Bluesky continues to soar
(techcrunch.com)
from blue_berry@lemmy.world to fediverse@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 2024 04:03
https://lemmy.world/post/19386818
from blue_berry@lemmy.world to fediverse@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 2024 04:03
https://lemmy.world/post/19386818
threaded - newest
Even if it doesnt have much impact on activitypub-fedi, I think this is good news for the fediverse in general. X is loosing more and more relevancy and microblogging is more and more happening on federating services.
I’m having trouble figuring out how bluesky is part of the fediverse at all.
From my understanding it doesn’t federate with anything.
It’s like saying a hamburger is really just a cheeseburger…you just need to add cheese.
It has an adapter that integrated with the current protocol.
Oh great. That bridge even federates with the bitcoin bros’ network (nostr)
Which one is that. I guess I’ve been left out of the loop.
Maybe they mean Nostr? If so, describing it as “the bitcoin bros’ network” is a bit misleading, since the “crypto” portion of Nostr is short for “cryptography”, not “cryptocurrency”.
Ah, so the kind of crypto bro, that instead of a fistbump, does a diffie-hellman key exchange instead?
Oh yeah, no. I literally mean the majority of the community there. All I see there is blockchain and bitcoin shit.
I think Nostr might unironically be my favourite platform, simply because it keeps those toxic morons away from the fediverse.
:D good one. My new favourite take on nostr.
I really like the Nostr protocol, though. It’s too bad the network is so inundated by cryptocurrency topics.
It’s simple, it has a nice extension process (standing on the shoulders of giants), and it’s super easy and lightweight to self-host. It reminds me a lot of the early days of http, when it was more common (as a developer) to telnet to port 80 and just type in a couple of lines of header and get a response.
Sadly, Nostr’s association with cryptocurrency, and the fact that 90% of the traffic on it is cryptocurrency created posts, has been a severe handicap.
In theory, bluesky can federate with other apps but it is currently the only one using their protocol, bluesky servers can federate with each other and when a new project using atprotocol appears it will probably be able to federate with that
You can see other instances at work in the app already. There is an @ symbol that says where the message comes from, and those differ from each other already.
Can you link to one of these other instances?
I think you can link bluesky to your personal domain. I’m not sure how it works.
From what I’ve seen it’s only single person instance where they use their domain names as user.
Not something you expect a standard person to have
It’s not a single person instance either, it’s just using your own domain in your handle.
There is only one bluesky it’s literally centralized
github.com/bluesky-social/pds
Any example of federated instance where registrations are open?
According to this blog post, they are currently limited to 10 accounts, so not many open servers, but you can host your own.
This is an old blog post, though, so the limit might have been lifted
Mastodon.social just went over the 2 million user mark. The switch to fediverse and fediverse adjacent is going pretty quick.
I’ve been on Mastodon for over a year and the content simply isn’t there. Several of the people that I follow on Twitter have tried moving or duplicating to Mastodon. They’ve had a fraction of the visibility and engagement from commenters that they would get on Twitter. Invariably after a few months they have essentially given up on it as a primary medium. For me the discoverability is essentially non-existent, which I don’t think is helped by the idea of it being based around instance-local communities, which have no meaning when you’re looking at something like Twitter.
Guess it’s not for you then. I’m having a blast. A lot of my friends are now in it and the last year or so have been great.
And more and more people seem to be moving.
Maybe, just maybe, if your followers aren’t willing to give up something vile because it’s giving them a dopamine hit, they’re not adding as much value to your life as you think.
There is absolutely nothing “vile” about quote tweets. When used properly, it is used to enrich a discussion. It’s not just because some idiot minority abuses a feature that it should be removed entirely. If well meaning people look at two different systems, and one of them is arbitrarily gutted of useful functionality, guess which one they will choose?
Sure, at the surface level of tweeting back and forth, there is nothing vile. But the very act of using the platform funds an agent of chaos that is doing very real harm, and to ignore that because it is inconvenient is at the most charitable interpretation a selfish and callous act. There are other means of discourse, and those with input that is valuable will follow you.
I am saying “quote tweets” as a reference to the functionality, not the usage of Twitter itself.
