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The Rise of Bluesky
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oDot 2y agoEvery time there's a Bluesky or ATProto post I comment with how I think their killer feature is video. Their smart use of domains makes it so that their equivalent of "channel" can be an actual website, that will offer you recommendations when you watch videos on it exactly like YT, except you control the algorithm. Users will get much better choice and experience over the already excellent YouTube, but most importantly the creators will be able to express themselves however they wish. They will rent hosting from a provider, shows ads from an Adsense-like service, and actually own both their content _and_ their subscriber list. I've been wanting to build it, but I'm always deterred by how ATProto is still tightly linked to Bluesky itself.
- IAmNotACellist 2y agoIt's so user-friendly that you get banned for sharing any remotely controversial opinion. Just like the good old days of Twitter! Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now. CNN even admitted that the party affiliation of its users went from majority-left (65/31) to split down the middle, 48/47. https://x.com/ScottJenningsKY/status/1861445812175147353 https://x.com/ScottJenningsKY/status/1861445812175147353
- transcriptase 2y agoYes but mars man bad. Ergo if everyone who hates mars man proclaims that the alternative to mars man website is “the next big thing” and “exploding in popularity” loudly and often enough, then maybe it will actually become popular outside the mars man bad crowd. You know it’s manufactured when news outlets are comparing App Store download rankings of X and BlueSky. The new app versus the one that’s been around for nearly 20 years and already present on most devices it ever will be. Meanwhile in the real world nobody has heard of BlueSky or really cares that people they’ll never interact with no longer get banned for being bigots on X.
- tomlockwood 2y agoThat reads like massive cope. Twitter fundamentally offers no killer feature. Being "around for nearly 20 years" means nothing.
- notadoc 2y ago> Twitter fundamentally offers no killer feature. Less censorship is a pretty important feature
- pohl 2y agoCensorship isn’t absent from Twitter. Quite the opposite.
- doug_durham 2y agoTwitter is all about censorship. That's its core feature now. Intimidation has been engineered into the platform. Suppression of unpopular or marginal opinions that don't align with the owner has been systematically added to the platform. Try typing the word 'cis' into the platform.
- sundaeofshock 2y agoA really killer feature for me is not being bombarded by racist, sexiest, homophobic, and transphobic drivel. Twitter doesn’t support this feature; it’s all but impossible to avoid all that crap on that platform.
- tomlockwood 2y agoPost "cisgender". Bluesky also has the "less censorship" feature :D
- latentcall 2y agoWhen people say censorship in regard to Twitter they just want to be shitty to people. Just post on 4chan what’s the real difference? Twitter is a cesspool.
- transcriptase 2y ago
- ruthmarx 2y ago> Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now. That might have a chance at being true if the owner didn't flood the network with deliberate misinformation and block dissenting opinions.
- GloomyBoots 2y agoThat was true previously as well. The most substantial difference between Jack and Musk is that the former was better at maintaining a professional demeanor. His biases were no fewer, his tenure at Twitter was markedly more censorious, but he was better at presenting himself. This seems to be the main distinguishing feature of American liberalism as opposed to conservatism. The point about misinformation is another place this can be seen. There's a lot of misinformation from both mainstream political camps in the US, but liberal misinformation is more dressed-up whereas conservative misinformation is downright clownish--Alex Jones being a good example.
- bdangubic 2y agothis is too funny. comparing X before and after Musk takeover… wowsa… can’t believe this is even a thing anyone can say/write with a straight face
- human_person 2y agoI see it more of a freedom from versus freedom to distinction. Under Elon’s Twitter you have the freedom to say anything (*almost anything — no tweeting about where his jet is lol). Under jack’s Twitter you have freedom from being bombarded with rape threats if you disagree with the wrong influencer. Personally I prefer the freedom from regime but the nice part of the divide is everyone gets to choose for themselves. I’ve seen more of the people whose create content Im interested in (scientists, artists, authors etc) migrating to Bluesky but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years.
