Surely nothing will go wrong with THIS corporate owned walled garden.
How any times do they have to learn the same lesson?
Technically it’s an open protocol. Whether or not any other implementations will surface remains to be seen.
I know a much better place. It is called mastodon.
Just pointing out the author mentions they used mastodon for a time too, their argument is that bluesky interface, content and moderation are better for them.
That mindset is the problem. A slightly better UX at the cost of freedom is a bad deal.
They keep building up these companies with shiti core principles then pika face when corpos do them dirty 🤡
It’s a little more than a slightly better UX. Dismissing the entire concept of the instance removes a fair amount of complexity and fragmentation from the equation. There are so many cheerful guides out there about how to select an instance and every single one of them loses 95% of normal people in the first paragraph.
Having a signup model that people understand helps. Concentrating everything in one schema creates a noticeable increase in density of relevant content. Having corporate money for real hosting and security counts. When you fediverse instance goes down to DDOS or implements crippling safeguards because they can’t keep up with the spam, you really feel how the whole thing is run on a shoestring.
UX matters.
If open source software genuinely wants to be an option for normal people, they need to fix their shit.
I will give bluesky credit for their focus on moderation. Hopefully some of that design is cloned by the Mastodon folks sooner than later
I will give bluesky credit for their focus on moderation.
Watch that focus disappear once the enshittification phase starts.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of the microblog format, but I’m pretty sure everyone here is going to agree that Mastodon is the superior Twitter replacement.
Nope. Not at all. I very much prefer BlueSky as far as Twitter replacement goes.
yep, people that loved walled gardens like twitter will absolutely love bluesky
I don’t think I get what you mean when you say “Walled Garden” in this context. Can you elaborate?
walled garden
Facebook control all aspects: you can only do what they want. Mastodon can be hosted and modified by anyone, it’s freedom.
A closed platform, walled garden, (…) is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content. - wikipedia
just another corporate managed behemoth. their interfaces are slick, but the federation lacking
Interesting. Ugh, I feel the need to go peek at it now, but I also expect to really not like it. Oh well, here goes.
Unfortunately not. For me the main problem is discoverability. There’s no recommendation algorithm except for boosts. I’m not suggesting Mastodon integrate some kind of machine learning or other advanced stuff, but number of likes from followed accounts and a threshold would be nice for a start. As it is, Mastodon is just bad for entertainment purposes. Maybe it works for other purposes, but for entertainment I’d rather have the algorithm-fuelled quote-tweet dunking on Twitter.
There’s the explore tab in the mastodon app that shows you trending hashtags, and recommends people to follow based off who you already follow. There’s trending accounts that just post about trending items too. Use them as your algorithm.
There’s definitely an opportunity for someone to run their own curation service for personalized feeds based on a user’s activity on other social networks.
I tend to just check All periodically for the first couple of months and follow tags and people that suit my own interests and build my own feed from zero. That takes manual effort though, many people want a firehose of personalized content presented to them immediately.
As much as this service raises data privacy concerns I suspect that many people would use it anyone purely due to convenience.
Now ditch that for mastodon
Leaving one privately run garden for another sure seems like a choice 🤔
It’s built to be decentralized though, from what I read.
Mastodon: Am I a joke to you?
I wasn’t a fan of the format. (and apparently I’m not allowed to have an opinion on format)
I value your opinion. What do you mean by format? Couldn’t you just use a different UI?
Isn’t the format literally just Twitter?
it’s quite different in the sense that you don’t see any recommended content, just your follows and their boosts.
It’s centralized. They allow federation using their own protocol.
But all you need to know is that it’s a capitalist, for-profit undertaking.
When it’s built around lage aggregators, running which privately is rather hard, there’s a bias in favour of centralised, large operators thereof, which mitigates some of the advantages.
Mastodon is much better for that
I tried Threads and it was horrible. Honestly not using Mastodon that much. But maybe that format is just not my thing.
See the thing is…you have to microblog like a crazed hobo yelling things into the void. It doesn’t need to make sense. It’s better if it DOESN’T make sense.