Mastodon refuses to implement the functionality, but it is supported on others: Soapbox, Akkoma…
„The content“ is there. Its just the addiction inducing, never ending dopamine that doesnt flow as freely which is great.
If you follow the topics that are most prevalent on the fedi (eg freedom, activism, technology, diversity) you will not run out unless you scroll for many hours a day, which is suggests you find yourself a hobby.
Also, the self fulfilling prophecy of „the fediverse is too small, I go to big platform“ will keep the fediverse small.
Be the change you want to see.
I feel this and some of the other comments in this thread are missing the point. It’s not about me and my followers. It’s about the news sources and topics that I search for or follow. They simply haven’t moved to Mastodon and where notable individuals that I follow have tried, it simply hasn’t worked out due to lack of interest. I’m not interested in the fediverse as a topic in itself, I’m interested in the topics and events I want to follow. Something happens and I can find and read and watch clips about it on Twitter. Not so Mastodon.
You are missing the point.
If lucifer was the only one having ice cream and you wanted ice cream, you would have to either go to lucifer or make your own (or ask someone to do it for you).
This is what the fediverse is about. Regaining control of our media. Your point that it is in any way too lacking to join or invest time into is self defeating as you and many others are needed to get it to that point.
So I‘m saying either accept that your work is needed to get any non billionaire owned/non corporate platform to work or stop pretending you care about your data.
You’re both right.
If there aren’t people building this alternative, in their free time, for free, then it won’t exist. Fair enough. Much credit to them.
But it looks like @SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world is just an ordinary user with a busy life who wants to consume content in a way that better respects their privacy and autonomy. That is also a fair demand. Not everyone needs to be a producer.
Bluesky is probably going to capture more of that than Mastodon. But threads is similarly struggling to develop it as well and they have very low barrier for new signups for anyone with a Facebook or Instagram account.
Boring, boring, boring, boring. This is all “meta-converaation”, like this exact thread.
Where are the musicians, the woodworkers, the DIYers, the athletes, the architects, the photographers, the wannabe chefs, the contrarian educators who do not toe the line of Academia?
Totally agree. But i don’t know if there is any hope, so many fedi people seem to not want any normies (people not working with computers i guess) entering.
!newcommunities@lemmy.world for other communities suggestions
Come on, you know that I’m talking about the people…
People post to the communities.
With this comment I was bringing them visibility, which is usually an issue.
On the side I keep promoting Lemmy on /r/Redditalternatives
Once we’ll get more people, and they’ll know where to find content, we’ll be able to solve that issue
I don’t want to make Mastodon propaganda, but Mastodon talks around technology are much better than Twitter ever was.
Hard disagree. It’s true that the tech conversation has shifted away from Twitter post-Musk, but to claim that Mastodon nowadays Mastodon is better than ever was is just wishful thinking.
Maybe they should stop caring about visibility and engagement and concentrate on participating in, building and y’know enjoying a community?
That can be difficult if your livelihood depends on it. Artists for example.
You can not have one without the other. Influencers look for audiences. If the community has no influencer, it means that the audience is irrelevant or inexistent.
I preferred the Internet that isn’t driven by non-genuine posts by profit driven influencers. I am glad that those people don’t like mastodon so they don’t ruin another platform.
You are missing the point. The point is that there is nothing to ruin here.
The Fediverse is by and large composed of antsy, narcissistic tweenagers who never created anything and use this space as some form of support network. They think that just because they are outcasts they are part of some counterculture movement (like the punks or the OG hackers from the early internet), but they miss the very important part that these movements need to create something meaningful.
All they can do is ridicule (parts of) the status quo and resort to shoot down anything and anyone who is willing to take any risks to effect any type of change. And for all the talk about diversity and inclusivity, one can read any news headline or article here and know exactly what is going to be the reaction from the people
The only way to break away from this unbearably boring monoculture is by bringing more people. We need to get of our comfort zones, dealing with differences and learning that (some) conflict is important. The alternative is stagnation, and culture-wise stagnation is the same as death.
Is anyone here opposed to bringing more people? I’m upset that people are going to an unfederated platform like BlueSky. I wish more people to join, no matter who they are.