- GloomyBoots 2y agoHonestly, I've thought about signing up for Bluesky on a similar basis, that a lot of the people I want to follow for my hobbies are there. I'm not sure what you mean about the rape threats. Is there a documented increase in such things on Xitter?
- dustyventure 2y agoWhere are the 400 million left leaning party members from to make up for the US?
- notadoc 2y ago> Twitter/X is actually a balanced discourse site now. CNN even admitted that the party affiliation of its users went from majority-left (65/31) to split down the middle, 48/47 To repeat a quote I have seen repeated in dozens of email signatures (below the pronouns, of course!) "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
- thegrim33 2y agoAfter all the hullabaloo recently I went and looked at it for the first time. Here's my true first-time user experience: The first 10 posts recommended to me were 1 comedian making a joke, 2 pictures of space, and 7 hate-based partisan political posts. All from one extreme end of the political spectrum. You can guess which. I instantly left and will never go back. For what it's worth, I also do not use X.
- IAmNotACellist 2y agoI'd agree the default user experience is shit (and I felt it was shit on old Twitter too). It's like a shotgun of shit at the wall to see what sticks. But once you engage with content you want (which can be entirely non-political and niche-interest based) that goes away. Or at least I suspect so. I often end up being interested in politics and thus get more of it, but I'm not complaining. I get a good mix of my specific interests, art, humor, cute animals, and politics.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoWell first post I’ve seen was “punch a nazi” and then bunch of other hate towards right-wing.
- latentcall 2y agoAre people mad about anti-Nazi sentiments? I guess people’s memories really are short.
- pohl 2y agoPepperidge Farms remembers that Indiana Jones was the good guy.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoI'm mad about calls for violence regardless who they are (esp. how quick everyone are to label someone)
- latentcall 2y agoWould you say the same thing in 1930’s Germany?
- boringg 2y agoBluesky wont happen no matter how hard they push right now. Its not offering anything fundamentally different. It will pull from X but will stay niche.
- autoexecbat 2y agoWhy not? These all come and go, it could be Twitter's time to go. MySpace became irrelevant, Facebook is near-irrelevant.
- krapp 2y agoIt's clearly already "happening." Bluesky doesn't need to offer anything fundamentally different, just an experience that users consider better than the alternative. People aren't seeking novelty so much as an escape from the toxicity and algorithmically-driven vitriol of Twitter.
- obar1x 2y agomastodont went nowhere... same here with this other runaway from X coz Trymp thing
- krapp 2y agoSure, Jan.
- GloomyBoots 2y agoEvery time I've opened the bluesky homepage it's been highly political. Not even in the sense of "here's a topic I feel strongly about". It's just "fuck conservatives" over and over. At the same time, even the most mild conservative opinions result in a ban. That's not a platform that one goes to for an escape from toxicity. It's a platform that one goes to so that they can burn strawmen with like-minded toxic people without worrying about getting blowback for it.
- krapp 2y ago>Every time I've opened the bluesky homepage it's been highly political. Not even in the sense of "here's a topic I feel strongly about". It's just "fuck conservatives" over and over. Odd. My homepage looks nothing like that. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
- autoexecbat 2y agoAll that really matters is: where do the advertisers choose to put their dollars
- verdverm 2y agoAllegedly, Bluesky does not plan to ever have ads on their app. They have some other monetization plans, yet to be announced publicly
- _mlbt 2y agoAh yes, the tried and true South Park Underpants Gnome business model... 1. Make Twitter/X Clone 2. ??? 3. Profit! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
- rglover 2y agoI switched to Bluesky yesterday due to the bots/zero engagement on X. It's basically become yelling into the void. Started out in 2007 and it was great for finding people and getting interest in your projects, but now, I just get a bunch of spam bot follows and on an account with 3,600+ followers, only 30-40 views at most per post (w/ no engagement).
