X's controversial changes to blocking and AI training saw half a million users leave for rival Bluesky in just a single day (www.techradar.com)
from ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:13
https://lemmy.world/post/21002056

Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).

It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.

Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.

In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.

There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

#technology

threaded - newest

roofuskit@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:17 next collapse

Lol, that’s probably 30% of real people still using it

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:17 next collapse

What a garbage dataset to train off. The majority of everything there is all bots and AI anyway lol

ohellidk@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 21:28 next collapse

bots training bots. maybe this will (hopefully) corrupt the AI’s data. its kind of like copying off a copy again and again.

dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:56 next collapse

This is in fact precisely what happens. LLM output becomes increasingly incoherent with each subsequent generation trained off of previously AI generated data.

TriPolarBearz@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 22:18 next collapse

Sound like human

50und 11k3 hum4n

50()|V[) 11X3 |-|()|/|4|V

$[]|||||) |!|<[- #|_|///-||

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 22:56 collapse

Don’t forget to yell into the data PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS!!!

KillerTofu@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 23:35 collapse

Haha, gooner.

meeeeetch@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 22:41 next collapse

Grok Habsburg

skvlp@lemm.ee on 18 Oct 23:12 next collapse

The AI version of mad cow disease.

Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 00:12 collapse

Man I think it’s already done, and been done for a long time, without AI. So much of who we are now is based on and informed by what we’ve read and watched online. It’s our been our dominant frame of reference, language and value system for quite a while. We are the AI.

Bonesince1997@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 00:32 collapse

There are no buses in this picture

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:37 next collapse

At least its not…

I dunno, YouTube comments? I think Facebook is even far better data-wise than X, and thats a low bar.

cerement@slrpnk.net on 18 Oct 21:51 next collapse

Elon decided Microsoft’s Tay chatbot was a guidebook …

postnataldrip@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 22:23 next collapse

It’s just virtualised Deliverance

Knuk@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 13:11 collapse

It’s also about the art posted on it. I use bsky for that purpose and all the “migrants” didn’t want their work to be fed to an AI.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 18 Oct 21:36 next collapse

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them,

WTF thats some clown ass analysis

Vanth@reddthat.com on 19 Oct 11:27 collapse

Huh? How? This is the problem I saw too. Knowing details about a victims life feeds stalkers and also gives them opportunities to connect to the victims physical location and movements.

Would blocking a stalker’s view of their victim’s social media solve the stalking problem entirely? Probably not. Would blocking kill off one lane of information that makes the stalking easier / more psychology rewarding to the stalker? Yes.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 19 Oct 13:15 collapse

Posting publically online to avoid "stalker"

Do y'all even do basic thinking here lol

Vanth@reddthat.com on 19 Oct 13:41 collapse

A victim could also stay in their house, never go outside, never talk to anyone to further limit a stalker’s access. But they shouldn’t have to let a stalker turn their life into an isolated prison.

Blocking people from viewing their account was one tool that was available, and now it’s not. People are saying they still want access to that tool and are unhappy it was taken away.

Not sure you’re intending to but you’re putting a lot of onus on the victim to address the behavior of bad actors.

Women don’t want to deal with men who would sexually assault them? Stop wearing “provocative” clothes and going to bars.

Kid doesn’t want to get bullied at school? Stop being “weird”.

Don’t want to be stalked? Stay away from public forums.

These are not solutions, these are ways to put responsibility for bad crimes onto the victims instead of the perpetrators.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 19 Oct 13:46 collapse

Threat actor can create another account to easily circumvent what ever this "measure" is.

Also how did blocking somebody you don't like online turned to SA situation, y'all sure love to escalate with idiotic analogies.

ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:36 next collapse

And that’s on top of all the Brazil users who fled to BlueSky when he refused to comply with a court order (and pay a fine) so they blocked Twitter for a few days. I’m not sure how many went back after he paid the fine but BlueSky was fairly popular in Brazil even during the closed beta so I’m sure a ton stuck around.

vzq@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:18 collapse

There is notably more Portuguese content since then. I’m guessing quite a bit stuck around.

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:41 next collapse

has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI

The Grok models are a laughing stock in the LLM space. They aren’t good over APIs, and they’re even less useful after Elon “open sources” them far later. Qwen 72B, and heck, Qwen 32B is already better than Grok 2, which is probably hundreds of billions of parameters. Qwen is runnable locally right now, Apache 2.0, and released day one. Grok 1 is… well, I dunno, no one has even bothered to try hosting it for anything.

