5 ms·

How to migrate from X to Bluesky without losing your followers

61 points by ohjeez 2y ago

neofrommatrix 2y ago
It’s apparent that design decisions are made keeping Musk in mind. I won’t be surprised if a lot of people have blocked Musk on X as they don’t want to see propaganda being spewed. And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any?
- jeswin 2y ago
  > And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any? Yeah, because it didn't make any sense. All you had to do to see blocked content was to log out of Twitter.
  - Pxtl 2y ago
    If you know the content existed, which in many cases you didn't. Like, most of the time the only time you saw blocked content was if somebody you followed quote-tweeted it (or they reply-tweeted to it and you investigated). Otherwise? It's like it doesn't exist at all. It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads. It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      On the other hand if someone blocks you yet your Twitter circle keeps interacting with that person–maybe because they are a big player in the space–your feed is full of "You cannot read this message" tombstones. It's stupid that you can't just see the tweet/reply at that point. And no less provocative. I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?) I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      Blocking from interacting makes sense and from showing up in the feed/search results also makes sense, blocking from viewing at all encourages trolls and deceivers. E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding. Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
      - hombre_fatal 2y ago
        Lately I've noticed on Reddit people blocking me the second they respond to me so that they have the last word in an e-fight*. Horrible implementation. *yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Yeah reddit is full of shady tricks like that, either as design choices, admin policies, or by mod coalitions of major subreddits. Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of. So much so, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, that it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.
        danslacker 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your point…?
      - Pxtl 2y ago
        I agree that that's a problem but this is the wrong solution. Letting the blockee see the blocker doesn't help them correct the record if the blocker has replied to them before blocking. They're still not permitted to reply. You can unblock-reply-block and do that all day under either model. Imho the right answer is just to a) Hide the blocker's replies to the blockee in an expand-to-view mode (like Twitter's View Hidden Replies feature) so that in a large conversation the non-blocking parties are the emphasized ones. and b) When shown explain that the reply was hidden because the reply-er has blocked the reply-ee. I assume they want to make blocking semi-secret so it's not showing dirty laundry all over twitter to people who aren't involved in the feud, but either way if party A and B had an argument and then one side unilaterally prevents the other from continuing it, that should made visible to the reader.
  - Groxx 2y ago
    It added friction, and that's often all that's needed to stop low-effort harassers (which are BY FAR the most numerous). Hell-bans work even better, and still do nothing that can't be seen publicly. I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  That's not the way the change to blocking worked right? I haven't used the site since he became owner, but isn't the recent change that if you yourself have been blocked by someone, you will now be able to see their posts if they're public (just as if you were logged out) and you stumble onto them somehow? So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?
- Uhhrrr 2y ago
  If you don't follow him and use "Following" instead of "For You", you will basically never see him. "Following" is invariably better anyway, because then you're seeing the things you want to instead of the things that the algorithm suggests.
pessimizer 2y ago
[flagged]
- talldayo 2y ago
  > Musk actually made it harder by turning the entire site into a walled garden So we're supposed to thank him for selecting the ugliest brute-force solution? It's not security theater to offer a user settings that help them tailor their experience. People aren't mad about stalkers being clever, they're angry at X for not giving them better options. If your social media doesn't let users voluntarily segregate themselves from antisocial behavior, it shouldn't surprise you when they want to leave your website altogether.
  - danslacker 2y ago
    Then simply don't do social media? Whatever you distribute there is forever.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      I don't use social media. I'm explaining why a ordinary person would disagree with the train of thought the parent was suggesting.
- Pxtl 2y ago
  Effort matters. This won't solve a dedicated stalker, but it will discourage a troll who scrolls twitter like a normal person. You're quite right that it's trivially easy to work-around, but if you just use a main account 99% of the time you won't even know that you have something to work around because you're not seeing the posts you want to attack and sick your followers upon. Twitter is mostly entertainment, so most people will use it in the way that's the most convenient. That means "hide posts from people who blocked me" should make a decent dent in that kind of negative harassment. Yes it won't stop somebody who treats hating people on Twitter as their job but how many of those are there?
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  It's hard to take this seriously when it is so laden with name-calling and bitter sarcasm. There is nothing ambiguous or complex about either side of the argument. If you can't defend your side of the argument without falsely accusing the opposing argument as being non-existent or factually incorrect when it's laid out so clearly (see siblings, or any responses any time this comes up), you should stop and come at it from another angle. And, to be clear, this is not me saying that one side of this argument is correct and the other is wrong. I just think your attitude is non-constructive.
zaphod420 2y ago
