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BlueSky has its problems, but the problems are more bearable than Twitter. You can have conversations about science and technology without weird angry people/bo
by matthewdgreen 2y ago
BlueSky has its problems, but the problems are more bearable than Twitter. You can have conversations about science and technology without weird angry people/bots popping up in the replies and shouting at you.
Twitter used to be great that way as well, but now it isn't. Losing those communication channels is a big loss, no matter what you think of social media.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoBluesky also doesn't show me videos of people dying every 10 minutes.
- jeffhuys 2y agoX doesn't do that for me either... If you see posts you don't like, block/hide them. X learns. That's the cost of a free platform though. Rather have that than being banned for thinking wrong.
- duxup 2y agoExtreme content aside (well sometimes included): Personally I found the "job" of managing who you follow / feed and pruning on twitter tiresome and at times impossible. Bluesky has been better, maybe only due to fewer people, but if so then so be it.
- aredox 2y agoIn the end, the only thing Musk has done is cripple the spam filter of twitter.
- duxup 2y agoMaybe, but I'm pretty sure that thing is not a lot of user's motivation ... at least as far as the discussion goes / their motivation to go elsewhere. Side note: It is amusing how the current ownership's concern about bots vanished as soon as they took over.
- grajaganDev 2y agoBluesky has a nuclear block which really helps.
- verdverm 2y agoBluesky, or more accurately ATProto, has stackable moderation which is more sustainable in the long run https://github.blog/news-insights/the-library/browser-monitoring-for-github-com/ https://github.blog/news-insights/the-library/browser-monito... tl;dr - anyone can run a labelling service, users have choice which one(s) they use (Bluesky &| 3rd party), competition and network effect will surface the good ones and weed out the bad ones. This concept is going to be extended to community notes, sometime this year I suspect
- patmorgan23 2y agoYeah. Think that got the broad strokes of the atproto architecture right for social media. Individual data stores -> aggregation/crawler layer -> services/app views. Feels like how search engines work with html web sites. I think it will be more successful than Mastodon has been.
- verdverm 2y agoIt's already 3x+ the size and growing faster, I would say it is already more successful in one regard. Next up is to build out the app ecosystem that APub has
- immibis 2y agoNote: the reasons Bluesky is more popular than Mastodon have nothing to do with their technical architectures (except insofar as some people have learned helplessness about x@y), and everything to do with one being heavily marketed by a billionaire. Though people do seem to prefer a consistent moderation policy, even if it's harsher. People don't like to have free speech about the things they want to speak about, and have another group of people choose to ignore it. They want to either speak to everyone at once or be blocked from everyone at once (at which time they make a new account).
- aredox 2y agoExcept that it is exactly the same, as Twitter will use those signals to derank globally the users whose posts are blocked too often. Meanwhile, Musk himself is banning people for thinking what he decides is wrong.
- dangus 2y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-musk-silencing-his-critics-as-journalists-are-suspended-by-x/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus... https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/business/x-banned-a-journalist-for-disproving-a-rumor-about-elon-musk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/business/x-banned-a-journalis... https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-account-suspensions-rising-2024-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-account-... https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-technology-business-dac21de7abb6167bb604f5317aeda10a https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-technology-business-dac... https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-musk-throttled-tweets-turkey-presidential-election-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/musk-tried-to-punish-critics-judge-rules-in-tossing-a-lawsuit/ar-BB1kvzSM https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/musk-tried-to-punish-criti... Should I go on?
- pmarreck 2y ago(apologies for AI summary of the above articles; was just trying to be helpful!) Elon Musk's tenure at X (formerly Twitter) has been marked by a series of actions that starkly contrast his self-proclaimed stance as a "free speech absolutist." Despite his vocal advocacy for unrestricted expression, Musk has overseen a significant increase in account suspensions and content restrictions, often targeting critics and journalists. Notably, X has suspended numerous journalists who have reported critically on Musk or his ventures. For instance, in December 2022, the platform suspended accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, among others, who covered Musk's activities. These actions have raised concerns about the suppression of dissenting voices and the erosion of journalistic freedom on the platform. Associated Press Furthermore, under Musk's leadership, X has shown a heightened willingness to comply with government censorship requests. During the 2023 Turkish presidential election, the platform restricted access to certain content within Turkey, a move that critics argue was influenced by Musk's business interests in the region, including SpaceX's satellite launches in collaboration with the Turkish government. These actions suggest a departure from Musk's professed commitment to free speech, revealing a pattern of behavior that prioritizes personal and business interests over the principle of open expression. The increasing suppression of critical voices and compliance with authoritarian regimes' censorship demands highlight a concerning inconsistency between Musk's stated ideals and his actions as the steward of a major social media platform.
- hedora 2y agoBlue sky supports federation, and X is selectively censored by the top level of the US executive branch. How do you define “free”?
- immibis 2y agoIn practice, Bluesky is a fully centralized system. You can run your own server to feed posts into the single centralized system.
- mayneack 2y agoThe moderation is mostly federated. You can choose which lists to subscribe to to mute/block/label as you see fit.
