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Two reasons to like BlueSky: 1. Your username can be your website. I'm @bradgessler.com. 2. Copy and pasting images into a message works on iOS (this has been

Two reasons to like BlueSky: 1. Your username can be your website. I'm @bradgessler.com. 2. Copy and pasting images into a message works on iOS (this has been broken on X/Twitter for a long time). There's more reasons to like it, but these two feel pretty great. I put a Ruby hacker starter pack together if you're looking for a way in: https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh There's tons of other ones and communities as well.

LeoPanthera 2y ago
> Your username can be your website. I'm @bradgessler.com. But more importantly, you have to verify that you own the domain. I can't sign up as google.com
- numpad0 2y ago
  Was it on Nostr that someone realized "s3.amazonaws.com/.well-known" was a valid unused bucket name and did that?
  - sathyabhat 2y ago
    Nope, bluesky itself https://chaos.social/@jonty/110307532009155432 https://chaos.social/@jonty/110307532009155432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820815
Vaslo 2y ago
It’s going to go the way of Threads and Mastadon. Lukewarm results at best, but glad you are enjoying it.
- bradgessler 2y ago
  Perhaps, but I haven’t seen this level of momentum and consensus behind a text-based social network since early Twitter. Time will tell—ultimately it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people “believe” and sign up, it will happen.
- nmfisher 2y ago
  I jumped on Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads during earlier exodi. They all waned for various reasons (Mastodon was slow and unreliable, Threads was basically an Instagram feed of nothingness, and Bluesky was dead at the time). This wave does feel very different though. People joining in large numbers (I gained more followers in a day than in a year on Mastodon). The Bluesky app itself is actually very nice. Twitter is becoming more and more unbearable with the force-feeding of ads and totally broken search (that's without even mentioning the post-election environment). You might be right, but I do feel like this time is different. Let's check back in 12 months and see. @nickfisherau.bsky.social if anyone wants to say hello.
  - mountainriver 2y ago
    Agree, mastodon always had a big UX problem and threads never gives me anything I want. I’ve actually really been enjoying bsky, it has the early social network feel right now where everything is just fun
throwawaycities 2y ago
This is the reason I initially got on the waitlist to join Bluesky. 11 years ago I made a social media aggregator where users had to have a verified domain to join - think using your domain as username and using you domain to authenticate your social media profiles. My show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6529523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6529523 This probably sounds silly but in the end I didn’t actually use Bluesky because they don’t support emoji domains.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  Did you try using the emoji domain as-is, or did you use the punycode version? e.g. <US flag>.com vs xn--w77hd.com Because I can imagine them not implementing support to limit lookalike codepoints being used in handles, or they just hadn't gotten around to supporting punycode in their domain verifier.
  - throwawaycities 2y ago
    I attempted both the emoji character and punycode. Emojis are tricky, most domain registrars can’t get them right, most browsers can’t get at least some right (usually the ones with ZWJ characters. So by no means a knock on Bluesky, but I was waiting for an invite code for so long just to be able to use an emoji as my identity. Not directed at you, but not sure why my initial comment was downvoted, it’s pretty damn hard for new social media platforms to get users from other platforms - and as domain identity/usernames is a main competitive feature and I was super excited then didn’t end up using it, sharing my experience might be worth more than downvoting
    - Joker_vD 2y ago
      Well, the last time I checked (it was 2 years ago so maybe something has changed since), all of the emojis were explicitly on the list of codepoints that are prohibited from appearing in IDNs. So all those domain registrars that accept emojis in the domain names just simply didn't bother to read the standards they were supposed to implement.
Diti 2y ago
Those arguments are applicable to X as well, though. 1. Your username can be your website. On Bluesky, domain verification (by DNS) maps to a `did:plc` identifier – ˋAppView`s (bsky.app, the Bluesky smartphone app, etc.) only look up to plc.directory, a “database” owned by Bluesky. For your username to REALLY be your domain name, Bluesky would need to support the `did:web` kind of identifiers, which they don’t. In short, your username maps to an internal database, which is what X does too. 2. Bluesky’s basically Twitter before it needed to give money back to investors. I’d bet money that we will be seeing more broken features ten years from now when Bluesky will have to focus on how to give the money back to investors. (Yes, I am slightly biased towards ActivityPub, even though Bluesky has better architecture.)
- TheCleric 2y ago
  As far as I know BlueSky does support did:web https://atproto.com/specs/did https://atproto.com/specs/did
  - Diti 2y ago
    The AT Protocol supports it (in the “standard”), but Bluesky itself doesn’t, at least not yet. Let’s say you are the owner of the example.org domain, and would like to federate your content to the Bluesky servers. The Bluesky servers are currently unable to make use of a `did:web:example.org` DID (that would induce a request to https://example.org/.well-known/did.json https://example.org/.well-known/did.json). All you can do is tell all the Bluesky AppViews that your @example.org nickname is an alias to your `did:plc` in Bluesky’s plc.directory “database”. So it’s just a local mapping between a domain and an account, that’s somehow secured by a DNS verification (but non-techies don’t know it, and someone on X could very well make use of your domain as a local nickname too). I would appreciate being proven wrong, though!
deleted 2y ago
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LeoPanthera 2y ago