I dunno what Twitter is doing with all those H100s Elon hoarded, but it seems like a big waste so far. Its certainly nothing to help the open source/self hosting space or to “decensor” and “democratize” LLMs like Elon fans seem to think.

Revan343@lemmy.ca on 19 Oct 05:00 collapse

dunno what Twitter is doing with all those H100s Elon hoarded

Duh. Mining crypto.

altima_neo@lemmy.zip on 18 Oct 21:43 next collapse

No one leaves Twitter. They always come back. People are so addicted.

expatriado@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:46 next collapse

i thought that was my case with reddit, but here i am, i haven’t touch the thing since may 2023

ptz@dubvee.org on 18 Oct 21:49 collapse

I left Twatter in 2020 and haven’t missed it even slightly. (FB in 2009 and same lack of missing it).

iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 21:43 next collapse

What pros are there to having a blocked person still be able to see your posts?

cerement@slrpnk.net on 18 Oct 21:48 next collapse

Elon Musk removes blocking feature so he can finally see what his kids post

iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 21:53 next collapse

I meant for the person who did the blocking.

zephorah@lemm.ee on 18 Oct 22:25 collapse

The kids comment. Have you read about Elon’s dad? The guy apparently groomed his stepsister, the sick fuck.

businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-errol-has-seco…

And Elon echoes the guy with his we’re only on earth to reproduce crap.

otp@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 22:41 collapse

Elon Musk’s dad groomed Elon Musk’s step-sister, if accurate, is more clear.

Elon Musk’s dad groomed his own step daughter…lol

kamenlady@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 23:00 collapse

Apparently his ex-wife, his now mother-in-law, accepted it in a way, that they are all pretty close.

Musk Sr. also said, paraphrasing:

“Women over 40 lost their essence, that’s why he just can’t…”

otp@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 23:08 collapse

Wait, Elon Musk’s ex-wife is now his mother-in-law?

kamenlady@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 09:22 collapse

Elon dad’s ex-wife is the mother of Elon dad’s wife.

No, wait… Yes, no

ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 04:19 collapse

Never bothered me personally. The reason I block people is that I no longer have to see their posts. I find some level on enjoyment in the fact that on Lemmy there are people constantly wasting their time writing replies to me which I’ll never read.

Lon3star@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 21:47 next collapse

Come on over to Mastodon, the water’s nice

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 18 Oct 22:36 collapse

I’ve stopped recommending it. The discovery and trending post mechanisms are either garbage or non-existent, and it’s really hard to get a feed that’s remotely entertaining. Devs also seem ideologically opposed to adding any features like that. It’ll just give normal people who aren’t willing to deal with all this crap a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to the fediverse. I do recommend lemmy to people tho.

actually@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 23:36 next collapse

Another issue I had was hundreds of saved toots having had awesome pictures, important data or things to do.

I saved them hoping to use some later, but it all remained an unorganized glop: unusable unless I looked at each one again, in order, to find the 75th one back, about a cat

jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip on 18 Oct 23:40 next collapse

Lemmy and Bluesky are what I use, atproto is just much more promising for microblogging than activitypub and Mastodon proves that. Lemmy is perfect for it though.

chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 23:51 next collapse

I wonder if they’re afraid of Eternal September’ing the service. A lot of people on Lemmy were upset when a bunch of people on Reddit joined. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have millions join in one day. I doubt it would be good for the culture of the community!

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 00:43 next collapse

That’s fair I suppose.

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 01:41 collapse

A lot of people on Lemmy were upset when a bunch of people on Reddit joined

How many active users were there pre API fisaco? Fedidb graph doesn’t go back that far.

Klear@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 10:47 next collapse

Most of the people upset when redditors joined were former redditors.

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 14:42 collapse

Yeah but they left before us so clearly they’re superior.

Rolando@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 13:14 collapse

Lemmy had around 1000 active users for the first half of 2023.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/92f35867-11cc-4985-96cd-c7a9285e26c9.jpeg">

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 14:41 next collapse

How did you view earlier in the chart? I figured it was low since maybe five instances existed before summer '23.

Rolando@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 15:16 collapse

I didn’t; I made the chart almost a year ago, click on the link above it to see the 11-month-old comment.

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 19:56 collapse

I see, thank you for digging it up.

KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz on 19 Oct 17:42 collapse

As someone who used lemmy pre migration, yeah it wasn’t exactly active

Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 00:06 next collapse

While I agree that it makes Mastodon less entertaining I also think that it makes it a lot more fair, representative and trustworthy as a lens through which to observe & participate in social discourse and share information and opinions. That in itself will probably mean that it remains less popular but I think it’s also what makes it more valuable IMO. We need to calm down from the urgency of the digital dopamine cycle, for many reasons. If social media is a truly human media then it should be boring at times because that is a human reality that we are adapted to.

moormaan@lemmy.ca on 19 Oct 00:33 next collapse

I agree. I love Mastodon’s calm columnar UI with lists and hashtags where I feel I’m in control of my experience, and that I can just stop whenever and come back in three days.

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 00:45 collapse

Yeah fair points. I will say this implosion of the social media I used to use has pushed me towards doing other things than scrolling on my phone lol, and that is a positive thing.

Empricorn@feddit.nl on 19 Oct 00:17 next collapse

It’s not perfect? Interesting. I’m sure that will be a deal-breaker for people exiting a failing platform run by a megalomaniacal MAGA asshole actively harming working people…

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 00:31 collapse

Or just use neither, like I’ve ended up doing.

drmoose@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 00:22 next collapse

I feel like its the opposite.

Mastodon’s hashtag following is by far the best discovery method out there.

I’ve stopped using Bluesky because I can’t find any content and there’s just too much “screaming into the void” making it impossible to find anything of substance.
I’ve stopped using Threads because it’s just engagement bait.

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 00:39 next collapse

I disagree, I just think some kind of engagement algorithm would be better. I haven’t used bluesky or threads so I can’t speak to them. I’m just saying that back in the day on twitter, I had no problem finding a bunch of very funny and clever posts, and posts were catered to me well. Through both me following people and I assume through the engagement algorithm. I’ve tried adding a bunch of hashtags, but I’m not finding a bunch of hilarious stuff to send to my friends like I did back then on twitter.

Bunch of spam too, because bots use the hashtags, so I’m often scrolling through a bunch of auto-posted stuff. Idk. Maybe I’m using it wrong. I just feel like your average person isn’t going to go through all that crap so they’ll cling to twitter until it dies.

And I’ve tried switching instances around, which is just confusing honestly, and didn’t really help with finding lots of content that I want to see. I used mastodon more when I was able to mirror people I know are funny on twitter to my mastodon feed lol. I want to like it, I just find I’m never tempted to go on it. Can’t figure it out.

leftist_lawyer@lemmy.today on 19 Oct 06:11 collapse

Is that you, Elon?

Aachen@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 06:20 next collapse

What do valid criticisms/grievances about Mastodon have to do with the poster being Elon?

half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 20:30 collapse

They crave the algorithm

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 06:57 collapse

Groan

anoncity@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 02:02 collapse

Yeah Threads has nothing of substance, just engagement bait as you said. X is similar now that users can make ad revenue

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Oct 01:39 next collapse

Yeah, once we have mastodon-wide full text search, it’ll be useful.

clot27@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 01:40 next collapse

Exactly, their official app is just pure garabage and they aren’t even trying to fix it

Aachen@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 06:23 collapse

Wdym they aren’t trying to fix it, their GitHub repo is very much active.

Though as for pure garbage, the app ain’t that bad IMO apart from the fact it’s made with React Native.

naught@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 19:54 collapse

Why is React Native garbage?

DrDystopia@lemy.lol on 19 Oct 14:11 collapse

I know what you mean. I’m self-hosting and use relay.fedi.buzz to subscribe to hashtags from all over the fedimicroblogosphere. It’s literally too much interesting content, I kept scrolling new stuff for hours and had to cut down on what tags I subscribed to. It’s like that Lemmy explorer but for microblogging.

I think a reasonable admin should be open to using the service to populate the federated timeline with niché content users ask for.

The only downside is “catch all”-tags and people abusing tags. “Hey #fediverse, check out my XYZ!”. No, I want fediverse news dang it!

But the dev stuff? Yeah.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 20 Oct 00:51 collapse

fedimicroblogosphere

Please never say that again

magnetosphere@fedia.io on 18 Oct 21:53 next collapse

Wonderful. Negative press for Musk makes me smile.

LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world on 18 Oct 23:23 next collapse

Dude, that’s gonna be one hell of a racist AI just based on the dataset it’s gonna receive

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Oct 01:36 next collapse

This is why when we give vacuum robots AI powers, they run around your house shouting racist pejoratives

Welcome to the future

jayrodtheoldbod@midwest.social on 19 Oct 01:58 collapse

It’s gonna train the little robot dog, which they’re gonna put a gun on. And drones. It’s gonna train drones, he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.

nokturne213@sopuli.xyz on 19 Oct 02:11 collapse

he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.

And if they will not buy it musk will sue them until they buy it.

Euphorazine@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 00:14 next collapse

So let’s say on Twitter, someone blocks me and I can’t read their post. Can’t I just log out and read their post that way? I don’t have a Twitter account, so I’ve never seen a blocked link before.

EatATaco@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 01:02 next collapse

Yup, that’s exactly right. On Lemmy you don’t even have to log out, blocking someone simply means you can’t see their posts. If you don’t want a harasser or stalker to see something, and you post it publicly, you’re an idiot.

And this is the way it should be… You shouldn’t be able to silence someone from responding to stuff you say publicly by blocking them.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Oct 01:38 next collapse

X is authwalled

Euphorazine@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 04:42 collapse

I can see this random tweet from Taylor Swift just fine in incognito mode. I can’t look at replies but I can see her posts.

https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1781171613058097619

People on Lemmy link to tweets all the time and I can navigate and read them. Not sure what you mean then that it’s authwalled. It’s an annoying experience and it bugs me every time I visit to make an account or log in, but I can see them.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Oct 05:12 next collapse

Maybe it just authwalls shared IPs like Google does (eg YouTube)

red@sopuli.xyz on 19 Oct 07:02 collapse

You can see a tweet, but not list of her tweets, iirc.

poplargrove@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 06:59 collapse

You can view some profiles (authwall for others) and some show all content (tried it out with bbc and forbes), others drop relatively recent content while some others only show ancient content from a year or more ago.

The latter two were when I tried opening the twitter pages for some smaller podcasts I follow.

[deleted] on 19 Oct 01:43 next collapse

.

Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de on 19 Oct 07:20 collapse

Someone could just open another account with a new mail address. Blocking doesn’t help much against stalkers as long as your posts are public.

madcat@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 00:35 next collapse

That’s how blocking and banning on the internet has always worked. When you block someone they just can’t reply to you. The way it was until now is just weird. Why would blocking an account prevent them from viewing your public posts!? “Stalkers” can always just make another account. I am glad they are actually fixing blocking on Twitter. g

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 01:30 collapse

I’m wondering the same thing. I never really used Twitter, couldn’t people just stalk without being logged in? Or was this to weed out the least motivated stalkers?

madcat@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 01:34 next collapse

couldn’t people just stalk without being logged in?

Yes, you can. That’s why it was even dumber. It’s super weird to me that anyone could be mad about this.

PlainSimpleGarak@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 02:57 next collapse

No one on Lemmy is upset about this. It only provides them an opportunity to increase their hate boner for Musk.

I created a filter to block all posts with “Elon Musk” in the title. It appears I have some updates to make.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 03:12 collapse

There a lot of reasons to hate Elon. He’s making new reasons every day lately.

A lot of people hate him for completely bs reasons like this though and then come off as hating anything he does just for the sake of hating him.

zarkanian@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 03:13 collapse

You used to. Not anymore. Musk made it so that if you try to view somebody’s profile, and you aren’t logged in, you don’t see anything except for a big box asking you to log in.

Also, it’s not so much about stalking per se, but being able to reshare posts (and thus bully) their targets. The way X is right now, they’d have to have a direct link to the post in question and then screenshot it.

can@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 21:19 collapse

I see. Guess that explains why back when reddit changed their blocking to this way people complained

Jordan117@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 00:46 next collapse

While anything that gets people off Twitter is good, I’m sorely unimpressed by those artists who “had to” to patronize the racist transphobic neo-Nazi hellhole “because my audience is there”… until Musk’s policies happened to offend their own personal interests, by requiring training for their AI. Countless models trained on all public images already exist, jumping ship won’t prevent their work from being scraped elsewhere, and frankly, any one image or even portfolio will contribute virtually nothing to the result, so quitting in protest is largely symbolic. But so many peoples drew the line at that, and not at Musk making “cis” a slur, or protecting child pornographers, or boosting white supremacist supremacy theories. It’s really disappointing to see.

LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Oct 05:34 next collapse

This is a lesson in humanity. Artists can be pieces of shit too and to be an artist, so committed to oneself and one’s thoughts is to be to some extent - narcissistic, and in the end they look out for self interest first, and it’s only that the AI portion of this threatens their self-interest do they become concerned. #NotAll, ofc.

Like I said before, solidarity of the scorpion with the turtle.

fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc on 19 Oct 05:47 collapse

Yeah this is pretty much how I feel.

I loathe musk, and despise twitter, and I’m happy about anything they will be unhappy about.

That said, I don’t have a lot of respect for anyone who is still there. Journalists, politicians, anyone who has to be there for their job… I still just don’t have a lot of respect for them.

nutsack@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 05:06 next collapse

ive been enjoying bluesky more than twitter. i just wish more bug accounts would migrate. i post on both platforms with a script that i wrote and my engagement/followers ratio is far higher

dan@upvote.au on 19 Oct 06:32 next collapse

I tried Bluesky but just couldn’t get into it. Same with Mastodon. I like Lemmy because long-form posts/comments are more interesting to me. I’m liking Threads a bit, too.

tja@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 07:36 next collapse

What would you say makes threads better than the other mikroblogging services?

dan@upvote.au on 19 Oct 08:37 collapse

I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of tech people on Twitter ended up on there. Mastodon originally filled that spot for me, but I found that a bunch of people that moved from Twitter to Mastodon ended up abandoning their accounts (or very rarely posting) a few months later.

It’s also probably the largest Fediverse instance, as users can opt in to sharing their posts to the Fediverse.

I still don’t use it often, though. I don’t spend a lot of time on any social networks (or similar services) any more.

nutsack@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:48 collapse

Mastodon has shitty clients, the servers are slow and the communication across them is buggy. some things are still just broken.

typically I’ll open the android client and stare for 15 seconds at a spinning “wait” symbol, and then I’ll close it and not look at it for the rest of the day.

maybe it’s the instance that I’m on? or maybe it’s something else.

tja@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 09:31 collapse

Yes, that might be your instance? I never had that problem. And I also think there are now some very good clients

stephen01king@lemmy.zip on 19 Oct 14:26 collapse

Can you suggest a few.

airglow@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 15:03 collapse

Tusky has been working very well for me on Android. There’s also Ice Cubes for iOS. Both are free and open source.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 11:46 collapse

I like the long form posts and I also find those sort of sites way too fast-moving to keep up with.

Maybe it’s because I’m an old man who grew up on BBSes, but forums are much more my speed.

RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:31 collapse

Bug accounts, or big? Bug as in programming?

nutsack@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:46 collapse

no like giant bugs

RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 20:37 next collapse

Lol, yes that’s a very good point.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 20 Oct 00:52 collapse

big bug accounts

ayyy@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 05:48 next collapse

Wait this whole article just baselessly assumes that 1 new bluesky account = 1 person leaving twitter. That is so obviously unrealistic. Sure some people were probably curious and wanted to check out something new but that doesn’t mean they will immediately switch platforms.

You can’t just make fun of Those Guys for endlessly believing fake bullshit while unquestionably parroting this garbage.

takeda@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 06:04 next collapse

Twitter is for narcissists, and when they say Mastodon is not as good as twitter they really mean that there’s not as many people watching them as on Twitter. So Bluesky gaining 500,000 new accounts could help in making it “better”.

ayyy@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 06:11 next collapse

The headline directly says half a million users left twatter. As far as I can tell that is literally a lie.

vzq@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:12 collapse

Mastodon is still pretty rough around the edges. Especially for the regular Twitter Instagram crowd.

MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com on 19 Oct 22:42 collapse

What’s rough about it? I’ve never been a twitter guy so can’t really compare, but I have a Mastodon account that I pop into periodically, and it works fine.

Istolla@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 17:21 collapse

Getting a 100000 new users when Twitter loses roughly the same amount is a pretty significant correlation.

deathbird@mander.xyz on 19 Oct 07:34 next collapse

I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.

One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml on 19 Oct 07:37 next collapse

Idiots users just recreating conditions that created their misery in the first place. Freedom doesn’t happen from the grace of some cult leader and their slightly less immediately hostile app

Tattorack@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 09:02 collapse

What sets it apart is that on Bluesky you can create your own algorithm. You can also share this algorithm, if you want, so others can subscribe to it. This means you see only what you want to see, and not what some corporate algorithm wants to see to maximise some kind of engagement.