- immibis 2y agoI created a parody Donald Trump account as an experiment. It was deleted for "impersonation". Are you saying if I had run it on my own PDS, other people would get to choose whether it was deleted for them or not?
- mayneack 2y agoI obviously can't speak to your specific situation. As I understand it, both X and bluesky require parodies to be labeled. From what I can tell, most content moderation on bluesky is done via labelers, which you need a pds to run, but not to use. Both X and bluesky have semi-automated moderation processes with an inherent false positive rate. The two high profile cases I'm aware of (Jessie Singal and Laura Loomer) that were suspended automatically eventually got turned back on once a human was involved. https://bsky.app/profile/jessesingal.com https://bsky.app/profile/jessesingal.com https://bsky.app/profile/loomered.bsky.social/post/3lemtdvls7k2n https://bsky.app/profile/loomered.bsky.social/post/3lemtdvls...
- immibis 2y ago
- Vaslo 2y agoLiterally never had this issue on X.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y agoI don't either, but that's because I stopped using Twitter ages ago. It's a very reliable solution to all of Twitter's problems.
- afavour 2y agoThis is far from the first time I've seen it mentioned. Seems quite possible that if you're a heavy user it has enough source material for your recommendations that they'll be good, but for less regular users it'll draw from whatever is 'trending'.
- TheChaplain 2y agoBecause there are no algorithms yet. I try to follow the situation in Ukraine and I see lots of videos on X with russians murdering ukrainians as well as their own.
- afavour 2y agoWell, no, violent content is against Bluesky's terms of service so it would be removed if flagged. Twitter has no such restriction so violent content spreads widely. I understand the free speech principle at work but from a purely pragmatic point of view I simply don't want to see that stuff in my day to day browsing of social media.
- llm_nerd 2y agoBluesky has a number of algorithmic feeds. For instance "What's Hot Classic". And while that feed doesn't have violence, it does have a surprisingly high number of "dudes holding their cock" and furry-related images, which seems like something that should probably be filtered out or at least tagged.
- diggan 2y ago> Because there are no algorithms yet. One of the major selling points of Bluesky is that you get to chose your own algorithms (or rather, chose what algorithms you want to use, that others built). So there are way more algorithms than any other social media, today. Only difference is that with Bluesky you get to chose which one you use. https://bsky.social/about/blog/3-30-2023-algorithmic-choice https://bsky.social/about/blog/3-30-2023-algorithmic-choice
- TiredOfLife 2y agoBluesky doesn't have a working only followed feed.
- pjc50 2y agoWhat's wrong with the "following" feed? Works for me.
- paulgb 2y agoSame. And Bluesky also allows you to bring your own feed algorithm, so if you don't like the discover feed you could make a better one! It's not a hypothetical either, I follow and use several custom feeds today (for example, one that shows post by people who follow _me_, so I can discover people to follow back).
- TiredOfLife 2y agoIt shows couple days worth of posts by people you follow and then turns into discover feed. While OnlyPosts feed shows posts only from 1 to 4 days.
- pfraze 2y agoInfra team recently switched the timeline backend to a new cluster and didn't backfill. It will regrow over time. Sorry about the confusion that caused. It was one of those things that happened in the scaling rush.
- after_mirage 2y ago[flagged]
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago[flagged]
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 2y agoWhat is "being bulldozed by them" like for you? I hear this sort of thing a lot, but I really can't say I've ever felt this way. And I am a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition, but I just don't ever feel personally affected by this issue.
- immibis 2y ago[flagged]
- concerndc1tizen 2y agoThe more you suppress normal people, the more people you will add to your opposition. But perhaps the right wing knows that. Maybe they're adding fuel to the fire by supporting extremist LGBT people. Wouldn't that be something!
- concerndc1tizen 2y agoBulldozed: flagged, downvoted, villified, sidetracked, strawmanned, ad hominem, getting cancelled. They often use tactics like brigading, dogpiling, astroturfing.
- 2y ago
- duxup 2y agoYeah the typical issue of "they could go bad" is always present. Really that's internet services history in a nutshell. You use the thing, you move when you feel motivated.
- diggan 2y ago> Yeah the typical issue of "they could go bad" is always present. It's at least refreshing to see Bluesky PBC try to prevent it by setting up guardrails themselves, like allowing people to host their data somewhere else, which seems to work today already. Here's to hoping the federation stuff shapes up nicely too.
- verdverm 2y agoThe community is organizing the first ATProto Developer Conference, Seattle, March 22-23 Getting together to show and talk about building the next gen of social media https://atprotocol.dev/atmosphereconf-confirming-date-seattle/ https://atprotocol.dev/atmosphereconf-confirming-date-seattl...
- diggan 2y agoThat's awesome to hear! You happen to know about something similar but outside of the US? Any continent is fine, even Canada or Mexico would be OK.
