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we’ve been seeing these “twitter’s in biiiiiiiiig trouble now!!” headlines for how many years now?
yet people refuse to just delete it
i can’t wait for the day i can go a full 24 hours without twitter shit showing up on every feed
I deleted Twitter as soon as Space Karen took over.
However, my friends and so many people I follow on other platforms still link their Twitter profiles. For some there needs to be something solid to make a real and consistent migration. I was overly hopeful that Threads (yes, another evil) would have buried Twitter.
Threads stood as much chance as Google Plus had against Facebook.
Zuckerfucker using a somewhat similar strategy to artificially boost Threads membership (login with instagram once, you can’t delete your threads account without also deleting the instagram one) speaks volumes.
I also like the absurd amount of permissions it requires. Meta couldn’t let their guard down for a moment.
To clarify, I mean Meta couldn’t be a little less data hungry in order to take marketshare from Twitter. They instantly needed access to absolutely everything at the start.
For what it’s worth, it is now possible to delete your threads account without also deleting your instagram account.
we’ve been seeing these “twitter’s in biiiiiiiiig trouble now!!” headlines for how many years now?
this time it’s for realsies.
yet people refuse to just delete it
Many journalists want to feel connected, and since many politicians have a presence on Twitter, they feel like they can’t. That means Twitter gets referenced way more than necessary in news stories, which feeds its popularity.
I honestly don’t think twitter will ever go away until all of a majority of all major sports teams and leagues, a majority of legislative body members, and major news and wire services have a sustained and active presence on bsky. it right now is literally coasting on everything that made it useful pre 2022 and every stupid fucking thing elon has done to make the twitter experience worse hasn’t done enough to cause a critical mass of people to jump.
once you see major popular twitter accounts like rex chapman, mark hamill, taylor swift and the like (and I say this not because of their politics but because of their massive follower base) regularly post on bsky you can probably start closing the book on twitter.
I’ve deleted it ages ago, but another friend that actually knows and cares about the insanity of twitter still refuses to get away from it because “it’s where the kpop community is”, nowhere else. It’s fucking sad.
Now that is an interesting target to get tons of people off twitter. If all these K Pop labels like Hybe and JYP suddenly started publishing on BlueSky their fans would immediately follow suit
I feel like I’m the only person who never signed up for Twitter.
i installed it while i was bored in a doctor waiting room, thought it was the dumbest most pointless thing ever. deleted after 5 minutes and went on with my life
Many people have deleted it. There just Right wing trolls and bots on that platform
Whelp, did mastodon got something out of this screwup?
Mastodon struggles a bit to pick up pace.
Found this:
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-people-leaving-mastodon/
It explains some pain points.
Basically it’s “I can’t get ✨ engagement ✨ on Mastodon”
People want big amounts of likes and reposts you don’t get that on Mastodon, the system is too distributed for that.
Bluesky gives them the big numbers
They want an algorithm.
As much as people mock it, or know it’s the source of why social media optimizes for outrage and other unhealthy behaviors, the algorithm is what they are missing on Mastodon.
As someone who always used third party Twitter apps, and never directly saw the algorithm in my timeline, mastodon feels like Twitter always did.
Yep. Actually brave to say this given the fever that word throws people into. But not only is everything literally an algorithm, including “show your subscriptions in chronological order” but we all want a little more than that because it’s easy to imagine how one frequent poster would throw that experience off completely. We need to talk about what we want from algorithms and lay down this narrative that we must stamp them out of existence.
This is exactly why I just could not get into mastodon, and probably Twitter-likes in general
There’s no way, atleast at the time, to sort by top of the day. No way to see what was trending across the larger fediverse, no real way to find new and interesting things every hour on the hour
Lemmy is thankfully significantly better with this, and it’s honestly become my go-to social app now
Some people don’t want a suggestion algorithm but do want full reply federation.
Alec from Technology Connections stopped using mastodon because of this, every post he made would get nitpicked on by 20 different people from instances who did not federate the replies with each other so each reply guy thought they were the first.
I have a single user instance and I use a relay, but most replies are still missing if I click on a post unless I go to the original webpage.
Lazy-federating replies when a post is viewed sounds like an obvious solution but AFAIK the mastodon devs are very opposed to this.
I would not have guessed that reply guys replying to really popular accounts would ever check if their reply is a duplicate.
I didn’t catch that this is why Alec stopped posting there. I assumed he was just being sensitive to being a public figure in general.
When you make a channel that is filled with “well actually” and “turns out.” You should expect your audience is into doing the same.