I haven’t been on mastodon much, but lemmy is quite diverse.
Apart from a bunch of thriving specialist techie communities, what I see there is mostly tiny spaces dominated by intolerant groupthink and tyrannical moderators.
Indeed I just had a very bad experience in one of those that left me (almost) regretting the R-site.
What are you interested in? !newcommunities@lemmy.world promotes a lot of different communities, which usually have less moderation debates than the largest ones
Intriguing, thanks.
How do you bring more people? I don’t think people would disagree with that, the hesitancy is from for profits and EEE. People want the fediverse to grow.
The profit-motive and capitalism is not the problem. Corporatism is.
Mastodon and Lemmy are doomed to stay irrelevant for as long as their leaders believe that “the Community” will support them.
You can not EEE an open standard. XMPP didn’t die when Facebook and Google dropped it.
We need to assess the power imbalances and strategize accordingly. This whole “boycott Threads” reaction, for example, works in their favor. They already have hundreds of millions of users. Because of the whole “FediPact”, now we have lots of people migrating away from Mastodon because their instance does not let them follow some celebrity or NBA player, or sports journalist. Instead of blocking Threads, we should have worked to let people away from Twitter and into Threads so that they could learn and understand how federation works.
After this would be the time to go after the popular YouTubers and say “hey, why don’t you setup your instance instead of using Threads? You won’t lose your audience, and you have more control over your brand and online presence!”
This is what any sane person with minimal understanding of marketing would think. But instead of that, we got some reactionary crybabies that want to have the Fediverse only to themselves.
The nice thing about Lemmy is that it doesn’t have celibrities and NBA players. It’s (mostly) honest discussion for the most part, sure you have a lot of people who getting angry but at least it’s not like reddit or Facebook or whatever where you never know if a post/comment is real or a paid advertisement. Yeah it’d get more reach, more people, more popularity with thread integration, but there would also be more people. …eternal September . It would be guaranteed to happen. Like you said, it’s about marketing. Once Lemmy has more than a few thousand people, marketers are gonna do the same thing they did to reddit. …destroy it. Yeah the shareholders are making out, but it’s value is gone.
I started on reddit in 2008, and Lemmy is a mirror image of what the community looked like back then. You don’t need inorganic growth to grow Lemmy. It just needs quality discussions and people, the organic growth will come naturally. The only thing that needs protection against is ‘linking’ with any for profit entity.
Connecting with threads and bluesky and whatever else would grow Lemmy, but for what purpose? I’d argue Lemmy isn’t the end solution, maybe the devs can evolve it to work over the long term, but really I think if a social media solution is really going to tackle Facebook et al, it’s going to have to be self hosted servers on every computing device in the world; where no government or organization can control, regulate, and most importantly one that cannot be manipulated for gain of a nation state or corporation.
I know of no such software, but I have a feeling such a solution would be superior to the fediverse in taking down the existing social media cartels.
If you are starting with something that is completely subjective, how do you expect to get any meaningful discussion? You might not care about these things. It doesn’t mean that this is not important to others.
Also, it’s not just about the celebrities and NBA players. It’s about the conversation surrounding these different interests.
It happened on Reddit many years ago, and because of the long tail it simply didn’t matter. Just stay from the (relative) popular subs and things work quite well, as long as they are some minimal critical mass. If you are the type that insists in participating in tiring and pointless discussions about politics, then yeah you are going to have a bad time.
Conjecture, that’s not a certainty. In an open network, it’s a lot easier to design and implement systems where you can actually verify who is behind an account. Or to implement a system that filters content from anyone who is not part of your web of trust. Or to do like spam filters that run content analysis before even hitting your inbox. You can not implement these things on closed networks because it would destroy their KPIs, but we don’t care about that here.
Of course it isn’t, but it’s the best we have at the moment. If we keep waiting for some ideal solution before working to get people out of the closed systems, it will never happen. Worse still, if we don’t get more people, we will hit a local maxima and never innovate. This is already happening on Mastodon.
Here we agree, 100%.
thank you for the link, it was an interesting read. I really like the idea of using a web browser, like firefox or a fork of it, as a basis point for a distributed social web.
