driven behaviour on Twitter (I once managed to offend Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter, back when he was still a darling of the far-right, and use of mass-block-lists was the only way to remove the hordes of angry teenagers from my at-mentions), but it was always clunky due to lack of first-party support, and post-Musk it became increasingly difficult with the death of the API.
wildpeaks 2y ago
As much as I hoped Mastodon to win (even backed their Patreon for a year), they kept underestimating the onboarding friction and now that the general audience was ready to switch, of course they went for the twitter clone that is easy to join and looks familiar.
- badgersnake 2y ago
  This is true. The trouble is, I don't see anything preventing it having all the same problems. I actually like Mastodon because it feels a bit more like the old internet. I'm thinking maybe onboarding friction is a feature not a bug.
- vinay427 2y ago
  As an anecdote, an online comment responding to someone asking if their choice of server matters (e.g. if their Mastodon account would be visible to someone using another server) was roughly "no, as long as your servers federate with each other." I would be able to parse that, but it seems rather out-of-touch for trying to attract the bulk of Twitter users. Meanwhile, Bluesky offers a de facto server with some (lesser?) amount of decentralization that's largely invisible to end users.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Yes, it's almost as if the general populace actually like centralization, even as many tech people on HN don't want to believe it.
    - financetechbro 2y ago
      “Liking it” is a stretch, I’m sure most normal people don’t have a real opinion on the subject; they just want to use whatever is frictionless and easy to understand
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        I should've said "prefer" rather than "like" then, as it's not a conscious understanding of centralization vs decentralization but that the centralized one is nicer and easier for people to use.
maxehmookau 2y ago
Maybe the world would be better if we just didn't have a service that allows everyone to shout whatever is on their mind in to the internet void? I'm glad X is dying; is a replacement really needed?
- bilekas 2y ago
  > Maybe the world would be better if we just didn't have a service that allows everyone to shout whatever is on their mind in to the internet void? The older I get and the more syndical I seem, the more I agree with this. The problem is its no longer just "the internet void". That would suggest that nobody ever reads some of the nonsense. It should have been obvious though when you give everyone an opinion that their ramblings are some kind of 'insight' and should be heard. It's exhausting, I hope the next stage of social media is it's boycott. /rant
  - mingus88 2y ago
    I remember the backlash to livejournal among the web forum community that I frequented over a decade ago. Little did we all know that in just a few years the entire internet would pivot to the most inane, short-form, self centered and low information content possible, and that most people would become addicted to it.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  Seems like many people disagree, but at least a few of us know this is correct. More people will learn the same lessons eventually, though not likely enough people to stop history from repeating.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Personally, I enjoyed old!Twitter, and am glad that there are two (or charitably three, but I don't really _get_ Threads) viable replacements. No need for you to use it, naturally, but I'm glad it's there.
- pixxel 2y ago
  Forums. Back to forums. Heavily administered/modded, stay on topic, small communities. No, not (sub)Reddit.
raesene9 2y ago
Whilst it's still developing I think Bluesky is doing quite a lot of things right. Specifically the starter packs and lists make it easy to find the kind of content you're interested in and the openness to third party integrations and API mean that people can easily build cool adjacent services. One small example I liked of this is the list of Kubernetes org members https://bit.ly/k8s-bsky https://bit.ly/k8s-bsky which is updated automatically based on Github profiles with Blue Sky links in them, who are in the org.
- huijzer 2y ago
  Is the link correct? It's behind a login wall.
  - raesene9 2y ago
    Seems to be, think you need to be logged in to Blue Sky to see it.
osigurdson 2y ago
The problem with X is, even if Elon is totally committed to free speech (I believe he really is) the perception is hard to shake as he is very active politically. Maybe this is why tradition media has usually had a political leaning.
- lores 2y ago
  He bans journalists and others who criticise him. Why do you think he is committed to free speech, rather than speech he likes?
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
  - marcusverus 2y ago
    He bans journalists?
  - cal85 2y ago
    That's troubling to hear. Can you give an example of a journalist he has banned?
    - cbHXBY1D 2y ago
      https://newrepublic.com/post/186423/elon-musk-x-suspends-journalist-klippenstein-leaked-jd-vance-documents https://newrepublic.com/post/186423/elon-musk-x-suspends-jou... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-temporary-ban-journalist-accounts-raises-alarm-rcna133084 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-temporary-ban-jo...
  - elforce002 2y ago
    Who did he ban?
    - rsynnott 2y ago
ryandvm 2y ago
I joined shortly after it was apparent that Twitter was turning into 4chan. Bit of a ghost town at first, but in the last few months it turned into a perfectly suitable replacement for what Twitter used to be. Then after the election I deleted all my social media accounts. I'm taking the next 2 years as a mental health break. I decided staying on top of which political out groups are being shat upon on a daily basis wasn't worth the the mental toll it was taking. I'll see you at the polls in 2 years.
- sho_hn 2y ago