And when you don’t have an algorithm filtering these for you… well, then you get the reality of other people’s interactions. Twitter just optionally hides this reality from big accounts. (I’m talking about what they use to label “low quality replies” or something similar.)
The federation issues of replies/boosts/hearts/etc are still a big bummer, though.
He was really popular on twitter, and if he says mastodon’s worse despite having a smaller audience there, I trust his judgement. Literally his pinned toot.
“First replies shown are the ones the author replied to and/or liked” seems like an obvious, simple, and transparent algorithm. Like youtube comments. Give lazy reply guys an opportunity to see without scrolling down that they aren’t as original as they think they are. The fact that this isn’t implemented in even a basic form is absolutely insane and shows a very fundamental ideological disconnect between people who want “open twitter with decent moderation” and whatever the fuck it is that the mastodon OGs/devs are trying to achieve.
Damn we can’t get influencers? How will we live.
we need People to tell us what to like!!!
Mastodon is fantastic for niche things. For example myself and my colleagues use it for work stuff and I also use it with a few friends for gaming. that’s it. Beyond that if you’re going to Mastodon to reach a lot of people and chase clout or what have you you’re gonna have a bad time. you’ll just be shouting to the void in many cases. I also use it to connect with people using linux for help and suggestions.
But just read feeds on Bluesky and you’ll see many people, probably the vast majority, just say they want something that “just works” and them trying to use Mastodon was too difficult. They didn’t understand the instances and what have you. It’s a generation that’s been raised on downloading an app, tapping on it, and it works. Login with your google, facebook, or apple id…that’s it.
People these days simply don’t want to do too much to use something. they don’t want to customize their online experience like we used to do years ago. If it doesn’t instantly “work” right out of the box, they won’t use it. And even regardless of how much they’ll complain about using it and all it’s bugs and foibles (X/Twitter, Windows 11, etc) they’ll continue to use it cause, again, “it just works”.
“Freedom of choice Is what you got Freedom from choice Is what you want” -Devo
Who is this wise sage, Devo? Are they internet search, wait the 80’s band with the construction helmets?
Whip it? Whip it good??
’80s* band
Yeah that looks better! Ty.
People want to socially interact on a platform with the intention of letting you socially interact. I understand Mastodon intends to do the same thing as.BlueSky so the question is why is BlueSky more.popular.
As someone who uses both. Mastodon’s UI and signup process is not as straight toward at least that is my personal reason why.
The reasons mentioned in the article:
One reason is that it seemed tech-savvy users heavily dominated the platform, making it difficult for regular social media users to find their way and feel comfortable on the platform.
I think that’s saying the content tends to be very niche and it’s hard to find people with similar non-tech interests.
and
Users have described their timelines (and even the explore tab) as “stale” because there’s often not much interesting content to consume or engage with.
This lines up with my experience: it’s hard to find people with similar interests. Even when you do, people aren’t saying much of interest.
Yep, same problem Lemmy has vs reddit. Only the nerdiest tech nerds got on here. Not many communities from reddit or just in general here. For example, I had to go back to reddit for a good sized general anime community. It’s that or fucking 4chan, and no thanks on the latter.
To me, Lemmy feels very much a giant technology board with a few memes.
But I will say, the past few days, Bluesky has gotten a lot more interesting.
Yep, same problem Lemmy has vs reddit. Only the nerdiest tech nerds got on here. Not many communities from reddit or just in general here. For example, I had to go back to reddit for a good sized general anime community.
I’ve had the same experience. I still post here because I want the platform to take off, but Lemmy doesn’t fulfill my needs.
The last part I think happens because the people who are there are most likely the ones that dislike very short content, which is what Mastodon offers by default (I know it depends on instance, some allow 1k or 5k character toots), but it’s a disorganized mess. It’s a kind of service/software for fast communication that can be done better in a specific Discord server. The “good stuff” will always end up posted elsewhere, like personal blogs or websites, where it’s better organized (most of the time)
One thing that keeps people on xitter is the “it’s where I get the news”. Major news outlets aren’t on Mastodon and likely won’t be. There’s also the stuff that “you get to know before it becomes news”, which also won’t be on Mastodon because it lacks the “gossipers” and the mass of users that is needed for having people “everywhere”
There’s also the stuff that “you get to know before it becomes news”, which also won’t be on Mastodon because it lacks the “gossipers” and the mass of users that is needed for having people “everywhere”
It’s not the gossipers, it’s a trending view. Mastodon doesn’t tell users about active conversations as they happen. That makes it really hard to get breaking news, because you need to be following someone who is posting about it AND you need to recognize that it’s breaking news.
Maybe that has improved in the year or two since I used Mastodon.