Mbin is attempt at having both. Microblog is a bit weak tho
Yup, I’ve tried Twitter and hated it. I remember when Mastodon launched, and it was described as “federated Facebook” IIRC, and now people are claiming that it’s more like “federated Twitter.” I hate both Facebook and Twitter, so I use neither.
So honestly, I don’t really care about Twitter/X vs BlueSky vs Mastodon, because I don’t want to use any of them. Reddit/Lemmy is a much more interesting format to me TBH.
I really need local interest groups. For example a local skating community or local hardware selling group - that’s only Facebook today unfortunately.
Dang. Does meetup work? I know it’s pretty decent for tech meetups, not so sure about the others.
Sort of. It’s definitely worse since Covid with the majority of “local” events being online either way. And where I live now it’s much quieter than where I used to live.
Dang. Covid really messed stuff up, I used to love Meetup before, but I haven’t had as much time since (had a kid right after Covid started, so I’ve been spending more time at home).
Removed by mod
How about, no
My experience with BlueSky has been that it is better than Twitter because it is smaller and doesn’t cater to the far-right.
BUT…
It can become extremely toxic very fast because they implemented the same poorly executed features Twitter did that fucked things up. In fact, it’s way worse than that…
The two features they copied from Twitter that hurt them the most are site-wide search and quote posts. Site-wide search enables people to “namesearch” or to monitor keywords for issues they want to fight about. Quote posts are a well understood “dunk mechanism”, that largely encourages dogpiling.
As for being free of a central algorithm, that seems good, until you see that there are tons of community algorithms you can subscribe to instead. Now there are algorithms for things like “anti-Zionist posts” and “pro-Israel posts”, which not only let people find their preferred echo-chamber, but also provide trolls access to exactly the groups of people they want to argue with or harass.
These algorithms can be built to detect certain hashtags and phrases, or they can just be big lists of accounts like a Twitter group. There’s no telling when you might show up in one of these algorithms or why.
As a result, if you say anything less than agreeable about any issue, there’s a chance you’re going to hear from a bunch of accounts you’ve never met before, regardless of what side of an issue you are on, or how extreme your view actually is.
I don’t recommend it. It’s a pro-profit company that seeks to be a wholesale replacement for Twitter. AT Proto federation is a complete joke, it’ll never expand if it doesn’t have a flagship open source server. They’ll give up on it just like Twitter did and just be another centralized, toxic, microblogging community.
The fucking lack of site wide search is why I hate these federated services. Such a glaringly missing feature.
I’d rather have a smaller but somewhat predictable group of peers I grow to somewhat respect and trust than being confronted by thousands of random strangers that are there for mere “engagemen” but not for helping each other out or saying nice things.
Thanks, this was helpful! Sounds like I’ll pass on Bluesky!
Another idea: ditch Twitter and learn to play the ukulele instead
Bluesky is also about as dead as tumblr
I barely see anyone interacting with anything, or anyone for that matter
There is another alternative to twitter
Its pretty unknown, especially on lemmy, so i dont think many people heard of it, its on something called “the fediverse” and is called “mastodon”
His profile is sign-in blocked.
“Public square” indeed.
The one drawback to Bluesky’s block feature is that a user’s block lists aren’t private. Through third party apps, you can find lists of everyone anyone’s blocked. That probably won’t bother most people, but it’s a potential issue for those who worry that public block lists could be used perniciously by persistent stalkers or harassers.
The only missing function is the ability to lock your account or go private as you can on Twitter, which would let you hide your account from non-followers while still posting to folks who already follow you.
But Bluesky has gotten considerable criticism at key points over the last year and a half for failures in handling anti-Black racism in particular. Rudy Fraser wrote extensively about some of these issues along with a deep dive into his goals and challenges as the creator of the now legendary Blacksky feed in a great post a year ago.
Every time someone recommends me Bluesky, I learn something else about it that makes me never want to make an account. Any one of these three quotes should be a dealbreaker on their own
