European Medicines Agency ditches Elon Musk’s X in favor of Bluesky (nltimes.nl)
from moe90@feddit.nl to technology@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 03:44
https://feddit.nl/post/27575518

#technology

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Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 04:05 next collapse

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. yet another frying pan.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 04:29 next collapse

In what way?

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 04:45 collapse

dustycloud.org/…/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

…mathewingram.com/is-bluesky-decentralized-its-co…

Basically, Bluesky is not functionally decentralized, so it’s just another platform destined for either failure or enshittification.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 04:50 collapse

So moving from a platform run by a far right, nazi saluting Jackass, to a platform that is building it’s user base at X’s expense is a step backwards?

Also, Bluesky is run mostly by former Twitter employees, so they know exactly what will happen if they follow in their footsteps.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 05:00 collapse

Bluesky is a step sideways, not forward or back. It kicks the can down the road a few years, but the fundamental concept is doomed. It has been tried, time and time again, and the inevitable result is gross enshittification.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 05:13 collapse

Given how many social media companies have collapsed over the years because they made their service worse, and their user base migrated en masse to other platforms, I don’t think it’s inevitable at all. Senior execs will be well aware of the consequences of that type of behaviour.

Don’t forget, Bluesky is rising out of the ashes of Twitter, which is a spectacular example of what not to do, and something shareholders will be terrified of.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 05:21 next collapse

To which I would respond:

Given how many social media companies have collapsed over the years…

…it doesn’t seem that “senior execs” are capable of learning the necessary lessons. Quite the contrary, the “senior execs” and most of the (early) shareholders of all these failed companies seem to be doing quite well for themselves, long after the companies have gone belly up.

Even if they are capable of learning, they don’t seem to care.

Grass@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 05:22 collapse

not even just social platforms, so many businesses have risen from the ashes of similar businesses that chased off their customers, then went on to repeat the failures of their predecessors. humans, particularly in positions of power or authority, don’t learn from their own mistakes so why would they ever learn from the mistakes of others.

iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 04:29 next collapse

Are you implying Bluesky is worse? Because that’s what that idiom means.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 04:41 next collapse

No, not worse. It’s just not decentralized in a meaningful sense, so it suffers from the same enshittification problems that have killed Twitter, Reddit, BoingBoing, Digg, Slashdot…

Fundamentally, it’s not any worse, but it’s not any better either.

iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 04:43 next collapse

That’s not the right idiom, then.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 04:48 collapse

I don’t agree that the idiom implies “worse”. In trying to escape being burnt in the frying pan, you’re getting burnt in the fire. Either way, you’re getting burnt.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 05:00 collapse

You don’t get to decide how language works.

It implies going from a bad situation to a worse one, and has from the moment it existed.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 05:09 collapse

Fine. It’s not the right idiom to express the point.

Point is still valid, even if I initially expressed it poorly.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 05:17 collapse

I think you, and a large number of people on this site, need to accept that the vast majority of people don’t give a shit about FOSS, and many actively view it as a bad thing.

Especially a government agency.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 05:22 next collapse

This isn’t about FOSS. This is about decentralization. You could make that argument on Reddit or Xitter. Not on Lemmy.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 06:06 collapse

You’re being a pedant, all while missing the point.

The point is most people don’t care.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 14:50 collapse

Most people? Or you?

rockSlayer@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 05:36 collapse

Especially a government agency.

Are you sure about that?

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 06:08 collapse

Agencies will have to share custom-developed code amongst each other in an effort to prevent duplicative software development contracts under a new bill signed into law by President Joe Biden.