It’s not a place for lurking, IMO. If you’ve got nothing to offer, don’t expect to get engagement on shitposts and rage-bait.
I personally get more engagement on Mastodon, because I couldn’t please the twitter algorithm. And I have 7 times fewer followers on Masto than I had on twitter.
Organic reach is best reach. Everything else is noise.
BlueSky has the one thing Fedi doesn’t: a large advertising budget. Hate to say it, but we have lost.
What are you talking about man?
BlueSky has money. We don’t.
People are going from one corporate-controlled social media platform to another corporate-controlled social media platform. You and I both know that’s the problem, but to the average user, they’re going to go to whatever has a large corporation spending a lot of money to tell them that their platform is the next big thing.
It sounds to me you are making excuses instead of confronting the obvious problems of Mastodon. It’s user-hostile to anyone who is not already a fucking nerd.
Just like Lemmy.
I haven’t observed that on Lemmy or Mastodon.
Non of my IRL friends are on mastodon. So there’s that.
Chicken / egg
Well I’m there. If one if them joined then they would not be able to sat what I said
Bluesky is decentralized only in its name. And media storage.
Better than the burning garbage inferno that is xitter.
but for how long?
Doesn’t matter, less time on twitter is better, even if bluesky ends up the same way. Something else will be less shit and worth going to then.
This isn’t necessarily true. Just because their architecture is harder and not a simple server host does not strip away its decentralization.
They have decentralized the following:
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App access (can build your own or show openProto posts in your platform
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Algorithms
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Relay (backend albeit rumored to be expensive)
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More if you consider the domain name hosting stuff and media storage control. Also moderation is planned to be decentralized.
Isn’t the only thing that really matters decentralised control?
Open protocols and APIs seem pretty meaningless to me if there’s a single point of control for the brand.
If everyone migrates to bluesky and then bluesky says “of we’re not doing that open thing anymore because of this new embiggened thing we’re doing” everyone will still be on bluesky.
Open protocols and APIs seem pretty meaningless to me if there’s a single point of control for the brand.
You’d need to expand on this more for me to understand you. Yes there’s a single point of control from a moderation standpoint (labeler), as there is on Lemmy instances. But anyone can host their own ATProto relays and the Bluesky relay will federate with each other automatically.
If everyone migrates to bluesky and then bluesky says “of we’re not doing that open thing anymore because of this new embiggened thing we’re doing” everyone will still be on bluesky.
Not necessarily because the accounts are atProto accounts and you can migrate to another platform(albeit another doesn’t exist yet) without data loss. As far as the Bluesky app goes it really just shows you atProto posts and hosts your data (similar to Lemmy instances) they as an entity just also maintain the OSS backend Relay crawler and more.
I really think a lot of people have this perspective that it’s not decentralized just because it truly is a lot more complicated due to there being like 5 different moving pieces of decentralization (PDS, Relay, Appview, tbd labeler, algorithm) and they do a great job at obscuring it for regular users which is a great thing. And nobody has really tinkered around and set-up any sites or integrations with it yet. I’m personally trying to get a two way mastodon integration as it’s possible but nobody has done a solid implementation (just somewhat gnarly bridges between protocols)
Oh sure ok. Silly me. I can’t wait to be embraced by the utopia of open standards bluesky is going to inspire.
Tl;Dr it isn’t decentralized.
If you can build your own or selfhost each of the following to read and push back to all of the atProto protocol:
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App
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Backend Relay
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Moderation
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Algorithm
And you still say that’s not decentralized I’m not sure what you’re looking for nor what your definition of decentralization is.
If I log into BlueSky right now, can I see posts from other instances? This is a legitimate question since the twitter archetype doesn’t appeal to me.
Instances aren’t necessarily a thing in atProto because an instance usually refers to a single server. But you can see people’s posts from selfhosted PDS/relays yes.
Yes! Actually.
The full atproto up and running with bluesky is only in the last month or so, so people are finally starting to trickle out and set up their own services and hosts.
It’s actually very promising and hopeful.
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Relay (backend albeit rumored to be expensive)
Not even rumored, so much as explicitly expected.
The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service. In all likelihood, there may be a few large full-network providers, and then a long tail of partial-network providers.
This doesn’t seem to be that big an issue as PDS’s can just directly communicate with one-another like how ActivityPub works.
They’re supposed to be able to, true, but I’ve not come across any examples of that in action yet. If you know of any I’d be interested in seeing them, as I’ve been trying to keep up with AuthTransfer’s developments.
Isn’t that what Whitewind is doing?
Hmm, if so, it wasn’t clear in the documentation I read. I was of the impression it was still passing posts through the relay to enable others’ discovery & interaction.
