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I much prefer Bluesky to X but have had a hunch this was coming due to everything I've read about the practicality of running a Bluesky protocol service. I sti

I much prefer Bluesky to X but have had a hunch this was coming due to everything I've read about the practicality of running a Bluesky protocol service. I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience. Nostr appeals to me technically but every time I'm on it seems swamped completely by discussion of cryptocurrency. I guess to me it feels like one of these catch 22 (necessary but not sufficient?) problems where you have to have the right technical base for a platform, which seems doable, but even then you have to have the right userbase also.

slg 1y ago
It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. And when it comes to social media, businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their userbase.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Correction: businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their customers And for social media that isn't their userbase.
  - slg 1y ago
    That remains to be seen. Typically, the userbase is the product for a social media company, not their customers. Which means without a sizable enough userbase, there is nothing to actually sell to their customers. Bluesky has claimed to be different, but they are very much still in the early phase of trying to attract enough users so they need to cater to those users' priorities and decentralization simply isn't a priority that will attract many users.
  - strogonoff 1y ago
    Businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their customers and for “free”, ad-supported[0] social media that isn’t their userbase. I’d like to see Bluesky’s long-term business plan and what they will do when someone inevitably wants return on investment. [0] Yes, this describes all of current social media, but it doesn’t have to be this way. This business model should not be legal: as long as there is one “free” social media platform, that is the platform that is going to be used, simply because even $1 is infinitely more than $0 and no one can compete with free.
- apwell23 1y ago
  common people arent really using twitter or bluesky that much anyways. its just the crazies that are on there.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Always was. It's why I found it so dismaying when we went through years of apparently serious newspapers reporting on every twitter-storm as if it was important. Yes, it was a good if unreliable source of breaking news, but the general noise of people fighting back and forwards about whatever it was that week ... was just noise, among a relatively small group of motivated crazies. Using it as a societal barometer just results in skewed coverage and an emphasis on American social issues that aren't necessarily as relevant everywhere else.
    - apwell23 1y ago
      yep thats why these platforms are so toxic. bunch of lunatics locked in an asylum together.
    - NotPractical 1y ago
      It's shockingly common for people to cite Twitter and Bluesky posts as evidence of what the average American of political party X or Y believes. I do not understand how they came to be so deluded.
      - array_key_first 1y ago
        Usually those people are literally quoting representatives of those parties. They are, wait for it, representative of their respective parties. I don't need to go find loonies. I can get on Twitter or Truth Social and get it from the horse's mouth.
- swed420 1y ago
  > It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. The choice need not be limited to the familiar corporate hellscape vs decentralized usability nightmare dichotomy. Middle grounds can exist if we want them to. I've seen a lot of general support for the criticisms and concepts described in this article: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ Anyone who builds what they describe there can expect it to take off faster than ever.
  - abnercoimbre 1y ago
    Oh hah, I guess my blog post came a month after this one. Near-identical subject matter. [0] https://abner.page/post/exit-the-feed/ https://abner.page/post/exit-the-feed/
  - NaomiLehman 1y ago
    I think more important than usability is the lack of moderation on some websites
- bxsioshc 1y ago
  [dead]
danpalmer 1y ago
> Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos I'm not sure that's true. It's important to note that these bans are from the Bluesky App View (one component of the infra), and that these users can continue to post under their identity (if they own it, which they can), and users on App Views that haven't banned these users could continue to follow them. None of that works with Mastodon. An admin bans you from the instance, and you can no longer post, use your identity, interact on the platform, etc. You have to start from scratch. In short, Mastodon reduces the blast radius, but the "blast" is the same as on any private platform. Bluesky/AT Proto changes the impact to a different, strictly lesser type.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mariusor 1y ago
  That is true, but due to the smaller size and larger number of instances, it's easier to find a place where you won't get randomly banned without an admin taking the time to talk to you about what's wrong. My instance has about 1K active people on it and I've always been able to have a dialogue with the moderators and sysop. When things have gone wrong I had the opportunity to correct them. I think there's a great value to the "small community" ethos that the fediverse supports much better than bluesky.
  - afiori 1y ago
    But this is completely not decentralized at the user level (especially IIUC mastodon users cannot export/import their data) Bluesky is trying to build something as decentralized as email where still few providers dominate the market and most use few common ip/domain blacklists. Yet it is one of the most decentralized protocols on the internet. I a not saying Bluesky is a masterpiece but I think it is naive to hold it to a higher standard than email as a protocol. If it fails due to little adoption then it is a fail, if it succeed there is a possibility of it becoming a good decentralized protocol
    - mariusor 1y ago
duxup 1y ago
Seems like the hard truth is all these alternate platforms that offer their technology as the reason to get on it ... it's just not a great selling point for someone who wants to post "woah watch out driving tonight, it's slippery out there" or cat pics. I think that's a lot of users. The content of the posts and some level of moderation is the selling point. Personally that's kinda a bummer, because IMO my biggest disappointment is that its just Twitter but little different. Same pithy posts and petty bickering:(
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
> I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience. There's more servers on Mastodon, yes, so in that way it is decentralized more. But as a user, I have a lot more sovereignty over my data on Bluesky than I get having my account on a Mastodon / fediverse. I can set up my own PDS quite easily, or move to another, or back to BlueSky hosting very easy. I appreciate this decentralization a lot. And I have a much better chance of being able to analyze system behavior, understand propoganda networks on atproto/bluesky. Mastodon servers heavily discourage trying to view & understand the network, but Bluesky really lets everyday folks run and analyze the whole firehose, very very cheaply. Which is an incredible decentralization, a very powerful syndication that it's protocols enable, that's simply unmatched. Still, research is being done on both networks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566

