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Bluesky Is Booming in Japan
- mgraybosch 2y ago[dead]
- esskay 2y agoNot really a Japan exclusive thing, it's had massive growth recently.
- leosanchez 2y agoDid people stop having meltdown about politics? When I installed few days ago every post was about politics it was suffocating.
- michael_nielsen 2y agoI see virtually no politics. Maybe don't follow accounts which post about politics?
- leosanchez 2y agoI didn't follow anybody. It was all I saw after creating account (which was just after US election results). Maybe i should give it another try.
- amazingamazing 2y agoYou see posts even without following anyone smh
- swed420 2y agoConsidering the world is on an insane trajectory, it's probably good politics is being discussed. If you can't handle reality, try blocking based on keywords to insulate yourself from it.
- hagbard_c 2y agoDiscussing politics in an echo chamber - which is what BS has rather quickly devolved into - does not help in resolving the 'insane trajectory' the world is supposed to be on. To resolve that it should not just be discussed but also acted upon in the real world where everyone gets to have a say instead of just those who happen to follow the desired narrative. Such discussions tend to be contentious and often not at all 'nice' but that's what you get when discussing important issues in an open forum. In that respect X does a lot better than heavily polarised venues like BS ('left') or Gab ('right'). Of course X will only be better in this respect as long as there are some 'progressives' who refrain from following the herd to the next echo chamber. If all of them leave X will become another Gab.
- swed420 2y agoYour compressed Overton window isn't doing you any favors. If all you see is "left" on bluesky, then you're operating on the terms that liberals and conservatives use, usually unconsciously, to further the interests of capital at their own expense. If you look closer, you'll see that liberal != leftist, and both exist on BS, and not exclusively in echo chambers. There's currently a shift or awakening happening where some liberals are actually self reflecting for a change, because they realize they're standing on false ground. Also, you can see on the bluesky subreddit that many users are aware that they shouldn't be blindly trusting the curated user blocklists, if for no other reason that they're being curated dishonestly (surprise, surprise). Old Twitter was always a steaming pile, and Musk didn't change that with X. Bluesky is actually innovative and refreshing. Time will tell how that holds up.
- hagbard_c 2y agoTo me "liberal" has nothing to do with "left" since I'm not American and as such use the term in its original meaning. As to the width of the window of allow discourse I'll just say that as far as I'm concerned it is only limited to the law of the land no matter which terms - left/right/liberal/conservative/progressive/whatever - you want to use. That wide window is not what I see on BS nor on Mastodon but it is starting to become visible on X. Such wide windows let in a lot of noise but that is part of deal.
- esskay 2y agoNever seen any politics on there personally. It seems to respect your interests a bit better. Grab a few starterlists for subjects you're interested in and that should narrow it down and make it more tailored.
- walthamstow 2y agoI am entirely fed up with articles about Bluesky growth / Twitter demise that include only the proportions and not the absolute values So Bluesky users quintupled... is that from 5 to 25 or what?
- ahiknsr 2y agoFrom the article > Active daily user numbers in Japan of Facebook-owner Meta's Threads have picked up from about 500,000 to 1.5 million, while for Bluesky it has gone from about 50,000 to about 500,000.
- walthamstow 2y agoThanks. I don't have a subscription. I was mostly venting about the first two paras that I can see and the many other articles using SimilarWeb data which don't include this info. It's interesting that the numbers give do not show a 5x quintupling, but actually 10x growth
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- maelito 2y agoFrench posts have also skyrocketed.
- p4bl0 2y agoIndeed! In particular in higher-education and research many people moved over to Bluesky in the past two weeks. In fact, the biggest "starter pack" on the platform is the French “#HelloESR” pack (ESR means "enseignement supérieure et recherche", literally "higher-education and research").
- maelito 2y agoI can't find the stats per language anymore...
- amazingamazing 2y agoSilly fools - once they need money it’ll turn to poo just like all other social media.
- rsynnott 2y agoI mean, if it just gets as bad as pre-Musk Twitter (which was basically financially stable, albeit certainly not printing money), then I think a lot of people would be okay with that. People were tolerant of a lot of shit from Twitter; there's a reason it was affectionately known as the hellsite.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThere was an intermediate state on Twitter -- where the default experience was poo but one could make Twitter palatable by using third party clients and other tools. The promise of Bluesky is that this intermediate state won't be yanked. There are some steps they've taken to fulfill this promise, but it's not fully realized.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- libsmentalill 2y ago[flagged]
- nixpulvis 2y agoI won't stop them.
- mehdix 2y agoFilter this page [1] for newly created profiles and see how it grows in realtime. https://firesky.tv/ https://firesky.tv/
- nixpulvis 2y agoWhat the hell am I looking at here!? This surely can't be ALL the messages right!? That would be amazing. Someone want to do the math on bitrates?
- sundaeofshock 2y agoSeems reasonable to me. If only 10% of the user base posts just twice a day, we are talking about 4.2 million posts in a single day or about 48 posts/second.
- nixpulvis 2y agoI'm still waiting for the dust to settle before I open my starter packs. I don't really need to be caught up in the hype. Even though marketing myself more would be nice. This rat race is exhausting sometimes.