I could be mistaken too, this has all only recently become interoperable so there’s some growing pains
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Taking a page out of Valves book.
Doing nothing and let the competition drive customers your way.
Not really what Valve did. Valve kept doing cool things that benefit the customer, while the competition actively drove them away.
I don’t follow social media. Is BlueSky feature rich and only getting better?
The biggest thing that valve did that kept them in everyone’s good graces is that steam’s core functionality hasn’t had any major changes in years. Dare I say, more than a decade.
It’s a platform where you buy games, download them, and play them.
In the early days you still had to deal with all the bullshit, including third party launcher installs and crap to get things going, and over time, valve simplified all of that, making it easier than ever to take advantage of the core function of steam: buying, downloading, and playing games.
Literally the only improvement I can absolutely, positively credit them for, is making that entire process, easier, simpler, and quicker, than ever.
Sure, you can chat to people, track achievements, comment on your profile, comment on your friends profiles, buy and sell cosmetics on the market thing, even voice chat and I think they have a way you can stream your game to friends… Not sure on that last one.
It’s like Facebook, FB marketplace, FB messenger, discord, Twitter… And a bunch of other services, all huddled together to make a bastard child with the entire PC video game industry… That’s steam.
But the core mechanic that was always the main reason why steam was great, remains the same.
I think you might be underselling how important things like the steam workshop and steam’s multiplayer support are.
Games like Starbound or Don’t Starve benefit a lot from the workshop.
While insert any party game gains a lot out of steam’s multiplayer support and friend list.
Also, while I don’t use Linux myself, Steam is one of the main reasons why Linux Gaming is a thing.
I don’t mean to, I wasn’t exactly looking at a comprehensive list of steam features when I wrote that. I’m sure I missed several of steam’s very good features from what I listed.
My main point was, and still is, that the core thing that made steam stand out, has more or less stayed the same throughout its existence. You log in, buy, download, and launch games right from one really easy to use program, it manages all the particulars about product keys and saves, etc. So you can focus on playing the game rather than trying to get the game running.
There’s a ton of other really good features that steam and valve in general have introduced, and I’m not trying to diminish the impact of those things.
While other games stores are pulling crap like exclusives to their platform, and requiring dumb shit like invasive spyware “anti-cheating” rootkits, steam has kept the basic formula the same, and doesn’t restrict any major publisher from deploying something on their platform. Other developers will still delay making their games available on steam for one reason or another, but steam has been fairly neutral in what’s published.
I am aware of some exceptions, so I’m not going to say it’s entirely universal that anyone can publish anything to steam, but it’s fairly rare that steam is preventing a game from being available on the platform.
That core purpose of steam has always been good. All the other stuff is almost always also good, but the core purpose of having steam installed is the same, or better then, when steam was first released.
It’s a lot of art, cats, and big tiddy cartoons. I haven’t found anything too onerous in its UI, the community has a somewhat toxic level of positivity but that’s certainly better than the general toxicity of most of the web these days.
Aw gross tig buddy cartoons yikes.
Can you share those links so I know what sites to avoid?
the community has a somewhat toxic level of positivity
Could you elaborate?
Well if you post something political you’ll get a couple dozen replies telling you to “Leave that stuff at the other place”.
…that sounds amazing. Perhaps I should go investigate Bluesky, heh.
It’s pretty okay. Lots of engagement, also there’s something of a ‘block early and often’ culture that seems to have a way of really reducing the drama and nonsense
Eh, that’s the only way to use the internet at this point anyways. I’m a one-stupid-statement-and-blocked person already and it’s made my life a lot easier.
Don’t do angry replies, just roll my eyes and add them to a blocklist. Much better on the blood pressure.
I’d say mastodon is a better choice, mostly so that you’re not beholden to yet another profit-focused tech corporation. I’m sure Bluesky is fine right now, but once they have their userbase they will shift to monetization - and you may regret letting yourself become entrenched in the world they control. They’re not doing it for your benefit.
That said, I’ve come to understand that a lot of people kind of like having their content feed controlled by others. When they only see what they ask for, they get bored. So I’m expecting Bluesky to always be bigger than Mastodon.
It’s all cyclical anyway. No social media company will reign forever. We’ve already seen a number of them rise and fall. It’s kinda like how different civilizations gained and lost dominance throughout history.
Toys-R-Us fell…nothing is forever.
Aren’t they in Macy’s now? Wait, is Macy’s still a thing?
mastodon blew it by attacking people who had legitimate concerns about the service during the first migration.