slg 1y ago

It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. And when it comes to social media, businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their userbase.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
terminalshort 1y ago
Correction: businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their customers And for social media that isn't their userbase.
- slg 1y ago
  That remains to be seen. Typically, the userbase is the product for a social media company, not their customers. Which means without a sizable enough userbase, there is nothing to actually sell to their customers. Bluesky has claimed to be different, but they are very much still in the early phase of trying to attract enough users so they need to cater to those users' priorities and decentralization simply isn't a priority that will attract many users.
- strogonoff 1y ago
  Businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their customers and for “free”, ad-supported[0] social media that isn’t their userbase. I’d like to see Bluesky’s long-term business plan and what they will do when someone inevitably wants return on investment. [0] Yes, this describes all of current social media, but it doesn’t have to be this way. This business model should not be legal: as long as there is one “free” social media platform, that is the platform that is going to be used, simply because even $1 is infinitely more than $0 and no one can compete with free.
apwell23 1y ago
common people arent really using twitter or bluesky that much anyways. its just the crazies that are on there.
- Nursie 1y ago
  Always was. It's why I found it so dismaying when we went through years of apparently serious newspapers reporting on every twitter-storm as if it was important. Yes, it was a good if unreliable source of breaking news, but the general noise of people fighting back and forwards about whatever it was that week ... was just noise, among a relatively small group of motivated crazies. Using it as a societal barometer just results in skewed coverage and an emphasis on American social issues that aren't necessarily as relevant everywhere else.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    yep thats why these platforms are so toxic. bunch of lunatics locked in an asylum together.
  - NotPractical 1y ago
    It's shockingly common for people to cite Twitter and Bluesky posts as evidence of what the average American of political party X or Y believes. I do not understand how they came to be so deluded.
    - array_key_first 1y ago
      Usually those people are literally quoting representatives of those parties. They are, wait for it, representative of their respective parties. I don't need to go find loonies. I can get on Twitter or Truth Social and get it from the horse's mouth.
swed420 1y ago
> It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. The choice need not be limited to the familiar corporate hellscape vs decentralized usability nightmare dichotomy. Middle grounds can exist if we want them to. I've seen a lot of general support for the criticisms and concepts described in this article: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ Anyone who builds what they describe there can expect it to take off faster than ever.
- abnercoimbre 1y ago
  Oh hah, I guess my blog post came a month after this one. Near-identical subject matter. [0] https://abner.page/post/exit-the-feed/ https://abner.page/post/exit-the-feed/
- NaomiLehman 1y ago
  I think more important than usability is the lack of moderation on some websites
bxsioshc 1y ago
[dead]

danpalmer 1y ago

> Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos I'm not sure that's true. It's important to note that these bans are from the Bluesky App View (one component of the infra), and that these users can continue to post under their identity (if they own it, which they can), and users on App Views that haven't banned these users could continue to follow them. None of that works with Mastodon. An admin bans you from the instance, and you can no longer post, use your identity, interact on the platform, etc. You have to start from scratch. In short, Mastodon reduces the blast radius, but the "blast" is the same as on any private platform. Bluesky/AT Proto changes the impact to a different, strictly lesser type.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mariusor 1y ago
That is true, but due to the smaller size and larger number of instances, it's easier to find a place where you won't get randomly banned without an admin taking the time to talk to you about what's wrong. My instance has about 1K active people on it and I've always been able to have a dialogue with the moderators and sysop. When things have gone wrong I had the opportunity to correct them. I think there's a great value to the "small community" ethos that the fediverse supports much better than bluesky.
- afiori 1y ago
  But this is completely not decentralized at the user level (especially IIUC mastodon users cannot export/import their data) Bluesky is trying to build something as decentralized as email where still few providers dominate the market and most use few common ip/domain blacklists. Yet it is one of the most decentralized protocols on the internet. I a not saying Bluesky is a masterpiece but I think it is naive to hold it to a higher standard than email as a protocol. If it fails due to little adoption then it is a fail, if it succeed there is a possibility of it becoming a good decentralized protocol
  - mariusor 1y ago

duxup 1y ago

Seems like the hard truth is all these alternate platforms that offer their technology as the reason to get on it ... it's just not a great selling point for someone who wants to post "woah watch out driving tonight, it's slippery out there" or cat pics. I think that's a lot of users. The content of the posts and some level of moderation is the selling point. Personally that's kinda a bummer, because IMO my biggest disappointment is that its just Twitter but little different. Same pithy posts and petty bickering:(

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

> I still think there's room for something better technically. Mastodon seems more true to the decentralized ethos but I've never quite gotten used to the server dependency experience. There's more servers on Mastodon, yes, so in that way it is decentralized more. But as a user, I have a lot more sovereignty over my data on Bluesky than I get having my account on a Mastodon / fediverse. I can set up my own PDS quite easily, or move to another, or back to BlueSky hosting very easy. I appreciate this decentralization a lot. And I have a much better chance of being able to analyze system behavior, understand propoganda networks on atproto/bluesky. Mastodon servers heavily discourage trying to view & understand the network, but Bluesky really lets everyday folks run and analyze the whole firehose, very very cheaply. Which is an incredible decentralization, a very powerful syndication that it's protocols enable, that's simply unmatched. Still, research is being done on both networks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507566