  So I've mostly sat out on social media in the past 20 years - I never hopped onto the Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, anything bandwagons - and I conclude I've been absolutely fine missing the minute-to-minute beat. I certainly have no problem keeping up with the times vs. other friends, nor have I accomplished any less, nor diversified my activities or knowledge any less. Everything of true, lasting value gets repeated by friends in group chats (my preferred online social fix), or referenced in articles, and reaches me soon enough. Social media is the text equivalent of mindlessly scrolling TikTok/YouTube Shorts. Can be entertaining (and entertainment is important), but is mostly just a waste of time.
  - SirFatty 2y ago
    Sure, from that aspect it makes sense. But there are companies who use Twitter, Discord, Facebook, et al for support and notifications (which I'm not a fan of). It's hard to avoid in those situations.
    - phil21 2y ago
      Seems pretty easy to avoid those situations to me? I've never had a Twitter or Facebook account, tend to participate in the modern economy at least as much as the average person if not a lot more, and never once have wished I could tweet at a company for some reason or the other. I'm sure I'm missing something - but I'm also equally as sure that it's a net gain in my life vs. a loss. It's quite possible to interact with nearly every company out there without using social media.
rmoriz 2y ago
Bluesky aka "this time it's different". I found my home in the Fediverse.
libertarian1 2y ago
[flagged]
- baq 2y ago
  only cows don't change their mind
herdcall 2y ago
Is there anyone here who uses Bluesky for its own sake rather than protesting against Twitter/Musk/etc.? Trying to understand if it have any inherent pros in terms of design or operation. IMO all these platforms thrive on network effects and their value grows exponentially as their size grows.
- Dudelander 2y ago
  The main advantages are the lack of bots (for now) and the lack of the paid blue checks. The former is a major improvement because it improves the overall quality of the tweets.
- golf1052 2y ago
  My major reason for using it is how open the platform is. I run a community project that involves posting pictures to multiple social media sites at once. Posting to Twitter was fine up until Elon's takeover broke a bunch of things. My API access got turned on and off repeatedly for unknown reasons. Checking the Twitter forums showed that this was happening to other developers as well with little response from the team there. Bluesky on the other hand has been open first. You can now host your own Personal Data Server (PDS) which means if you ever want to post to the network you are basically never blocked from doing so. I kept posting on Twitter manually (along side automatic posts to Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads) because people were there but with this latest shift in interest having to post manually is a pain so I'm dropping Twitter.
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  I use BlueSky because others seem to be using BlueSky. I think this is the simplest and most common reason.
dustedcodes 2y ago
[flagged]
- hu3 2y ago
  Us vs Them triggers a very strong and bonding instinct in animals. Humans are no different. Marketing people have been using this trick since forever. And the two masses keep spouting and shouting their mutual hate. I don't understand why people devote so much time and energy to this kind of fruitless behavior.
- patchymcnoodles 2y ago
  So you basically say: A platform where a lot of radical right people are is full of hate and verbal violence, whereas where the radical lefts are it is nice and peaceful? Shouldn't that give you something to think about ;)?
  - claar 2y ago
    The comment you replied to didn't say either of those things. Shouldn't the fact that you inserted "hate" and "verbal violence" into their comment give you something to think about ;)?
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    Remember the well-known interview [1] between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman? If not you may want to have a look at it to see where she went wrong by using that 'so you are saying that ...' construction you employ here in the same erroneous way. No, that is not what he said, at all. In a debate you should engage your actual opponent instead of your own projection of that opponent to avoid situations like this one. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375138990_So_you're_saying_the_interrogation_of_Jordan_Peterson https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375138990_So_you're...
    - claar 2y ago
      Wow - that's such a sad interview. Thanks for sharing. https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?feature=shared https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?feature=shared
joeyagreco 2y ago
Is this worth trying? I tried Threads when it came out and very quickly regretted it. Is this a legit replacement for X/Twitter?
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
- Dudelander 2y ago
  Yes, it's basically Twitter without the paid blue checks.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Yet.
- lobsterthief 2y ago
  Maybe we’re all looking for a replacement for something that can no longer exist on the Internet. Maybe we don’t miss Twitter as much as we miss the Internet of yore. Maybe not, but worth thinking about.
Thoreandan 2y ago
I'm pretty nervous that neither Wayback Machine nor archive-dot-today appear to be able to snapshot Bluesky posts. Between this and paywalls, I'm not aware of an alternative user-accessible check against edited / deleted posts. Might as well be a Telegram/Discord channel, or a Futaba Channel site. At least vBulletin could be archived. Looks like there's a page on https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Bluesky https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Bluesky for it though.
- esperent 2y ago
  Maybe they just didn't add the functionality yet? There's another post somewhere here from someone saying that consuming the entire bluesky firehose (which I take to mean all new posts) costs them $2.50 a month.
andrewstuart 2y ago
I get the sense that the sort of people who move to Bluesky are against the things such platforms need to do to make money. And yet such platforms need money to run.
anacrolix 2y ago
I can't get behind a build platform that requires you to login to read