Moreover, Bluesky is also its own federation. There aren’t many who choose to do so, but you can connect to Bluesky using your own domain, which you have complet control over.

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml on 19 Oct 10:18 collapse

Ok, thanks ! Looks like I was wrong then, I see it is open source under MIT license Frankly I assumed it was another tech bro blitzscale project since it was from Rasputin himself There even is a 3rd party client so possibly it won’t be a open source but problematic, like Signal

dragonfucker@lemmy.nz on 19 Oct 08:08 collapse

Neoliberal guano website is better than Nazi guano website

Snapz@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:14 next collapse

Just helpful to remember, as all this horseshit persists, Bluesky is Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is former head of Twitter and musk’s good buddy.

It’s all a losing proposition, whatever direction you move - except if you move… Away.

Tattorack@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:56 next collapse

I dunno. I’d say it’s more important to see what exactly he’s doing and what Bluesky is.

Right now Bluesky is really good. So until it turns bad I’m sticking to it.

Snapz@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 22:35 collapse

When people tell you who they are, believe them

Default_Defect@midwest.social on 19 Oct 09:06 next collapse

He left in May.

DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social on 19 Oct 09:29 next collapse

He left the board. As a “public benefit organization” it’s still a for-profit company and he still owns stock.

Prior_Industry@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 10:31 collapse

But he’s left seemingly under a cloud, so unless the leadership changes I doubt he’s influencing decision making.

Let’s be honest these social media platforms will be a rinse and repeat. Just enjoy it whilst it lasts. Move on when the ownership go full Elon.

vzq@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:09 collapse

Jack Dorky got literally laughed off the platform.

Snapz@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 22:38 collapse

So he’s completely removed from anything to do with that company and isn’t inherently woven into the DNA as it’s very recent founder?

Prior_Industry@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 12:06 collapse

Mike Masnick is also been added to the bluesky board which gives me some faith Bluesky will less of a Elon / Dorsey vibe

bsky.social/about/blog/08-06-2024-board

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 20 Oct 16:32 collapse

im not sure people wont consider mastodon tbh.

Snapz@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 17:05 collapse

They should

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 20 Oct 20:00 collapse

i know. but its our responsability to understand why the corporate shitty options are always preferred by the layman public.

Snapz@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 22:09 collapse

Because we are extremely simple and self obsessed animals on the whole. At the intersection of those two things, we regularly conflate base familiarity with earned trust. A bit of a narcissistic drive to tell ourselves that… if WE know about something, it MUST be good, otherwise we wouldn’t have taken the time to first learn about it!

It’s why your town is currently infested with candidate signs in every public space. It’s also why incumbents have such large advantages in elections and why dead/convicted politicians (or Last-name sharing family members of those politicians) are often elected after the fact.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 20 Oct 23:01 collapse

what

Mwa@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 08:23 next collapse

even tho twitter is more ruined by him people will still use it

mochisuki@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:26 next collapse

Network effect is a hell of a drug

BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 11:00 collapse

How do you ruin something that was toxic garbage before.

Mwa@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 11:47 next collapse

oh yeah true you got me people say elon musck ruined twitter

zeppo@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:36 collapse

By making it even worse?

RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 08:29 next collapse

Is 500,000 actually a lot? Honest question, my sense of scale with these things is shaky.

itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 Oct 12:37 collapse

For Twitter? No

For Bsky? Yes

Amir@lemmy.ml on 19 Oct 08:37 next collapse

How does this blocking thing make sense?

Either the profile is public, which means you can still open it on another account, or it’s private, which means no one can see it anyways if they’re not an accepted follower.

I don’t see how anything changes from Musk’s change…

Miphera@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 09:20 next collapse

lol

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/73462500-56fd-4d09-a628-65b3b305879b.png">

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 11:34 collapse

Just like a real girlfriend, but better. Apart from you having absolutely no sex life and apart from the fact that it has absolutely no emotional attachment or attraction to you whatsoever. And it will also never do anything like buy you dinner or a birthday present. Enjoy throwing money at your robot that you can’t even fuck like a fleshlight.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 20 Oct 00:50 collapse

No, they can sync with toys like fleshlights now.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 10:25 collapse

Fair enough, but I wouldn’t call that having a sex life unless you’re really into fucking tubes and aren’t just using it as a vagina substitute.