People about to learn the power of network effects.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Over the years social media companies learn this lesson as well. Maybe that time is here for Xitter.
  - Pxtl 2y ago
    Even if it is, Musk won. He got his $44 billion value back through getting premium position for all his government-contractor companies by becoming the President's right hand man. This is reflected in his share values climbing. If this kills Twitter, I think Musk will be annoyed but it's still a net success for him.
    - lcfcjs6 2y ago
      The man is so egotistical that every penny he loses hurts him a lot. Losing this amount of money will bother him massively.
      - happytoexplain 2y ago
        I don't follow Musk's personality foibles closely at all, but from what I have seen, I get the sense that profit is not one of the things he ties closely to his aggrandized self-image. Wealth, yes, but only in the sense that it is for spending to do great things, even if the profit isn't there, like "protecting freedom of speech" (there aren't enough quotation marks in the universe). I.e. Tony Stark, not Gordon Gekko.
        Terr_ 2y ago
        Another name to throw out there when discussing time in the limelight versus numbers going up: Larry Ellison.
    - 2y ago
mrbombastic 2y ago
You’ll be happier with neither, but i support anyone getting off of X.
- grammarnazzzi 2y ago
  [dead]
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
But I'd still be able to do my banking at X, right?
decremental 2y ago
[dead]
grammarnazzzi 2y ago
[dead]
xnx 2y ago
If you don't own the domain your content is served from, you have nothing. With control of the domain there will always be some way to redirect or migrate, but without that, you'll always be at the mercy of the domain owner. I don't know if there were any alternate proposals, but it is a shame of internet history web and email weren't focused on domain ownership first, with different subdomains proxied/routed to other services.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  See also: the US Postal service almost giving everyone in the country an email address. It didn't have to be this way!
  - thmsths 2y ago
    Hey that seems like an interesting tidbit of information. Do you have more details or do you remember where you learned about that? I would be interested to know why it did not happen.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      I can't remember where I originally saw it. Hopefully another commented can assist, but it's at least discussed in chapter eight of this report https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8214.PDF https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8214.PDF
- josefritzishere 2y ago
  The POSSE model prevails here (post on your own site, syndicate elsewhere)
- Vinnl 2y ago
  Unfortunately, realistically, you can only really rent your domain, no?
loudmax 2y ago
Really wish people were migrating to Mastodon, or even to Threads, since Threads can federate. IMHO, the lesson from the corruption of Twitter should be don't build your social network on a proprietary walled garden.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  I like Mastodon better too, but non-technical users seem to find it too complicated/nerdy. Threads is easy to use but apparently suppresses posts containing political content and perhaps as a result of inheriting Instagram's userbase, has an issue with users accusing other users of posting engagement bait, which isn’t conducive to building and sustaining a community. Mastodon and Threads have also been comparatively slow/reluctant to respond to community feedback. With Mastodon this is understandable because it’s open source and resources are limited, but with Threads that’s not a problem which suggests it’s intentional.
- Funes- 2y ago
  "The corruption of Twitter"? Whenabout do you pinpoint that? For me, it took place when the platform went from being a place where virtually every user was just a regular person and it got raided and invaded by corporate media, "celebrities" and politicians, so pretty soon. Shortly afterwards it began curtailing freedom of speech heavily by way of very suspicious and surreptitious means (deplatforming, suppression of ideas, removal of posts, shadowbanning, penalizing certain keywords, collaborating with governments to silence opposition and dissent, etcetera). Only since Elon Musk took over all of those vile tactics went out the window globally, though I admit I don't like the walled-garden nature of it all one bit, but at least one can express oneself there more or less freely now, and community notes are truly a boon to every sane individual--albeit certainly not to legacy media and woke cultists. With regards to federation, I think in this case it just takes the worst of both worlds, but to each their own. I'd prefer a truly decentralized approach.
  - mrbombastic 2y ago
    Musk still does those things: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazi... he just has to be prodded a bit more (read it affects his wallet) or it has to be in favor of his particular politics https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his-x-social-media-platform-to-amplify-right-wing-views https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/how-elon-musk-uses.... If you want to see the outcome of an unmoderated platform without consequences or accountability see how anonymous message boards evolve every time. Society and face to face discussion has its own inherent methods of moderation so I don’t really understand this absolutist desire for an anonymous town square we can all yell vitriol at each other. And twitter isn’t even that.
erickhill 2y ago
Title of this article is total b.s (although so was flagging this on HN). However, the tool it mentions is pretty cool and frankly I'm surprised it even works considering Twitter shut down APIs a while back. I just tried it out and it helped me connect with over 200 folks on Bluesky that I'd been following on Twitter that I didn't know had migrated. Pretty handy... while it lasts.
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Ok, but please don't fulminate on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
drdrey 2y ago
pretty sure the article is confusing follows and followers -- you are definitely losing your followers