125 points by davidbarker 2y ago

andrewstuart 2y ago

Why would this be any better or worse than Twitter? Won’t it be the same with fewer but growing number of users?

Arnt 2y ago
It's oddly different. I think the reasons are subtle, but exist. I know one technical difference: if someone quote-tweets to dunk on you, you can stop it. There must be more like that, because the effect is readily noticeable.
- wildpeaks 2y ago
  It doesn't stop the dunking because people will quickly adjust to use screenshots instead of detachable quote-tweets, but you're less likely to stumble on it, everyone remains in their bubble.
  - teamonkey 2y ago
    Although it’s strongly left-leaning at the moment it’s not exclusively that. I’ve seen some conversations where the “bubbles” (as you say) crossed, which would have exploded on both Twitter and Mastodon. Being able to cut out people when they start screaming and being abusive definitely helps to maintain a more chill atmosphere.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    It adds _friction_ to the process, though. Never underestimate the laziness of annoying internet people.
  - Arnt 2y ago
    Whatever's good enough to preserve the atmosphere is good enough.
yen223 2y ago
For a side project I created a new account on X and on Bluesky, both before the election. Bluesky asks what my interests are. I said software engineering, science and tech. Bluesky showed a lot of posts of cool space photos. X asks me to follow an account from a list. I chose NASA. Out of curiosity I checked out the "For you" tab on this brand new account. I did not get recommended space photos. X pushed a lot of political posts, some bordering on hate speech (one used the n-word). I don't quite know what explains the differences between the new-account experiences, but I had a much better time on Bluesky. I don't know if this will last, or if Bluesky is destined to follow in Twitter's footsteps once more people start joining, but I think right now Bluesky is in a good spot.
- fsflover 2y ago
  Did you try Mastodon?
  - yen223 2y ago
    No. I should probably give it a go (I have a mastodon account from 2017(!), but there was so little activity back then I think I just forgot it was there.)
rsynnott 2y ago
- No pay-for-attention model. - Third party clients available. - Blocklists and other more sophisticated custom moderation available. - Threads and profiles accessible to non-logged-in people (note that you can read the linked post and its replies without being logged in; on Twitter you at minimum couldn't see the replies, and depending on the account/phase of moon might just get an error for the actual post.) - Less deranged leadership (at least now that Dorsey has flounced off). - Blocking works.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  For now. I was a private alpha tester "when it was cool" but I get the feel they're taking the discord approach of things. I predict that in a year you will soon be charged for uploading videos and or something of the likes. Last week I deleted my account. Now proud to be 99.8% (HN, LinkedIn) social network free.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Yeah, their plans for monetisation seem to be along those lines, vs Twitter's pay-for-attention thing.
  - chucke1992 2y ago
    I am personally curious into what Linked will devolve eventually.
    - xnorswap 2y ago
      Is linkedin not already in a devolved state?
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      It's hard to imagine it being more off-putting than it already is.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      The only useful part is the Rolodex of past co-workers and bosses to message when you’re looking for a job or looking for someone to hire. As long as they don’t ruin that, it can’t get worse than it already is, because nothing else about it matters.
_fizz_buzz_ 2y ago
The owner of bluesky doesn't artifically inject themselves on top of your feed.
rbits 2y ago
People can't pay to force themselves to the top of the replies.