Prior_Industry@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 10:23 next collapse

Do they drift back though. Bigger accounts seems to struggle to kick the Twitter high .

sweetpotato@lemmy.ml on 19 Oct 10:24 next collapse

These mfs will use literally anything except for open source, decentralised social meda

LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Oct 13:45 next collapse

The masses yearn for the corporate boot

toybastard@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:35 collapse

Is bluesky not federated?

Strepto@sh.itjust.works on 20 Oct 02:55 collapse

It is but from what I understand it doesn’t run on ActivityPub. Rather it runs on AT Protocol

toybastard@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 19:15 collapse

Right. That’s what I thought. Not sure what GP is talking about, then.

JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee on 19 Oct 11:16 next collapse

Social media like Twitter preys on people’s fear of missing out.

Manufactured Problem - not being up to date on internet bullshit. Marketed solution - be on twitter. Supply and demand died a long time ago. Now it’s all about manufactured problems, and conveniently marketed solutions.

This sort of psychological manipulation in marketing works. It’s why it’s so hard to get people to leave websites like Twitter, reddit, fb ect. They’ve made their brands synonymous with media trends.

It took long enough, but I’m genuinely happy to see folks wising up and realizing they don’t “need” Twitter. It’s like watching a bunch of people break up with a toxic ex all at the same time.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 11:33 collapse

Not just Twitter. FOMO was what kept me on Reddit far longer than I should have been there.

Suavevillain@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 13:41 next collapse

Bluesky is pretty great once you learn how to use it. I plan to slowly back off twitter.

Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 14:05 next collapse

That type of social media just isn’t really for me. But why would one want to choose Bluesky over Mastadon?

When I did try Twitter I somehow ended up following and be followed by a bunch of folks from Ghana… that was pretty neat. Although I did miss out because my Akan/Pidgin is basically non existent. Although I was introduced to the word “bomboclaat” which was interesting… lol

stephen01king@lemmy.zip on 19 Oct 14:23 next collapse

1 reason for me, the algorithm. I can never find a lot of new thing to discover or new people to follow on Mastodon when I first started, which makes me not use it very much even now.

Lag@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 22:50 collapse

I heard the struggle with recommendations is because it doesn’t track you. One of the suggestions was to use tags to find content based on your interests.

ahal@lemmy.ca on 20 Oct 11:47 collapse

That’s a good point. The original question was why would someone pick blenny Bluesky over mastodon? You just hit the nail on the head.

It’s because the vast majority of users value features and usability much higher than privacy.

zeppo@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:34 next collapse

That’s how Facebook went for me the last time I tried to use it with a new account… I was immediately swamped with friend requests from people in western and central Africa. I accepted some out of curiosity so of course FB decided that’s what I was really into. I’m not sure if these people just send out random requests or why they want to add Americans… I didn’t get hit up for scams or anything, it was just people posting and sharing photos of their lives as normal FB users.

Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 22:26 collapse

That’s how it was for me too. I was never targeted or anything… although there was some discussion of some ridiculous scams others were supposedly doing. It was just normal conversation for them, for me it was kind of like a riveting soap opera. Too bad I forgot the password/it got bought out by an asshole.

pycorax@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 06:30 next collapse

I’m mostly still on Twitter because I follow a lot of Japanese artists and bands. Now plenty of them are jumping out BlueSky so off I go.

ahal@lemmy.ca on 20 Oct 11:49 collapse

Because users value usability over privacy.

The major thing that make Mastodon unusable is lack of users. That and lack of algorithmic feeds.

supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz on 19 Oct 14:48 next collapse

Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.

Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.

There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides (however imperfectly). It is also full of “liberal” sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.

Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.

Boiglenoight@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 21:56 collapse

But is it filled with the people that many want to follow and interact with? Twitter was popular for this reason, and people will tolerate being advertised to and sold on if it recreates that experience.

I had brief conversations on Twitter with Ice-T and John Carmack. Twitter’s nature enabled that remarkable connection. Could it happen on Mastodon? Absolutely, but those celebrities and geniuses need to embrace it. If it’s Bluesky, it’s better than X if only for a time.