61 points by ohjeez 2y ago

It’s apparent that design decisions are made keeping Musk in mind. I won’t be surprised if a lot of people have blocked Musk on X as they don’t want to see propaganda being spewed. And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any?

jeswin 2y ago
> And, he wants them to see it. I cannot think of any other reason why this decision was made. Are there any? Yeah, because it didn't make any sense. All you had to do to see blocked content was to log out of Twitter.
- Pxtl 2y ago
  If you know the content existed, which in many cases you didn't. Like, most of the time the only time you saw blocked content was if somebody you followed quote-tweeted it (or they reply-tweeted to it and you investigated). Otherwise? It's like it doesn't exist at all. It became even more difficult to see blocked content after Twitter nerfed the logged-out view of the site so you couldn't even see comment-threads. It wasn't a perfect solution obviously but it helped. Helping is good.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    On the other hand if someone blocks you yet your Twitter circle keeps interacting with that person–maybe because they are a big player in the space–your feed is full of "You cannot read this message" tombstones. It's stupid that you can't just see the tweet/reply at that point. And no less provocative. I guess they could hide quote-tweets from people you follow if they responded to someone who blocked you but that has major drawbacks and is weirdly heavy handed. (Why should someone blocking me prevent me from seeing tweets from people I follow?) I think Elon's change to the block system has the most sensible trade-offs in this example. If someone blocks you, their tweets don't show up on your feed, but you can still see them when they interact with other tweets and when people quote-tweet them. It should really just prevent interaction.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Blocking from interacting makes sense and from showing up in the feed/search results also makes sense, blocking from viewing at all encourages trolls and deceivers. E.g. I’ve noticed cases where user A replies to user B, writes something pretending to carry on a conversation, then immediately after tweeting goes to block user B such that it looks like, to passing readers, that user B made a decision to stop responding. Which of course, in addition to wrecking the credibility of user A and deceiving user B, slightly reduces the credibility of every other conversation chain on the site and the site itself, every time that is discovered.
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      Lately I've noticed on Reddit people blocking me the second they respond to me so that they have the last word in an e-fight*. Horrible implementation. *yeah, 20 years on the internet and I still have that dog in me
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Yeah reddit is full of shady tricks like that, either as design choices, admin policies, or by mod coalitions of major subreddits. Edit: And probably via other ways I haven’t heard of. So much so, and considering it has gone uncorrected for many years, that it seems likely that’s the intended purpose of the system, to dupe naive teenagers and other susceptible groups.
        danslacker 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your point…?
    - Pxtl 2y ago
      I agree that that's a problem but this is the wrong solution. Letting the blockee see the blocker doesn't help them correct the record if the blocker has replied to them before blocking. They're still not permitted to reply. You can unblock-reply-block and do that all day under either model. Imho the right answer is just to a) Hide the blocker's replies to the blockee in an expand-to-view mode (like Twitter's View Hidden Replies feature) so that in a large conversation the non-blocking parties are the emphasized ones. and b) When shown explain that the reply was hidden because the reply-er has blocked the reply-ee. I assume they want to make blocking semi-secret so it's not showing dirty laundry all over twitter to people who aren't involved in the feud, but either way if party A and B had an argument and then one side unilaterally prevents the other from continuing it, that should made visible to the reader.
- Groxx 2y ago
  It added friction, and that's often all that's needed to stop low-effort harassers (which are BY FAR the most numerous). Hell-bans work even better, and still do nothing that can't be seen publicly. I guarantee you that they knew this. Everyone doing anything social knows it. It's an industry standard because it's extremely effective.
madeofpalk 2y ago
That's not the way the change to blocking worked right? I haven't used the site since he became owner, but isn't the recent change that if you yourself have been blocked by someone, you will now be able to see their posts if they're public (just as if you were logged out) and you stumble onto them somehow? So if Musk is being blocked all the time, he wouldn't be able to see posts from the randos who blocked him. His posts presumably would still be hidden by those who blocked him?
Uhhrrr 2y ago
If you don't follow him and use "Following" instead of "For You", you will basically never see him. "Following" is invariably better anyway, because then you're seeing the things you want to instead of the things that the algorithm suggests.