That’s not what open source means.

rockSlayer@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 13:59 collapse

Are you expecting that regular people will understand what foss means without ever seeing it before? The law is literally named the Securing Open Source Act. By law, code that is not classified must be open source.

tortina_original@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 09:22 next collapse

It’s much better.

cley_faye@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:41 collapse

it suffers from the same enshittification problems that have killed Twitter, Reddit, BoingBoing, Digg, Slashdot

I’ll easily agree that these platforms are bad, but saying anything “killed” them is very, VERY generous. Reddit and slashdot are very much still a thing, and they don’t look like they’re slowing down, despite the supposedly insurmountable issues. Keep in mind that the goal of a “social network” (for lack of a better word) is having an audience. Reddit literally shat on its user base, AND on the people that kept the site usable, and communities are still thriving there.

Sludgehammer@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 04:46 collapse

Well… Bluesky was founded by the same sort of techbro culture that spawned Xitter, but hit hasn’t gone full incel fash fanboy like Xitter. So maybe it’s more “Out of the fire, into the frying pan, then back into the fire” because I’m pretty sure Bluesky will follow Twitters trajectory.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 04:52 next collapse

Twitter truly went to shit when Musk bought them, and I doubt anything quite like that will happen any time soon, especially considering the huge loss in value since the takeover.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 05:06 next collapse

Twitter was spiraling long before Musk bought them. He is accelerating its demise, of course, but he wasn’t the cause.

The cause is the basic concept.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 05:15 next collapse

Twitter was the default way for any famous individual to address their fan base, and government agencies around the world to communicate to the public.

Train delays, road closures, states of emergency, it was all done through Twitter. They weren’t spiralling anywhere.

adarza@lemmy.ca on 25 Jan 2025 05:25 next collapse

they just weren’t making the kind of money that pleased the vultures and wall street.

Petter1@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 09:17 collapse

And here we see, that a government should never rely upon a private company with important stuff like communication with its people.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 10:39 collapse

My dear sweet child, governments use private companies to communicate to their citizens all the time.

They advertise on TV, they have ads on bus shelters, they give interviews on commercial radio and TV stations. Even systems like emergency broadcast systems use cellular networks and TV and radio stations run by private companies.

Even government websites are seldom hosted on their own servers.

Using a third party website specifically set up to communicate short, sharp, and to the point messaging as one way of getting information out is just sensible.

Petter1@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 11:16 collapse

Well, you are absolutely right 😆😅hoppala

dilroopgill@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 05:25 collapse

nah twitter was great, I tweeted all the time, it hit its peak years before he bought it but still was a solid “news” source

dilroopgill@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 05:26 collapse

The algorithim knew what I liked so well, down to people I follows likes being shown, it knew so well, now it just shows me weird angry ppl

Sludgehammer@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 05:38 next collapse

I dunno, never discount a company hiring a slash-and-burn failson to give the stock a temporary boost so the upper management can take the money and run. Are you really sure Bluesky won’t hire some techbro CEO to pump the stock somewhere in the near future?

ye_olde_noob@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 25 Jan 2025 06:00 collapse

Twitter sucked long before musk bought it. A character limit is just not conducive to many modes of discourse, but that didnt stop people from shoehorning everything into the format anyway. The result is a culture of flippancy, where quips are prized over earnest engagement. I had to stop using twitter in like 2012 because it only ever made me angry, even if I limited my follows to people I agreed with. It’s all anwers with no questions, unless they’re a rhetorical device in service of the answer.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 06:10 next collapse

I agree that it sucked, and I didn’t use it, but a huge number of people did.

Post Musk, their userbase is collapsing.

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 09:48 collapse

The Twitter format was good for precisely one thing:

Come see our band perform live at the Megadome Thursday at 6:00 PM! Tickets on sale now!

It’s THE worst way to express, like, your opinions, man.

MITM0@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 05:49 next collapse

Incels live rent-free in everyone’s head huh & of Course BS (As in BlueSky) will follow Twitter’s Trajectory, it’s created by Jack Dorsey remember

iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 06:17 collapse

But hasn’t yet and that’s good enough for me right now. I’m not interested in letting perfect be the enemy of good.

stardust@lemmy.ca on 25 Jan 2025 06:18 collapse

When it comes to the average person it’s more important to be willing to jump to another platform if an alternative comes up than waiting for a perfect one that will likely never appear. Repeating the cycle of joining and leaving I think is better than just staying when it comes to the average person and mainstream platforms.