I don’t really understand how it would do that but it is a very interesting idea. I guess since firefox is open source anyone could create this ability. Is there a discussion about this somewhere on the web? Lemmy is a good a place as any as it’s too unimportant and tiny right now ;)
Thanks!
Maybe I wasn’t too clear on the post about one thing, though. There is no need to fork the browser. I believe this could be implemented as a simple browser extension or even as Progressive Web App, like Voyager or Elk. The idea that I’m working with is actually to fork either one of these applications and just change its internal libraries to make it “speak” ActivityPub directly, instead of using Mastodon’s or Lemmy’s APIs.
Specifically about this approach, no. But matrix.to/#/#fediverse:pixie.town is a good room for people working in Fediverse/Social Web.
I genuinely don’t care about influencers. Like, at all.
It’s okay, they don’t care about you either…
Strangely comforting for something I’m sure you thought was a snappy comeback,
Not a comeback. My point is that no one cares about this space at all. We had for the past two years everything in our favor to dismantle corporate-controlled social media, but the people that are here have ridiculously small ambitions and seem to keep the Fediverse completely irrelevant.
How else can I put it? Imagine that you live in corner of the woods of Bumfuck Alabama and you say, “I’m so glad we don’t have McDonalds around here”, like it was some reason to be proud. It’s not, it just means that you live in a place so desolate that not even McDonalds thinks it’s worth it to open a shop there.
This was genuinely funny. Thanks.
You’re using words like ‘ambition’ and ‘irrelevant’ like the Fediverse is some sort of corporate entity. It’s not - that’s a point very much in its favour in the opinion of quite a lot of people on it. Contrary to your opinion that no one cares, lots do. What some of us don’t care about is catering to a set of people who are paid to express opinions and who, it seems to me, over a period of time end up becoming Andrew Tate or Russel Brand.
There’s no McDonalds in the town I currently live in, which is 20 minutes away from one of the largest cities in the country. It might come as a massive shock to you but I - and I think the majority of people - can survive just fine without a Mickey D’s. Not having one doesn’t make a place desolate, it makes it healthier. And if someone really wants a Big Mac, they can go and get one from elsewhere.
Do you see what I’m saying? This isn’t the same place as that - it’s quite nice to have a place online that still isn’t. And for those that do want that, they can still spend time there if they chose to.
That’s faulty logic. The presence or absence of a fast-food chain does not indicate that people eat better or worse than a place without. If you live in the US (and maybe the UK) I can bet a $100 with you right now that the average person in your town is heavier and more prone to metabolic diseases than the average person where I live (Berlin, Germany). Even if I am surrounded by probably a dozen Döner shops from my building, I am not forced to eat there. On the other hand, on average we eat less processed food, the restaurants are not serving those ridiculous oversized meals, the European lifestyle requires more physical activity, etc.
Likewise to the social networks. You are just saying “I don’t want Andrew Tate”. A big network is not just made up of assholes. The presence of some assholes does not imply that the average user is an asshole, and it also does not mean that you need to deal with them. But a small social network does unfortunately implies that there will be less of the good people.
Instead of saying who you don’t want, have you actually tried reaching out to the people that you do want to see here? Can you honestly say that you can find a diverse range of people that talk or work with things that are of your interests? Because I surely can not, and I am not one to have an extremely long list of interests and hobbies…
No, that’s absolutely the problem. I don’t want to go to Reddit, because of Reddit management. My problem with Reddit is not the “average redditor”, or “power-tripping moderators of popular subs” because I never went to Reddit to talk with the “average redditor” and I don’t care about “popular subs”.
Personally, even the API changes wouldn’t affect me. I used old.reddit to browse on desktop and I was never a big user on mobile. But the reason that I decided to leave was because Reddit decided to complete turn against its users to pursue relentless growth.
By “going to Reddit when I want”, I am still enabling Reddit and I am complacent with the status quo. I can only solve “my” problem by having people out of Reddit and into an open alternative that is more resistant to enshittification.