satvikpendem 2y ago

When I joined it, just as when I joined Mastodon, most of what I saw was just anti-Twitter and anti-Musk content, which I didn't really care to read about, either for or against both of them. It might just be who I was following but the people I followed were similar in both Twitter and Bluesky / Mastodon, mostly indie hackers and other small time SaaS founders, and even these people started posting a lot of anti-Twitter stuff, more than even talking about their own products. On Twitter, the same types of people just...didn't give a shit about any of the drama and I actually learned a lot about product building from their threads. It seems like if you start a platform mostly as a reaction to another platform, you're gonna get the same sort of social media bubble, only of the opposite variety. That's why I still use Twitter currently, I just don't see the same issue that other people seem to have, and that's likely because I don't engage in politics or respond to trolls on there.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
3adawi 2y ago
it's starting to change now - definitely give it another spin in a week or so - a lot of organic non-musk/twitter content there now
purplethinking 2y ago
It will take a lot to break the network effect of X, probably more so than many other platforms, because it's very detrimental to their reach (and income/revenue share) for people with a lot of followers to move. So the important people will mostly stay, and they will attract back the people who leave, we've seen this a couple of cycles. Contrast that to something like Facebook. It had large network effects too, but all it takes is a few of your best friends switching at the same time, and nobody is losing a lot of reach by leaving. So they keep posting to both, but that takes work to keep up.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the important people will mostly stay, and they will attract back the people who leave Important people on the left (broadly, not just lefties) are starting to leave. I think Kara Swisher just deleted her Twitter and migrated to Threads.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

I don't really do any twitter style social media but just from checking the occasional post I can tell it's taking off because angry right wing trolls have started appearing in the replies. I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site.

rsynnott 2y ago
> I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site. One thing that Bluesky has over Twitter is the first-party concept of a moderation list; people can maintain lists of accounts, and people who trust those lists can use them to mass-mute/block the people on the lists. This actually used to be a somewhat common user-driven behaviour on Twitter (I once managed to offend Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter, back when he was still a darling of the far-right, and use of mass-block-lists was the only way to remove the hordes of angry teenagers from my at-mentions), but it was always clunky due to lack of first-party support, and post-Musk it became increasingly difficult with the death of the API.

wildpeaks 2y ago

As much as I hoped Mastodon to win (even backed their Patreon for a year), they kept underestimating the onboarding friction and now that the general audience was ready to switch, of course they went for the twitter clone that is easy to join and looks familiar.

badgersnake 2y ago
This is true. The trouble is, I don't see anything preventing it having all the same problems. I actually like Mastodon because it feels a bit more like the old internet. I'm thinking maybe onboarding friction is a feature not a bug.
vinay427 2y ago
As an anecdote, an online comment responding to someone asking if their choice of server matters (e.g. if their Mastodon account would be visible to someone using another server) was roughly "no, as long as your servers federate with each other." I would be able to parse that, but it seems rather out-of-touch for trying to attract the bulk of Twitter users. Meanwhile, Bluesky offers a de facto server with some (lesser?) amount of decentralization that's largely invisible to end users.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Yes, it's almost as if the general populace actually like centralization, even as many tech people on HN don't want to believe it.
  - financetechbro 2y ago
    “Liking it” is a stretch, I’m sure most normal people don’t have a real opinion on the subject; they just want to use whatever is frictionless and easy to understand
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      I should've said "prefer" rather than "like" then, as it's not a conscious understanding of centralization vs decentralization but that the centralized one is nicer and easier for people to use.