Samespot@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 04:08 next collapse

not enough, we need businesses and other government organisatiins ditching X fast

DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org on 25 Jan 2025 05:20 next collapse

Disappointing.

They could have followed the EC’s example ec.social-network.europa.eu/about

Temperche@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Jan 2025 07:15 next collapse

You could send a question to them to ask why: ema.europa.eu/…/send-question-european-medicines-…

Bz1sen@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 07:46 collapse

Yes…most of these news recently is then followed up by:we are on bluesky now… Well it’s fair enough but they should at least also join mastodon … I don’t know. It’s frustrating.

IndianaJones@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 25 Jan 2025 18:55 collapse

Or just bridge to Mastodon

Rooty@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 06:20 next collapse

Why have they jumped to another billionare run site instead of spinning up a mastodon instance?

moe90@feddit.nl on 25 Jan 2025 06:21 next collapse

FYI, Jay Graber is not a biliionaire.

Badeendje@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 08:52 collapse

Until they can sell blue sky to VC that is.

moe90@feddit.nl on 25 Jan 2025 09:07 collapse

Jay Graber is a woman btw

Badeendje@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 10:02 collapse

Gotcha. Tx

Temperche@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Jan 2025 07:16 next collapse
lurklurk@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 09:43 next collapse

It’s easier

Blackmist@feddit.uk on 25 Jan 2025 11:12 next collapse

Or why isn’t there a server for EU agencies rather than each of them spinning one up. Surely across the whole of the EU, somebody could set that up.

index@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 11:32 next collapse

You already know why

cley_faye@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:37 collapse

Because there hasn’t been much billionaire behind bluesky for a long time now, and “spinning up a mastodon instance” is the exact reason the general people are avoiding mastodon in the first place.

The goal is to reach people, not to promote a pure solution that’s repulsive to the masses.

rarbg@lemmy.zip on 25 Jan 2025 06:22 next collapse

Lmao they went to Bluesky, a centralized (don’t get pedantic with me) social media platform controlled by Americans. Genius

tabular@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 08:39 next collapse

Wikipedia says “direct messages are offered though a central service”. If that’s was/still is correct then you’re correct, it’s centralized.

Nuance is the friend of truth - pedantic.

exu@feditown.com on 25 Jan 2025 11:07 collapse

The whole algorithm (AppView) is centralised. While it’s technically possible to host with enough capital, a second AppView server would also double bandwidth required for every message sent on the network. This gets worse the more AppView instances you add, as every message has to be sent to every AppView server (exponential growth)

mac@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 19:13 collapse

Thats the same issue with activity pub, is it not?

exu@feditown.com on 25 Jan 2025 21:13 collapse

No, ActivityPub only send messages to the recipients. Uninvolved servers don’t get the message at all until one of their users explicitly searches for it.
In the worst case where every user has their own server, one message per recipient is sent. Adding another recipient on their own server means one more message being sent and so forth.

lurklurk@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 09:40 next collapse

Still an improvement

dnzm@feddit.nl on 25 Jan 2025 12:06 collapse

From boiling water into water that happens to be in a switched-on kettle. Huge improvement.

When the enshittification comes (when, not if, they’ll have to drag their feet to move somewhere else again. All their followers will have to follow them again. Had they moved to a proper open solution, they could’ve stayed there indefinitely.

It’s not just about Bluesky" not being the proper and pure solution", it’s about this being a temporary measure at best, and people don’t seem to realize that.

Tja@programming.dev on 25 Jan 2025 18:31 next collapse

From boiling water into water that happens to be in a switched-on kettle. Huge improvement.