- loevborg 2y agoSame for me. 1,000 followers and barely any engagement. I swear it used to be different. My posts weren't any less dumb years ago, but I used to at least get a few replies and likes, even retweets.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoGetting tired of these samey sort of 'look what a revolution Bluesky is' posts. Yes, it's doing well. A boom. A recent boom. But I also anecdotally am not seeing huge swathes of engagement or migration depending on niche. It was like that when the whole Mastodon exodus happened a few years ago also - both in the numerous excitement posts, and the niche-specific migration. Let's just see where it goes. The thoughtpieces are endless and lack any real insight or substantive data.
- slowmovintarget 2y ago[flagged]
- 123yawaworht456 2y ago>Someone's pushing really hard to make Bluesky happen yeah, there are 1-2 posts on the frontpage every day now. totally organic
- pohl 2y agoThis was a great little article. Very fair summary of the situation. After the demise of Twitter, I first tried Post.news — which had great branding but failed to get the everything-is-a-tweet model right (comments were 2nd class citizens to posts). Then I moved to Mastodon, which I enjoy. Mastodon’s biggest issue is the enormous UX hurdle to pick an instance before even signing up, though. That and the lack of a unified view (mentioned in the article) will probably keep it niche. Also lack of quote-tweeting, a deliberate choice. BlueSky is the first truly worthy successor. It’s better than Twitter in its prime, before it went algorithmic. It allows quote-tweeting but gives the quoted party control over the scenarios that Mastodon was trying to prevent by avoiding the feature entirely.
- infotainment 2y agoAgreed about that they nailed the UX for BlueSky in terms of “best possible Twitterlike”. That said, my biggest concern is how they plan to make money. With BlueSky being completely open at the moment, there is effectively no possible monetization strategy for them without making major breaking changes to the protocol. For example, if they added ads to the app, someone could just write a client that didn’t have ads. Donations are another possibility, but probably wouldn’t be enough to pay for the servers.
- rsynnott 2y agoTwitter had third party apps with no ads for over a decade without the sky falling. Few people use anything other than the default.
- infotainment 2y agoFair point! Ditto for Reddit, I suppose. Though, wasn’t Twitter’s financial situation starting to become somewhat dire toward the end of its pre-Musk life?
- rsynnott 2y agoI mean, define dire. It was not what you’d call the world’s most profitable company, and had negative income for two years, but it had been cash flow positive every year for years. Its valuation was… optimistic, but it’s not like it was going to collapse or anything.
- notadoc 2y ago[flagged]
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoYou can literally host your own PDS, and no one will stop you. It's based on protocols: so what thou wilt. But that doesn't mean you also get to show up for free in any place you want & spout off your mouth. Block & moderation tools aren't censorship; we don't let lunatics into our living rooms to say whatever they want any time. The X experience for many is being drowned in the muckiest shittiest slime. Paid-for bluechecks drowning out the air, spouting wild conspiracy theories, hate, disinformation, and every other blood pressure rising attention grabbing FUD they can push. The open protocols are a great possible virtue we hope keeps combinatorially improving the ecosystem, but really it's the absolutely despicable descent to bedlam that X has dug its own hole with. And if Bluesky thinks your account looks antagonist (which a significant number of right wing agitators are doing), I respect Bluesky 's right not to have to host hot slop garbage. Your post is full of incredibly slanted wild flame-wars level accusations & bitter slant. That I don't think represents reality at all. Underneath the mud slinging your core argument seems to be censorship, but that complaint is so very on the face of it obviously factually incorrect at the most basic levels.
- notadoc 2y ago> The X experience for many is being drowned in the muckiest shittiest slime. Paid-for bluechecks drowning out the air, spouting wild conspiracy theories, hate, disinformation, and every other blood pressure rising attention grabbing FUD they can push. That's what you engage with, so that is what it gives you. Are you not familiar with social media algorithms?
- mustime 2y ago[dead]