Mate, I was simply extending an analogy you introduced. I neither know (nor care) what the presence of a McDonalds does or doesn’t do so don’t Sagan me. Nor am I claiming mainstream social media is all arseholes. What I’m saying is that mainstream social media most certainly has the ability and propensity to make people into arseholes due to constant enshittification - part of which is the influencer phenomenon in my opinion and the need for growth at all costs.
I most definitely have reached out to lots of good people on the fediverse and had lots of great exchanges that follow both professional and ‘hobby’ based interests I have.
But here’s the thing - you want growth? OK. I also have no issue with growth. But the best sort of growth in my experience comes organically. It happens at its own pace. The minute you start prodding it along with managed algorithms and all the other stuff mainstream social media now has you end up with an extended hate room. I don’t miss Reddit or Xitter at all. I genuinely mean that. No more ‘suggestions’ of people to follow, no more manufactured outrage getting pushed to my feed, no more clickbait. Instead what I have now is a curated feed across multiple different types of experiences that I spent some time getting how I want them and dipping in and out of when I want to.
Who here is talking that the way to grow the network is by applying the techniques from Big Tech? It seems like you’ve created this giant strawman in your head.
All I am asking is for us to be more welcoming to people here, even if they are not exactly like what you wish. Or to help your friends to try it and see if they can help enough people/content for them to remain invested. Or even (possibly?) reaching out to someone on Twitter/YouTube and say “hey, I want to keep following you, but I don’t want to stay here. Would you consider creating an account on Mastodon/Peertube?”, etc.
I’m tired of people arguing that the sum of the people in the platform does not equal its culture. Facebook and other social networks clearly benefit from having influencers in their platform, and they make the platform orbit around it.
People who use facebook are not responsible for old people posting what they want. But also, Facebook earns profit from that kind of behavior, so it makes its algorithms circle around it.
It’s like saying Instagram isn’t responsible for all the influencers and the ‘vibe’ it has. It is responsible for it and you don’t make the platform your own, especially not with the Big players.
Even Mastodon, where you can set up your own instance, has its culture, even if it is richer (culturally) than Instagram or Facebook.
No, each person does not make the platform their own or make out of it what they will. Only a masochist would stay on Facebook preaching their own culture while they have other options that fit better.
Your argument fails.
Also, on another note, I’m tired of Carl Sagan’s atheists using Darwinism as basis for lack of a God, and I’m not a christian or muslim. That’s just reason to silence people who don’t want to take “scientific” argument at face value. True science is debatable and built upon healthy discussion. Not something you toss at other people to make them seem dumb or preach like a religion.
There is a crucial difference. The cool thing of the Fediverse is that there is no central authority. There is no CEO pushing things in one direction or another to try to maximize revenue. We have here the potential for real diversity of groups and interests, but (so far) all we seem to be getting is a very tiny vocal minority that wants to complain about anything that resembles the mainstream but is unable to build an alternative.
You are reading too much into the quote. I just pointed out that faulty logic. Nassim Taleb also talks a lot about this
To each its own, I like it here.
What would you suppose it is ambition, to feed off influencers? What good would that bring to the platform?
If the people who used it would benefit at least. But then again, that’s cryptocurrency culture, so I don’t know if both complete each other.
I think we could and should work to make the Fediverse an universal alternative. If not make it something that appeals equally to everyone, but to have a real diverse set of people and users. My litmus test is simple: my wife is still on Facebook because of different groups: parenting groups, events around town, some arts and crafts showcases… If I ask my wife her to take a look at Lemmy, will she find something that interests her?
So far, the answer is no. The range of interests around here is very small: sophomoric discussion of US politics, outrage-bait pieces whenever Musk/Zuckerberg/Bezos does something stupid, a handful of otakus, a somewhat-larger-but-still-small group of Linux nerds… that’s about it. Everything else is represented by at most one or two people who had a sizeable community on reddit, but failed to bring them over.
My experience has been better. User engagement is much higher per follower and the discussions don’t devolve. They’re much more useful and/or interesting. KPIs don’t measure everything.
Many people are most interested in profit as their only KPI and mastodon puts up a lot of hurdles for those people.
It’s not the best platform for the profit driven, and I much prefer it that way.