- verdverm 2y agoNo, this is totally grassroots by the people, though it is in the same city Bluesky is located. This kind of thing is just getting started, it is actually a guy from Vancouver that is taking the lead on this one. I'd recommend - getting on the ATProto dev Discord: https://discord.gg/VweB8gn5 https://discord.gg/VweB8gn5 - getting involved with: https://github.com/lexicon-community/lexicon https://github.com/lexicon-community/lexicon - using the #ATProtoDev hashtag There is a lot of overlap in the people and the developer community is starting to snowball
- itsoktocry 2y ago>You can have conversations about science and technology without weird angry people/bots popping up in the replies and shouting at you There's a guy on Twitter who posts about AI and has been reposting his Bluesky interactions on Twitter. Absolutely unhinged people going off on his benign takes. It's hilarious. People who have moved to Bluesky like to tell themselves it's the "smart place", but it's really just the place where you agree with the politics.
- peterpost2 2y agoI'm not sure if I would agree with that, definitely a lot of political arguments going on in bsky. It definitely used to be an echochamber though. But with Twitter being packed with Nazi's and every other comment being a sex-spambot I would guess plenty of non-traditional bluesky users have come over.
- itsoktocry 2y agoI have a niche I follow on Twitter, and during the great Twitter migration a few month back, everyone made an effort to head to Bluesky. I did as well, because I want good content, I don't care about the platform. It's already a ghost town. Sparse posting, lots of empty "here's what I cooked for supper" posts.
- immibis 2y agoIf Nazis become the majority, then non-Nazism is an echo chamber phenomenon. Is this fixable?
- fnord77 2y ago> You can have conversations about science and technology without weird angry people/bots popping up in the replies and shouting at you. If the conversation is about climate science, no you cannot unless your POV is the oceans are going to boil off in the next 5 years.
- eightysixfour 2y agoI wish there was a bluesky with less moderation. I don’t want bots and spam, but since I can control my own feeds and the mute functions actually work, I can shape it better than the other networks let me. I think that should be the real goal.
- pjc50 2y agoYou can actually unsubscribe from default moderation, and there's quite a lot of NSFW on there if you want it. There are some things they won't host, but it may be possible to work around that with your own PDS.
- eightysixfour 2y agoI meant more along the lines of kicking off people with viewpoints their user base doesn’t like. The Lauren Loomer’s of the world. I vehemently disagree with every thing she stands for and I agree that Bluesky has a right to ban her. But long run, I think we suffer when the biggest platforms turn into partisan black holes. I want a platform that is accessible to "normal" people, spends tons of effort blocking bots, has a UX that makes it easy to manage content you do and don’t see, and is open to any human to speak.
- immibis 2y agoHow would it be different from Mastodon?
- eightysixfour 2y agoThis comes up in most bluesky threads. I honestly can’t tell you what it is but every experience I have with Mastodon sucks. Maybe you can point me in a better direction. I want a platform that: • blocks bots and maybe doesn’t allow companies as users • user control first (blocking, custom algos, smart word filtering, content/topic based filtering) • does not deplatform users for their views • has community notes
- pjc50 2y agoThe blocklists systems can often be over-broad and sneakily include personal beefs, but overall the bluesky norm of "block on sight on first aggressive contact" is having a positive effect against engagement-baiting. Hostile actors seem to be trying something else: LLM "reply guys", which make superficially plausible conversation in your replies. Twitter is really the King Log/King Stork parable writ large. It had problems under Jack, as absentee owner, but getting an owner who is interested in making it his personal platform is much worse. Edit: this post has already been flagged off the front page, lol
- concerndc1tizen 2y agoIt's an interesting arms race, where an optimal bot has better chances of surviving than a normal person that will naturally have diverse opinions. As I pointed out in another comment: The right can pretend to be antagonizing extremist LGBTs to get more centrists to support their agenda - while undermining the LGBT movement itself also from within.
- immibis 2y agoIf you support people who "pretend to" antagonize LGBTs you're not a centrist.
- concerndc1tizen 2y agoYou misunderstood: I'm saying that right wing activist groups can use botnet to pretend to be LGBT, while being hateful and extreme in their views, to the point that "normal" people (who are indifferent about LGBT) become annoyed with "LGBT" to the point of supporting Trump etc. I'm saying that LGBT groups need to be aware that there is a serious internal threat of people pretending to be LGBT while harassing people who are not against LGBT, but will be. An alternative explanation is that LGBT people are just a hateful bunch, but I'm trying to argue against that hypothesis.
- diggan 2y ago> The blocklists systems can often be over-broad and sneakily include personal beefs, but overall the bluesky norm of "block on sight on first aggressive contact" is having a positive effect against engagement-baiting. Yeah, it's kind of inspiring to see even the common person is getting used to just block trolls on sight, rather than engaging in it. Something we veterans been doing for 2 decades or more, but good to see others are catching up on how to save your sanity :) That said, the other day I ended up on a "Transphobes, Genocide Enthusiasts, and Crumbums" list for some reason on Bluesky, while I haven't even posted anything about those topics or engaging in anything like that. Makes one wonder how many others on a list like that actually even discussed the supposed topics? I kind of wish people had to justify additions to lists somehow, like adding a reason or at least linking the post that made you add this user to the list, or something similar.
- clumsysmurf 2y ago> BlueSky has its problems I had this same problem with twitter - I would like to follow a person, say Joe, that talks about X, Y, and * ... but I'm only interested in X. I would like more granular pub/sub so I could follow Joe/X. Of course, Joe would have to set up those channels.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]