maxehmookau 2y ago

Maybe the world would be better if we just didn't have a service that allows everyone to shout whatever is on their mind in to the internet void? I'm glad X is dying; is a replacement really needed?

bilekas 2y ago
> Maybe the world would be better if we just didn't have a service that allows everyone to shout whatever is on their mind in to the internet void? The older I get and the more syndical I seem, the more I agree with this. The problem is its no longer just "the internet void". That would suggest that nobody ever reads some of the nonsense. It should have been obvious though when you give everyone an opinion that their ramblings are some kind of 'insight' and should be heard. It's exhausting, I hope the next stage of social media is it's boycott. /rant
- mingus88 2y ago
  I remember the backlash to livejournal among the web forum community that I frequented over a decade ago. Little did we all know that in just a few years the entire internet would pivot to the most inane, short-form, self centered and low information content possible, and that most people would become addicted to it.
karaterobot 2y ago
Seems like many people disagree, but at least a few of us know this is correct. More people will learn the same lessons eventually, though not likely enough people to stop history from repeating.
rsynnott 2y ago
Personally, I enjoyed old!Twitter, and am glad that there are two (or charitably three, but I don't really _get_ Threads) viable replacements. No need for you to use it, naturally, but I'm glad it's there.
pixxel 2y ago
Forums. Back to forums. Heavily administered/modded, stay on topic, small communities. No, not (sub)Reddit.

raesene9 2y ago

Whilst it's still developing I think Bluesky is doing quite a lot of things right. Specifically the starter packs and lists make it easy to find the kind of content you're interested in and the openness to third party integrations and API mean that people can easily build cool adjacent services. One small example I liked of this is the list of Kubernetes org members https://bit.ly/k8s-bsky https://bit.ly/k8s-bsky which is updated automatically based on Github profiles with Blue Sky links in them, who are in the org.

huijzer 2y ago
Is the link correct? It's behind a login wall.
- raesene9 2y ago
  Seems to be, think you need to be logged in to Blue Sky to see it.

osigurdson 2y ago

The problem with X is, even if Elon is totally committed to free speech (I believe he really is) the perception is hard to shake as he is very active politically. Maybe this is why tradition media has usually had a political leaning.

lores 2y ago
He bans journalists and others who criticise him. Why do you think he is committed to free speech, rather than speech he likes?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
- marcusverus 2y ago
  He bans journalists?
- cal85 2y ago
  That's troubling to hear. Can you give an example of a journalist he has banned?
  - cbHXBY1D 2y ago
    https://newrepublic.com/post/186423/elon-musk-x-suspends-journalist-klippenstein-leaked-jd-vance-documents https://newrepublic.com/post/186423/elon-musk-x-suspends-jou... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-temporary-ban-journalist-accounts-raises-alarm-rcna133084 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-temporary-ban-jo...
- elforce002 2y ago
  Who did he ban?
  - rsynnott 2y ago

ryandvm 2y ago

I joined shortly after it was apparent that Twitter was turning into 4chan. Bit of a ghost town at first, but in the last few months it turned into a perfectly suitable replacement for what Twitter used to be. Then after the election I deleted all my social media accounts. I'm taking the next 2 years as a mental health break. I decided staying on top of which political out groups are being shat upon on a daily basis wasn't worth the the mental toll it was taking. I'll see you at the polls in 2 years.

sho_hn 2y ago
So I've mostly sat out on social media in the past 20 years - I never hopped onto the Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, anything bandwagons - and I conclude I've been absolutely fine missing the minute-to-minute beat. I certainly have no problem keeping up with the times vs. other friends, nor have I accomplished any less, nor diversified my activities or knowledge any less. Everything of true, lasting value gets repeated by friends in group chats (my preferred online social fix), or referenced in articles, and reaches me soon enough. Social media is the text equivalent of mindlessly scrolling TikTok/YouTube Shorts. Can be entertaining (and entertainment is important), but is mostly just a waste of time.
- SirFatty 2y ago
  Sure, from that aspect it makes sense. But there are companies who use Twitter, Discord, Facebook, et al for support and notifications (which I'm not a fan of). It's hard to avoid in those situations.
  - phil21 2y ago
    Seems pretty easy to avoid those situations to me? I've never had a Twitter or Facebook account, tend to participate in the modern economy at least as much as the average person if not a lot more, and never once have wished I could tweet at a company for some reason or the other. I'm sure I'm missing something - but I'm also equally as sure that it's a net gain in my life vs. a loss. It's quite possible to interact with nearly every company out there without using social media.