> Your username can be your website. I'm @bradgessler.com. But more importantly, you have to verify that you own the domain. I can't sign up as google.com

numpad0 2y ago
Was it on Nostr that someone realized "s3.amazonaws.com/.well-known" was a valid unused bucket name and did that?
- sathyabhat 2y ago
  Nope, bluesky itself https://chaos.social/@jonty/110307532009155432 https://chaos.social/@jonty/110307532009155432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820815

Vaslo 2y ago

It’s going to go the way of Threads and Mastadon. Lukewarm results at best, but glad you are enjoying it.

bradgessler 2y ago
Perhaps, but I haven’t seen this level of momentum and consensus behind a text-based social network since early Twitter. Time will tell—ultimately it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people “believe” and sign up, it will happen.
nmfisher 2y ago
I jumped on Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads during earlier exodi. They all waned for various reasons (Mastodon was slow and unreliable, Threads was basically an Instagram feed of nothingness, and Bluesky was dead at the time). This wave does feel very different though. People joining in large numbers (I gained more followers in a day than in a year on Mastodon). The Bluesky app itself is actually very nice. Twitter is becoming more and more unbearable with the force-feeding of ads and totally broken search (that's without even mentioning the post-election environment). You might be right, but I do feel like this time is different. Let's check back in 12 months and see. @nickfisherau.bsky.social if anyone wants to say hello.
- mountainriver 2y ago
  Agree, mastodon always had a big UX problem and threads never gives me anything I want. I’ve actually really been enjoying bsky, it has the early social network feel right now where everything is just fun

throwawaycities 2y ago

This is the reason I initially got on the waitlist to join Bluesky. 11 years ago I made a social media aggregator where users had to have a verified domain to join - think using your domain as username and using you domain to authenticate your social media profiles. My show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6529523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6529523 This probably sounds silly but in the end I didn’t actually use Bluesky because they don’t support emoji domains.

extraduder_ire 2y ago
Did you try using the emoji domain as-is, or did you use the punycode version? e.g. <US flag>.com vs xn--w77hd.com Because I can imagine them not implementing support to limit lookalike codepoints being used in handles, or they just hadn't gotten around to supporting punycode in their domain verifier.
- throwawaycities 2y ago
  I attempted both the emoji character and punycode. Emojis are tricky, most domain registrars can’t get them right, most browsers can’t get at least some right (usually the ones with ZWJ characters. So by no means a knock on Bluesky, but I was waiting for an invite code for so long just to be able to use an emoji as my identity. Not directed at you, but not sure why my initial comment was downvoted, it’s pretty damn hard for new social media platforms to get users from other platforms - and as domain identity/usernames is a main competitive feature and I was super excited then didn’t end up using it, sharing my experience might be worth more than downvoting
  - Joker_vD 2y ago
    Well, the last time I checked (it was 2 years ago so maybe something has changed since), all of the emojis were explicitly on the list of codepoints that are prohibited from appearing in IDNs. So all those domain registrars that accept emojis in the domain names just simply didn't bother to read the standards they were supposed to implement.

Diti 2y ago

Those arguments are applicable to X as well, though. 1. Your username can be your website. On Bluesky, domain verification (by DNS) maps to a `did:plc` identifier – ˋAppView`s (bsky.app, the Bluesky smartphone app, etc.) only look up to plc.directory, a “database” owned by Bluesky. For your username to REALLY be your domain name, Bluesky would need to support the `did:web` kind of identifiers, which they don’t. In short, your username maps to an internal database, which is what X does too. 2. Bluesky’s basically Twitter before it needed to give money back to investors. I’d bet money that we will be seeing more broken features ten years from now when Bluesky will have to focus on how to give the money back to investors. (Yes, I am slightly biased towards ActivityPub, even though Bluesky has better architecture.)

TheCleric 2y ago
As far as I know BlueSky does support did:web https://atproto.com/specs/did https://atproto.com/specs/did
- Diti 2y ago
  The AT Protocol supports it (in the “standard”), but Bluesky itself doesn’t, at least not yet. Let’s say you are the owner of the example.org domain, and would like to federate your content to the Bluesky servers. The Bluesky servers are currently unable to make use of a `did:web:example.org` DID (that would induce a request to https://example.org/.well-known/did.json https://example.org/.well-known/did.json). All you can do is tell all the Bluesky AppViews that your @example.org nickname is an alias to your `did:plc` in Bluesky’s plc.directory “database”. So it’s just a local mapping between a domain and an account, that’s somehow secured by a DNS verification (but non-techies don’t know it, and someone on X could very well make use of your domain as a local nickname too). I would appreciate being proven wrong, though!

deleted 2y ago

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