It IS a huge improvement.

militaryintelligence@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 2025 09:30 collapse

Gosh I know, moving from a social media platform where its owner sig heils to a platform where its owner does not is just as bad. You’re either trolling or an idiot.

cley_faye@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:35 next collapse

People go to the platform that’s easy, attractive and works, instead of the very beautiful, finely crafted, exquisite solution that requires days of reading followed by fiddling every other day to barely get the same immediate result, assorted with hidden surprises like hidden moderation and silent failure situation that leads to fragmentation of the whole network. What a surprise.

Also, “don’t get pedantic with me” does not sit well with the current goals of bluesky. Sure, right now, they focused on making something that works and is usable by everyone. Whoop fucking doo, that’s exactly what mastodon/lemmy/most activitypub services skipped. And that’s why the general public look at them with contempt. I can’t see the future (maybe you can, lucky you), but for now, bluesky works, and the plan they’re still following up to now is aimed toward a decentralized solution.

jol@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Jan 2025 12:42 collapse

If I had a company with public presence, I would too. Companies and organization’s go to the people are.

uis@lemm.ee on 25 Jan 2025 19:50 collapse

This is local thing though.

Demdaru@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 09:31 next collapse

For the love of god wake up people, do you know what little percent of people know about fedi? Services like these jump to where the public is, not drags public behind it. Bluesky made huge jump publicity wise, and that’s when it was already more widely known than fedi. Moaning about it doesn’t help.

In perfect world, we’d have country-specific instances with all national news and announcments centralised in there, to which people could easily subscribe to. But that even sounds complex to average person, compared to “Hey, Bluesky? Yeah twitter but better”.

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz on 25 Jan 2025 11:31 next collapse

End user doesn’t really need to know how it works. We talk about it more because most people here are tech nerds

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jan 2025 14:59 collapse

End users didn’t know how email or the world wide web worked once upon a time. There’s that clip of Katie Couric asking her producer “Can you explain what internet is?”

In the years since, they figured it out.

And as I pointed out recently, people figured out how to play WoW even if you have to pick a server before you can start playing. My understanding is different servers have different modes, like there might be one where PvP is enabled, etc. so there’s a clear reason expressed why you might pick one over the other. I’ve noticed Fediverse instances are really shit at that.

I signed up for Pixelfed recently, and the Join Pixelfed website’s page where you pick an instance had a bunch of tiles that read something like this:

| Pixelfed.de

|

| Pixelfed is an image sha…

Fist of all the description for the instance started out trying to explain what Pixelfed as a whole was, and then it was truncated to about a quarter of a tweet with no way to expand it right there.

I’ll take this opportunity to bang on once again about everyone wanting to make general purpose instances with no attempt at finding a niche. I’ve been saying this since joining; every instance decides it needs a c/funny or a c/linux or a c/cats or a c/games and so then there ends up being 40 of each and the one on .world or .ml ends up being the de facto one everyone uses. Then you get a page where you have to pick from lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, lemm.ee, lemmy.ca each one giving the first fifty characters of the definition of Lemmy as their description, yeah no one’s going to open another browser tab and end up doing something else when confronted with that, huh?

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz on 25 Jan 2025 15:04 collapse

I doubt most people know what the difference with pop and imap is though. Generally they don’t need to know this sort of stuff.

Resol@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:18 next collapse

I know the BBC has made a Mastodon instance as a test some time ago. If only other broadcasters did something like that.

tal@lemmy.today on 25 Jan 2025 21:43 next collapse

I’m surprised that the norm isn’t to do many of them, that someone hasn’t written some software package that just “aggregates” multiple platforms on the client side.

I mean, if I were running a business and wanted to have a social media presence, that’s probably what I’d want to have.

MisterFrog@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 2025 01:23 collapse

I’d have no problem with them making Bluesky account, but why not both that and spinning up a Mastodon server?

It’s just short-sighted

Demdaru@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 2025 09:09 collapse

Well, to keep profile on Bluesky they essentially keept the same social media presence guy and just tell him to switch. To add to it Mastodon, they suddenly need to extend infrastructure to add a server, need to have someone manage that server and on top of that make that social media presence guy also take care of posting there. If they even have that guy and it’s not simply something Monica from HR is doing.