pessimizer 2y ago

[flagged]

talldayo 2y ago
> Musk actually made it harder by turning the entire site into a walled garden So we're supposed to thank him for selecting the ugliest brute-force solution? It's not security theater to offer a user settings that help them tailor their experience. People aren't mad about stalkers being clever, they're angry at X for not giving them better options. If your social media doesn't let users voluntarily segregate themselves from antisocial behavior, it shouldn't surprise you when they want to leave your website altogether.
- danslacker 2y ago
  Then simply don't do social media? Whatever you distribute there is forever.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    I don't use social media. I'm explaining why a ordinary person would disagree with the train of thought the parent was suggesting.
Pxtl 2y ago
Effort matters. This won't solve a dedicated stalker, but it will discourage a troll who scrolls twitter like a normal person. You're quite right that it's trivially easy to work-around, but if you just use a main account 99% of the time you won't even know that you have something to work around because you're not seeing the posts you want to attack and sick your followers upon. Twitter is mostly entertainment, so most people will use it in the way that's the most convenient. That means "hide posts from people who blocked me" should make a decent dent in that kind of negative harassment. Yes it won't stop somebody who treats hating people on Twitter as their job but how many of those are there?
happytoexplain 2y ago
It's hard to take this seriously when it is so laden with name-calling and bitter sarcasm. There is nothing ambiguous or complex about either side of the argument. If you can't defend your side of the argument without falsely accusing the opposing argument as being non-existent or factually incorrect when it's laid out so clearly (see siblings, or any responses any time this comes up), you should stop and come at it from another angle. And, to be clear, this is not me saying that one side of this argument is correct and the other is wrong. I just think your attitude is non-constructive.

zaphod420 2y ago

People about to learn the power of network effects.

rootusrootus 2y ago
Over the years social media companies learn this lesson as well. Maybe that time is here for Xitter.
- Pxtl 2y ago
  Even if it is, Musk won. He got his $44 billion value back through getting premium position for all his government-contractor companies by becoming the President's right hand man. This is reflected in his share values climbing. If this kills Twitter, I think Musk will be annoyed but it's still a net success for him.
  - lcfcjs6 2y ago
    The man is so egotistical that every penny he loses hurts him a lot. Losing this amount of money will bother him massively.
    - happytoexplain 2y ago
      I don't follow Musk's personality foibles closely at all, but from what I have seen, I get the sense that profit is not one of the things he ties closely to his aggrandized self-image. Wealth, yes, but only in the sense that it is for spending to do great things, even if the profit isn't there, like "protecting freedom of speech" (there aren't enough quotation marks in the universe). I.e. Tony Stark, not Gordon Gekko.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        Another name to throw out there when discussing time in the limelight versus numbers going up: Larry Ellison.
  - 2y ago

mrbombastic 2y ago

You’ll be happier with neither, but i support anyone getting off of X.