This exactly. I was saying that as a user, not a creator. I make money away from social media so I don’t care to bring that to my personal space.
mastodon had their chance during the first exodus but they refused to listen to what twitter users wanted and shot down things like lists, quote tweets, and privacy controls.
mastodon is very gatekeeper-y
And they sold out the people, who tried to help by posting, to Meta.
That’s not at all the problem here, no
Blue sky leads to the same trap Twitter was. A place that will be purchased by some asshole that shits on everyone for money.
You’ll be shocked to know that bluesky is open source then and PDS is well on its way to allowing you to host your own instance.
I’m shocked to learn that Reddit is opensource back then.
Anything that you’re not willing and able to keep financially sustained yet rely upon will likely be used against you by someone with more resources. This is why groups like Fosstodon, Beehaw, and Fedihosting Foundation stand out in these spaces. They are both transparent and financially sustainable. But most of that sustainability relies on unpaid volunteer labor.
theverge.com/…/bluesky-self-hosting-servers-data-…
What is the status now?
It doesn’t say there’s any limit on their github
Jack Dorsey left the board, so I’m ok with that. Good for them!
How much is Jack involved? He was the reason Twitter went to shit to begin with.
Was, he’s gone balls deep on nostr now.
Oh no, now nostr is ruined
swapping jack dorsey for mike masnick is a mega mega w for bluesky
The CEO comes from the world of crypto and it is a for profit company
People will never learn, will they? You give them AP and they go for the Jack Dorsey clone. Amazing
Anti Commercial-AI license
Jack Dorsey is not involved in Bluesky anymore.
It’s a for profit company founded by jack dorsey and currently led by a cryptocurrency fanatic
It would be interesting to know more about the additional users. The banning of Shitter in Brazil is very much tied to internal politics and AFAIK it might be the Brazilian equivalent to MAGA that is currently mass-migrating to Bluesky.
If so, this might be a bad thing for them, as they probably don’t want to get perceived as the Brazilian truth.social.
I would assume that since this whole thing is more or less a result of left-ish policy, and the opponent in the scenario is the far-right platform formerly known as Twitter, lead by the aspiring far-right icon Musk, the right-wingers would more likely opt to complain, cry several rivers and eventually turn to alternatives catered specifically for them (not even sure which ones are still alive after former tweetyplace took the crown) instead.
Haven’t done a vibe check on bluesky, but I assume it almost has to be more tolerant and potentially more progressive-ish than the old nazibirdhouse. If you lean towards the far right, why choose that, if alternatives exist?
Bluesky is explicitly promoting their system as “choose your own censorship” kind of deal, which in the way it is framed could look very attractive to right-wingers looking for an alternative platform. While this is technically also true for the Fediverse, it isn’t promoted as such, and rather has a reputation for the opposite, as most fedi server admins are center-left leaning.
Bluesky might be also more left-leaning right now as obviously there is little reason for right-wingers elsewhere to switch away from Shitter to another (mostly) centralised platform, but given the overall low user numbers this could switch very quickly.
I guess we will have to see how this develops over time and get some answers from Brazilians that have a deeper understanding of the current social dynamics there.
Due to the language divide it might end up as two distinct social spheres, like Fedi’s Japanese bubble, but that’s a best case scenario for Bluesky I guess.
That’s why I don’t use it. I am not ok with bigots sharing my network. This is true whether I can see them or not. If they’re welcome, then I won’t be there.
Let me know when I can disconnect from spaces that host bigots rather than just hiding them
This reads like satire. These are people you’re talking about, probably your fellow citizens. Their wrong opinions are not going to pollute you from the other side of a wall. Seeing (apparently sincere) takes like this really makes me worried about the future of democracy.
Let me clarify so I understand your position
I said why I don’t use Bluesky. I didn’t say it shouldn’t exist, or that other people shouldn’t use it. I didn’t pass judgement on people who do use it, or suggest that their having a different opinion on how to deal with bigotry is an issue. I simply said why I don’t use it
You then insisted that I am the problem with democracy, despite you being the person insisting that everyone has to do things your preferred way?
Do I understand your position correctly?
Sort of. Essentially I am saying that in a democracy we need to talk to each other, and sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and chanting “lalalala I can’t hear you” seems like a poor way to go about that. These people can vote too. Like it or not, you have an interest in understanding what makes them tick and what might help them to see the world in a way more conducive to you.