- toddmorey 2y agoThe article nails Twitter's problem: spambots and promoted tweets. Checking Twitter now feels like checking my spam folder. Bluesky at the moment feels like a group chat with old friends. It will get worse as it grows—that's how these things seem to go. However, two things give me a bit of hope: first it's been a chance for a complete reset and I'm ruthless curating who I follow. Secondly, and most importantly, hackability and API access makes it easier to filter out the stuff I don't want to see. You don't even have to built it yourself! There are already AI tools that will hide screenshots from Twitter / Insta / etc for example.
- josefritzishere 2y agoThe Twitter nazi problem is also real. Nobody wants to hang out at a pub where a bunch of nazis are doing their nazi thing. Ditto chatrooms, social media etc.
- sundaeofshock 2y agoI think the “Don’t engage, just block” culture helps a lot. I don’t have much of a block list since the larger accounts I follow have been ruthless in with their block lists. There is a spam-bot “herd-immunity” developing in certain communities on Bluesky.
- verdverm 2y agoyeah, this has been big, also the custom labellers for moderation. Sub'n to a couple does wonders.
- fofoz 2y agoBluesky stats: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bcounter.nat.vg/ https://bcounter.nat.vg/
- attilakun 2y agoThese are great. I'm working on something related, a hashtag tracker for Bluesky [1]. Japanese posts are often among the top hashtags. [1] https://www.butterflystats.com/ https://www.butterflystats.com/
- jazz9k 2y agoBluesky is just another haven for degenerate behavior with authoritarian leaders. It will be gone within a year or two.
- hagbard_c 2y agoThe amount of BS astroturf - or should that be bluescreen [1] given the subject at hand? - is remarkable which makes me wonder whether these posts are created by a small but dedicated number of users. Having a quick look at the submission history for belter, a prolific high-karma poster indicates this might be the case given that it shows 7 posts in the last 4 days which either directly plug BS (3 posts) or are negative towards something related to Musk or X (4 posts). 7 posts in 4 days sounds like a person on a mission. What about others though? It would be a coincidence if belter happened to be the leader of the pack when it comes to BS bluescreening. So, what does it look like for the last 7, 31, 365 and (why not) 3650 days? Well, like this when searching for posts with 'bluesky' in the title [2]: In the last 7 days belter was actually the most prolific bluescreener. In the last 31 days (i.e. including the whole post-election period) the following users submitted two or more posts with 'bluesky' in the title: 2 "coloneltcb" 2 "davidbarker" 2 "hasheddan" 2 "hboon" 2 "Karrot_Kream" 2 "Kye" 2 "ulrischa" 3 "belter" 3 "colinprince" 3 "consumer451" 4 "cannibalXxx" 4 "speckx" 11 "mooreds" Run the command yourself [2] for the other results, they are less interesting. The results show most 'bluesky' posts come from individual users so in that respect this disproves the thesis that the whole BS push is the result of a few users trying to create groundswell around BS while showing there are a number of users, belter being one of those who are pushing the subject with above-average fervour. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key [2] Run this command: now=$(date +%s);query="bluesky";for n in 7 31 365 3650;do echo -e "\nLAST $n days\n"; curl -s -d '{"query":"'$query'","page":0,"hitsPerPage":1000,"minProximity":7,"numericFilters":["created_at_i>'$((now - (n*24*60*60)))'"],"restrictSearchableAttributes":["title","url"]}' 'https://uj5wyc0l7x-dsn.algolia.net/1/indexes/Item_dev_sort_date/query?x-algolia-agent=Algolia%20for%20JavaScript%20(4.13.1)%3B%20Browser%20(lite)&x-algolia-api-key=28f0e1ec37a5e792e6845e67da5f20dd&x-algolia-application-id=UJ5WYC0L7X'|jq '.["hits"].[].author'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n;done|less
- sundaeofshock 2y agoPeople post frequently on topics they like. There are plenty of folks on HN that are heavily engaged in just a few topics, from specific programming languages to certain political ideas.
- incomingpain 2y agoJapan is 1 of 2 countries whose political polarization is worse than the usa. The democrats fleeing to bluesky after the unexpected to them win of Trump, the greatest threat to democracy... Identical for Japan's exodus. LDP did still win in october. One of the shocking things CNN recently said. X is properly balanced politically. This is what's needed to cure the polarization.
- piva00 2y ago> One of the shocking things CNN recently said. X is properly balanced politically. This is what's needed to cure the polarization. Care to elaborate? I really don't see the logical steps for this to happen, those bubbles don't intermingle on platforms since they pigeon hole themselves, the only overlap is through slinging shit onto the other side. Would really appreciate some elaboration on how exactly this statement could have any logic.
- sundaeofshock 2y agoI didn’t see that CNN article, however I do see my feed on twitter. It’s a depressing flood of MAGA assholes that made it painful to see anything interesting. I’m sick of all the rage bait that’s pushed because it juices engagement numbers. It’s been a joy to follow conversations on Bluesky and not have to worry about some chud interrupting with “cry more libtard” or some anti-trans bullshit.
- fomine3 2y agoAbsolutely false. Both side still love X.
- fallinghawks 2y agoThis is great news to me. I've made the switch to Bluesky, but don't want to close my account on X yet because I follow a bunch of Japanese game devs, for whom US politics is not a reason to leave. Hope to see them on bsky.