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 10:24 collapse

Bluesky is the promise of Mastodon with none of the failsafes of Mastodon.

billbasher@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 16:11 next collapse

Opt out is such a shitty practice. Especially for AI generation

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 19:51 next collapse

How do we know this bluesky isn’t just the same shit run by different assholes?

mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works on 19 Oct 20:09 next collapse

We don’t. It probably is. Mastodon is the way, but they need to fix a few things themselves.

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 22:24 collapse

How do we know mastadon isn’t just owned by Musk too?

communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz on 19 Oct 22:37 next collapse

Because it’s federated and FOSS.

CgH10N4Co2@lemmy.cafe on 20 Oct 02:36 collapse

It can’t be.

Honytawk@lemmy.zip on 19 Oct 22:47 next collapse

We can’t, but at least there is a chance it is not.

With Xitter, we know for certain.

sibachian@lemmy.ml on 19 Oct 23:36 next collapse

we already know bluesky is run by former twitter assholes. but it’s the same with everything. people disappointed in new facebook policies move to band…

there are better alternatives, guaranteed not to turn into a heap of shit because of designed safeguards - but people don’t like those things; they always opt for the devil they already know.

T156@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 12:02 collapse

Although it also helps that places like BlueSky have less of a barrier to entry.

Alternatives like Mastodon are a bit more confusing, compared to a centralised site, where everything is linked in through the one interface.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 16:46 next collapse

Most of the coolest places have barriers to entry

sibachian@lemmy.ml on 20 Oct 21:07 collapse

i disagree. the only barrier of entry is when people are pushing the fediverse concept as a whole. for the vast majority of people; all they need to know is to go to mastodon.social and sign up, done. they’ll get the wider picture on their own terms and at their own pace if left alone.

dog_@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 07:14 next collapse

I’ve been on the platform for about a year, it’s more community driven than other sites.

fantawurstwasser@feddit.org on 20 Oct 11:28 collapse

We know that it is run by the same assholes. Bluesky is VC backed and Twitter was also. There is no way that Bluesky won’t go the same route as every other VC backed social network. Sometime in the future they will start to meddle with your feed to push ads and sell your data to everyone.

Asetru@feddit.org on 20 Oct 17:07 collapse

This makes me wonder so hard why people don’t switch to Mastodon instead. Like… You have literally seen this before! Why are you doing it again?

rozodru@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 22:28 collapse

Because people “just want it to work”.

from what I’ve read on bsky is that people don’t like Mastodon due to the instances. They don’t want to figure that out. Either because they’re too lazy or because they’ve spent so many years utilizing apps that “just work” that it’s beyond them.

That’s the meat and potatoes as to why Mastodon isn’t taking off, it’s “too much work” to use Mastodon.

KAYDUBELL@lemmy.world on 19 Oct 20:04 next collapse

Pussy. Ass. Bitch.

yamanii@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 12:13 collapse

I just go where the japanese artists go, and they are going to either blue sky or misskey, mostly blue sky since it has a bigger reach, misskey closed account creation for outsiders, and the way mastodon works I bet it’s defederated from a lot of the popular instances like baraag.

IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 20 Oct 16:54 collapse

Misskey is like mastodon so you can just go to another misskey instance.

But if you’re talking about the misskey.io instance, it’s not that defederated from my experience (the 3 instances I’m on aren’t defederated from it).

The instance simply follows Japanese law so whatever Japan allows they allow and whatever Japan forbids they forbid (which is why censoring genitals is also mandatory in that instance lol). It’s not like it’s some nazi cesspool or anything like that.

yamanii@lemmy.world on 20 Oct 19:13 next collapse

I don’t know how to see how much an instance is defederated, I just concluded it must be in the same rate of baraag because both misskey.io and it allows loli art. I know that baraag is on some default block list for administrators for example.

IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 20 Oct 22:36 collapse

Baraag is way more permissive than misskey.io and it gained a pretty bad reputation in the past because of that, plus it essentially advertises itself as a safe haven for lolicon art and primarily focuses on that, so that’s why it’s on many block lists.

misskey.io is just a generalist Japanese instance (which is why many Japanese artists easily hop on it). It’s also the biggest misskey instance and is run by the main developer, so it’s usually not blocked by default because most people use it.

Defederating from misskey.io would be like defederating from mastodon.social. Some will do it but it’s not the default stance afaik.

Voltage@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Oct 20:02 collapse

Japan is weird as fuck. I just saw a Japanese disc store collaborate with an incest sleep rape game.