That doesn’t happen on bluesky either though. The moderation approach on bluesky means that people can control who they see, and who can interact with them. So people can still remove bigots from their timeline.
I also take issue with your insistence that bigots have the right to be bigoted and spread hate, and that their targets are somehow in the wrong for not wanting to be exposed to that hate.
Assuming that “bigots” is not a synonym for “anyone I disagree with”, then fair enough.
My underlying point is that technology is making it very easy to wall ourselves off into comfortable echo chambers. Some are even calling that “safety”. From my understanding of history, this looks like an obviously slippery and dangerous slope to be on.
But if are talking about what most of your fellow citizens would also identify as “bigots”, then fair enough.
Why would it be?
Your experience is different to mine. I wish I could wall myself off from people who want to remove my rights and target me with hate, but I’ve yet to find a way of doing that.
Well this is at least honest!
Perhaps it’s a personality thing. Perhaps generational. Technically I’m a member of a minority community but I’ve never defined myself by that, and “hate” in the contemporary sense (I think its meaning has drifted unhelpfully) is not something that especially bothers me. My experience is that most people are well-meaning, so I tend to be intrigued by the question of why they think the things they do.
Anyway, this is not a debate with a single correct answer. It is of course your right to shut out whoever you want, I won’t question that.
There are multiple governments, political parties and hate groups explicitly focused on taking away my rights and ensuring I can’t exist safely and openly.
It’s got nothing to do with personality. I’m exposed to a barrage of hateful media targeting folk like me every single day, and it’s next to impossible to escape.
So finding spaces where I can just not have to deal with that shit is important
actually, the opposite. The MAGA types are doing whatever they can to continue sucking on Elon’s balls. It’s journos and normies who are moving to Bluesky.
Even though I still don't understand those platforms, I had a look at the site. It seems like 80+ percent of the content is from Brazil or at least in Portugese.
If you enable and check nsfw content it is also 80+ percent dicks and furry content. One of the dick posts was a self declared "15y" which I promptly reported (a day later the posts & profile seem to be gone, presumably banned, which is good). You can mute hash tags of your choice, but then 90+ percent of the feed will be muted posts or those that did not get caught because they did not use hash tags. Muted users still show up in those feeds too, you have to properly block them to hide them but that is also incredibly tedious when it is basically all that there is.
A lot of posts also seem to just be weird spam, using the same odd list of hash tags that I can't make sense of (but maybe that's just weird local online trends there). I tried looking for various topics but could only find fringe posts & accounts, worse than even here. But that again might just come down to the fact that the majority of users seem to be from Brazil, so the English content is simply lacking on all fronts. You can specify languages in your profile, but I did not notice to what purpose when it still shows you all the non English stuff.
Aside from all that I once again couldn't figure out what to do, just like on Twitter back then or on Mastodon. I suppose those platforms and their hype will remain a mystery to me. But I can't help but wonder how people from Twitter who think about switching will react to this experience though...
Brazilian MAGA = Most Bolsonaro supporters. Of course, there are some decent people who aren’t 100% fanatic, but most of them would be the equivalent to those hat-wearers.
I’m way too federated for this.
Great, you can host your own instance!
Is running a pds really equivalent to running your own instance? As I understand it, 2 friends running their own pds cannot federate without the centralized relay which still can’t be self hosted.
You’re right, while there are advantages to hosting a pds, it doesn’t seem you can run a fully fledged instance at this time
Thanks for clarifying
Bluesky has no documentation for running a relay (indexing node). It doesn’t seem like they intend to have any documentation on it any time soon. But it is possible to set one up yourself. I don’t know anyone that has done so.
But control of the protocol - the definition and development - is still controlled by the for-profit company, right? It hasn’t been handed over to a nonprofit governance committee, has it?
Federation or not, if Bluesky dominates the protocol, they can decide to stop federating and essentially kill the independent servers. Much like what Signal did. Sure, you can run your own Signal server, but without access to the dominant player’s market, and using a protocol that’s controlled monopolistically, it’s practically useless to do so - which is why almost nobody does it anymore.