grammarnazzzi 2y ago
[dead]

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

But I'd still be able to do my banking at X, right?

decremental 2y ago

[dead]

grammarnazzzi 2y ago

[dead]

xnx 2y ago

If you don't own the domain your content is served from, you have nothing. With control of the domain there will always be some way to redirect or migrate, but without that, you'll always be at the mercy of the domain owner. I don't know if there were any alternate proposals, but it is a shame of internet history web and email weren't focused on domain ownership first, with different subdomains proxied/routed to other services.

Y_Y 2y ago
See also: the US Postal service almost giving everyone in the country an email address. It didn't have to be this way!
- thmsths 2y ago
  Hey that seems like an interesting tidbit of information. Do you have more details or do you remember where you learned about that? I would be interested to know why it did not happen.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    I can't remember where I originally saw it. Hopefully another commented can assist, but it's at least discussed in chapter eight of this report https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8214.PDF https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8214.PDF
josefritzishere 2y ago
The POSSE model prevails here (post on your own site, syndicate elsewhere)
Vinnl 2y ago
Unfortunately, realistically, you can only really rent your domain, no?

loudmax 2y ago

Really wish people were migrating to Mastodon, or even to Threads, since Threads can federate. IMHO, the lesson from the corruption of Twitter should be don't build your social network on a proprietary walled garden.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I like Mastodon better too, but non-technical users seem to find it too complicated/nerdy. Threads is easy to use but apparently suppresses posts containing political content and perhaps as a result of inheriting Instagram's userbase, has an issue with users accusing other users of posting engagement bait, which isn’t conducive to building and sustaining a community. Mastodon and Threads have also been comparatively slow/reluctant to respond to community feedback. With Mastodon this is understandable because it’s open source and resources are limited, but with Threads that’s not a problem which suggests it’s intentional.
Funes- 2y ago
"The corruption of Twitter"? Whenabout do you pinpoint that? For me, it took place when the platform went from being a place where virtually every user was just a regular person and it got raided and invaded by corporate media, "celebrities" and politicians, so pretty soon. Shortly afterwards it began curtailing freedom of speech heavily by way of very suspicious and surreptitious means (deplatforming, suppression of ideas, removal of posts, shadowbanning, penalizing certain keywords, collaborating with governments to silence opposition and dissent, etcetera). Only since Elon Musk took over all of those vile tactics went out the window globally, though I admit I don't like the walled-garden nature of it all one bit, but at least one can express oneself there more or less freely now, and community notes are truly a boon to every sane individual--albeit certainly not to legacy media and woke cultists. With regards to federation, I think in this case it just takes the worst of both worlds, but to each their own. I'd prefer a truly decentralized approach.
- mrbombastic 2y ago
  Musk still does those things: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Twitter_in_Brazi... he just has to be prodded a bit more (read it affects his wallet) or it has to be in favor of his particular politics https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his-x-social-media-platform-to-amplify-right-wing-views https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/how-elon-musk-uses.... If you want to see the outcome of an unmoderated platform without consequences or accountability see how anonymous message boards evolve every time. Society and face to face discussion has its own inherent methods of moderation so I don’t really understand this absolutist desire for an anonymous town square we can all yell vitriol at each other. And twitter isn’t even that.

erickhill 2y ago

Title of this article is total b.s (although so was flagging this on HN). However, the tool it mentions is pretty cool and frankly I'm surprised it even works considering Twitter shut down APIs a while back. I just tried it out and it helped me connect with over 200 folks on Bluesky that I'd been following on Twitter that I didn't know had migrated. Pretty handy... while it lasts.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Ok, but please don't fulminate on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

drdrey 2y ago

pretty sure the article is confusing follows and followers -- you are definitely losing your followers