rmoriz 2y ago

Bluesky aka "this time it's different". I found my home in the Fediverse.

libertarian1 2y ago

[flagged]

baq 2y ago
only cows don't change their mind

herdcall 2y ago

Is there anyone here who uses Bluesky for its own sake rather than protesting against Twitter/Musk/etc.? Trying to understand if it have any inherent pros in terms of design or operation. IMO all these platforms thrive on network effects and their value grows exponentially as their size grows.

Dudelander 2y ago
The main advantages are the lack of bots (for now) and the lack of the paid blue checks. The former is a major improvement because it improves the overall quality of the tweets.
golf1052 2y ago
My major reason for using it is how open the platform is. I run a community project that involves posting pictures to multiple social media sites at once. Posting to Twitter was fine up until Elon's takeover broke a bunch of things. My API access got turned on and off repeatedly for unknown reasons. Checking the Twitter forums showed that this was happening to other developers as well with little response from the team there. Bluesky on the other hand has been open first. You can now host your own Personal Data Server (PDS) which means if you ever want to post to the network you are basically never blocked from doing so. I kept posting on Twitter manually (along side automatic posts to Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads) because people were there but with this latest shift in interest having to post manually is a pain so I'm dropping Twitter.
CaptainFever 2y ago
I use BlueSky because others seem to be using BlueSky. I think this is the simplest and most common reason.

dustedcodes 2y ago

[flagged]

hu3 2y ago
Us vs Them triggers a very strong and bonding instinct in animals. Humans are no different. Marketing people have been using this trick since forever. And the two masses keep spouting and shouting their mutual hate. I don't understand why people devote so much time and energy to this kind of fruitless behavior.
patchymcnoodles 2y ago
So you basically say: A platform where a lot of radical right people are is full of hate and verbal violence, whereas where the radical lefts are it is nice and peaceful? Shouldn't that give you something to think about ;)?
- claar 2y ago
  The comment you replied to didn't say either of those things. Shouldn't the fact that you inserted "hate" and "verbal violence" into their comment give you something to think about ;)?
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  Remember the well-known interview [1] between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman? If not you may want to have a look at it to see where she went wrong by using that 'so you are saying that ...' construction you employ here in the same erroneous way. No, that is not what he said, at all. In a debate you should engage your actual opponent instead of your own projection of that opponent to avoid situations like this one. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375138990_So_you're_saying_the_interrogation_of_Jordan_Peterson https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375138990_So_you're...
  - claar 2y ago
    Wow - that's such a sad interview. Thanks for sharing. https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?feature=shared https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?feature=shared

joeyagreco 2y ago

Is this worth trying? I tried Threads when it came out and very quickly regretted it. Is this a legit replacement for X/Twitter?

stiltzkin 2y ago
[dead]
Dudelander 2y ago
Yes, it's basically Twitter without the paid blue checks.
- fsflover 2y ago
  Yet.
lobsterthief 2y ago
Maybe we’re all looking for a replacement for something that can no longer exist on the Internet. Maybe we don’t miss Twitter as much as we miss the Internet of yore. Maybe not, but worth thinking about.

Thoreandan 2y ago

I'm pretty nervous that neither Wayback Machine nor archive-dot-today appear to be able to snapshot Bluesky posts. Between this and paywalls, I'm not aware of an alternative user-accessible check against edited / deleted posts. Might as well be a Telegram/Discord channel, or a Futaba Channel site. At least vBulletin could be archived. Looks like there's a page on https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Bluesky https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Bluesky for it though.

esperent 2y ago
Maybe they just didn't add the functionality yet? There's another post somewhere here from someone saying that consuming the entire bluesky firehose (which I take to mean all new posts) costs them $2.50 a month.

andrewstuart 2y ago

I get the sense that the sort of people who move to Bluesky are against the things such platforms need to do to make money. And yet such platforms need money to run.

anacrolix 2y ago

I can't get behind a build platform that requires you to login to read