And all that for what, maybe 500k people using it? Accounting for people not hearing about it, not being in EU, not caring about it etc. etc.

For comparision, Bluesky has 3 times Mastodon’s users and it’s growing quicker than Mastodon, being seen as viable alternative to twitter/x.

MisterFrog@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 2025 09:29 next collapse

Hiring one extra person, for an agency that covers hundreds of millions of people? I’m gonna go out there and say yes, that is reasonable to expect. Sure, uptake is low now, but network effect is responsible for that, now when people are moving from Twitter is the exact time to encourage people to change to something better.

The European Commission has its head on straight, that they are being a first mover on Mastodon, because putting critical communication infrastructure in the hands of a private company is silly long term.

I’m not doubting your reasoning as to why this agency hasn’t bothered, but it’s not convincing that it’s reasonable.

Irelephant@lemm.ee on 27 Jan 2025 15:44 collapse

According to fedidb, the fediverse has 1.3 million mau.

in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 25 Jan 2025 11:16 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/d466f27a-bf94-4c12-82ff-ded0c8629199.webp">

Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 11:29 next collapse

Use mastodon

WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:17 next collapse

Man, everyone bitching about Bluesky but very few cheering the long overdue departure from twitter.

Anywhere is better than twitter.

secret300@lemmy.sdf.org on 25 Jan 2025 12:39 next collapse

Ah yes anywhere is better than twitter let me go switch to threads.

Jumping from one central controlled platform to another changes absolutely nothing. People switching to Blue sky instead of the fediverse are braindead

NutWrench@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 12:57 next collapse

This. Eventually, some billionaire will buy up BlueSky and make it shitty. It’s much harder for one person to take over a defederated platform, spread out over hundreds of instances in several countries.

secret300@lemmy.sdf.org on 25 Jan 2025 13:55 next collapse

Exactly. It’s baffles me that most people don’t see that

Tja@programming.dev on 25 Jan 2025 18:29 next collapse

Even if that happens, having switched once, makes sit easier for further switches as needed.

WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 19:57 next collapse

Eventually Earth will be consumed by the sun.

All movement away from Twitter is a positive. Fuck fElon and fuck him right now.

pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 25 Jan 2025 23:54 collapse

there are a few small AT protocol instances that the billionare would try to get rid of.

wewbull@feddit.uk on 25 Jan 2025 13:53 next collapse

I wouldn’t mind if they did switch to threads. It would still be a chink in the stranglehold that Twitter has.

Tja@programming.dev on 25 Jan 2025 18:28 collapse

Not letting perfect being the enemy of good and all that…

WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 19:54 next collapse

Any changes away from Twitter is a net positive. I don’t care where, as long as its not there.

Neon@lemmy.world on 27 Jan 2025 14:38 collapse

Brb, switching to Truth social

WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world on 27 Jan 2025 14:42 collapse

That will increase the number of non-bot users to 2

Neon@lemmy.world on 27 Jan 2025 14:43 collapse

I am unique on there

lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de on 26 Jan 2025 12:05 collapse

Threads and twitter are both worse than bsky. I like Mastodon even more but bsky is at least a departure from open right extremist rhetorics.

I could debate the braindead assertion, but I don’t feel like it, and in any case a braindead not-Nazi is a net improvement over a Nazi (which are braindead anyway) or a Neo-Nazi (who do a damn good job at imitating that).

meliante@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 18:49 collapse

That’s people for you. Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag!

cultsuperstar@lemmy.world on 25 Jan 2025 23:19 next collapse

It’s not X, it’s Truth Social 2.0.

anti_air_poison@endlesstalk.org on 26 Jan 2025 09:31 collapse

European here. Never heard of them. Beside given how they embezzled public money by buying overpriced Pfizer vaccine and covered all dissent using the antivax accusation, they can fuck themselves.