Wait what? Are we talking about the chat app?
Indeed
You can’t run your own server. Never have been able to…
You can create your own federated chat app or whatever that uses the Signal protocol? You can also fork the Signal chat application? But all Signal messages run through Signal servers.
Seems to be similar here, you can run PDS (personal instances), but they still rely on a central Bluesky server
Right, the point is there was never a time you could use Signal on another server.
Yes, that’s what the first comment you replied to said
No, you said there were “independent servers” and that Signal “killed” them…?
You also said you could run your own Signal server. You cant.
You also said nobody runs their own anymore, when they never did.
Not me, it was @sxan@midwest.social
I reread their whole paragraph, and I agree, but anyway
And you’d still have federation issues, so doesn’t solve OP’s problem.
Is there an easy to understand explanation to the differences of the AT Protocol and ActivityPub?
iirc, atprotocol was made to bring some features of mainstream social media to the fediverse that activitypub maintainer have said they won’t be adding. They explain other reasons in their faq
Many of the functions provided by a Mastodon service is split into separate services in the AT Protocol. This means there are instances that just handle an end users data, instances that just handle indexing and streaming out the amalgamated end user data being streamed to the “relay”, there are instances that are just filtering the stream from the indexing relay. so basically the various backend parts are modular with the AT Protocol rather than monolithic as is assumed by the ActivityPub protocol where separation is assumed to be only between the frontend and backend of the service.
i dont like bluesky bcs its missing alot of features compared to mastodon and twitter also when you host bluesky the server you hosted you cant view bsky.social so thats why i use mastodon alongside
What features are missing compared to Mastodon?
@Tywele videos mostly
Which is coming with the next Bluesky update.
@Tywele not released yet = its missing
Yes I know what upcoming updates are. What else is missing in Bluesky?
Actually being able to self host and federate, and without any dependence on the main instance.
And ability to federate with other open and federated services, like how mastodon can federate with so many others like lemmy and pixelfed.
@Tywele federation 🥸
Yooo! Are you from Mastodon?
@P4ulin_Kbana yesss absolutely!
Craaazy!
Unrelated but I think you have a nice profile!
Do you mean my Lemmy profile? Thank you I guess
in bluesky (also being implemented) there is no post pinning,no post editing, No account privating and thats what i remember
Techcrunch has basically been an ad network for companies who want to promote themselves. Other open source projects probably don’t have a budget to pay for an a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶ ad spot.
So which tech adjacent publishing you recommend?
Independent or otherwise.
i personally like Ars Technica quite a bit.
www.theregister.com
If I have mastodon, how and when can I follow Blue sky users? I read something about an adapter server or something, but I don’t know what that means in a practical sense.
There is Bridgy Fed, which bridges accounts over to the other side if they follow the respective Bridgy Fed account on their platform. This is opt-ín though, so you can’t just follow anyone, they need to have followed @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. To have your interactions bridged you need to follow @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy.
If the account you want to follow is not bridged and you are okay with just reading their posts, you can also use a service like RSS Parrot as every Bluesky account also serves as an RSS feed.
Just an FYI for the RSS thing: if a Bluesky account is set to be viewable to logged-in users only, its RSS feed will not work. It only works if the profile is viewable publicly without logging in.
.
What timconspicuous said. Make sure your instance hasn’t blocked bluesky as well
Good. Competition is good. If they suceed or fail just means we learn and build a better product.
(if by better you mean more profitable)
if a product sucks, it won’t be profitable
What about reality has suggested that to you?
The fact you think the product sucks does not mean it’s not good for many other people.
For example, I have Framework Laptop and I really think surface laptops suck due to how unrepairable they are. However, that does not mean that everyone cares about their repairbility…
yeah, competition is basically they key to the society
Sorry if this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but how do we know that BlueSky isn’t padding their stats with internal bots? I could see this being a viable strategy to attract users and overcome the social network bootstrapping problem.
They could be, but 2M new Brazilian users after Twitter’s block there actually seems quite low and definitely credible.
I really really don’t like the app
I’m not on Bluesky, what downsides are you seeing in their app?
It’s ugly