Yep. And also, like I said in https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/
For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn’t have good experiences … so didn’t stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn’t addressed the reasons why.
Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities … So today, BTS ARMY and millions of Brazilians, and everybody else looking for a Twitter alternative are more likely to have a good experience on Bluesky than Mastodon.
Mastodon isn’t a person. So I don’t know who you are talking about when you say ‘mastodon was attacking people’. I certainly didn’t see anything like that. Perhaps you have an example link for context?
that and the whole “learn in your own” part of it.
I use bSky quite a bit more than my mastodon account, it made more sense to operate and had better documentation/help getting started, so I could use existing muscle memory on it and loo kthimgsu p if needed
The plan for bluesky to for people to start their own instances and decentralize.
I’ve been on Bluesky and Mastodon but I’m seeing people pretty happy with how less toxic it is on Bluesky.
Just wait until enough sane people have left Twitter; it’ll then implode and the fascist Nazi shitheads will migrate.
They don’t want an echo chamber- they want to be able to shout their slurs and right-wing bullshit at you while you can’t respond. It’s exactly why places like Voat and that shitty T_D knockoff crashed. Once the ratio of right-wingers to non-right-wingers on Twitter hits a critical amount, they’ll start looking for other places to infest.
At least Blue Sky supports community block lists. You can block every nazi with the click of a button
Just wait
Dude. It’s been 2 years. The people who were going to leave because of Elon already left.
I’m not saying the current twitter userbase 100% fully believe in his views, but I am saying that they’re not leaving the platform over it.
Either they don’t know about bluesky/mastodon, or they don’t care enough to leave.
Uhh, the very existence of this article indicates you’re wrong. Elon removed the block feature and even more users left; how can you say that “the people who were going to leave because of Elon have already left”? Certainly the group who disliked Elon on ideological grounds did, but there are plenty of other users who are leaving because they’re finally deciding the changes Elon is making removes any value they see in remaining on Twitter.
Yeah bro I wish they would keep to their own echochambers so they can become more and more radicalised and end up causing even more harm in the long run rather than at least having some if minimal exposure to normal fucking people /s
Dude. Isn’t truth worth billions?
I guess you’re mostly right, but the exception is that they need one safe space in which to congratulate each other and wank about NFTs and what not.
You mean Trump’s Twitter clone? Depends on how you define “worth.” The total stock valuation is worth that much, but that’s because stocks are largely bullshit priced based on how buyers feel. Someone keeps buying the stock, so the price reflects that.
If you’re talking about the company itself, it’s not worth dick. They have a six or seven digit revenue compared to eight or nine digit losses- there is absolutely no way the stock price represents the “true” value of the company. Given that Trump owns 60% of the shares it’s absolutely certain that someone is using it as a way to funnel money to Trump outside of campaign finance laws.
Also, they don’t have that many users.
You’re dead right that the company isn’t worth anything in a traditional sense.
However, the existence of truth social directly contradicts your claim that they don’t want an echo chamber.
A daily active user count of under 80,000 is utterly meaningless for a social media site.
The right-wing chuds aren’t flocking to Truth Social because they can’t “own the libs” there. That’s what I mean when I say they don’t want an echo chamber.
I mean at some point elon will buy bluesky, too
How? I’m mostly following mlp-related accounts on mastodon and don’t see any toxicity.
I haven’t seen any toxicity on the server I’m on (https://mastodon.gamedev.place ) either. But I’ve seen people I follow complain about it in the past, and I trust them. Especially considering they left for Bluesky.
I think Mastodon users are more technical and blunt, drawing from the same stereotypes that people have (often fairly) thrown at nerdier people. We just need to keep that in mind. And maybe a good ad/explainer, given how many people bounce off the concept of federation and different servers.
Toxicity drives engagement. Engagement means more ad views.
As long as profits are the motive it’s a flawed design.
Glad to see people leaving X. I look forward to it’s end.
I’m on Bluesky. I have seen a drama increase in followers in the last few days since Twitter let blocked people see content that were blocked from.
It’s a big blow to Twitter that people are finding someplace, anyplace , else to go.
I had to decide if I was going to Mastodon or Bluesky. I picked Bluesky because after reading Mastodon’s integration problems with itself I wanted nothing to do with it. It couldn’t scale unless each instance played nice and in the years since it went live they had refused to do that and showed no signs of even moving in that direction.
I have seen a drama increase in followers
If there’s one thing a social media site loves, its a drama increase.
It’s a big blow to Twitter that people are finding someplace, anyplace , else to go.
Honestly, more than anything, it feels like an indictment of Threads. That was supposed to be the big party spot for creatives, journalists, and D-list celebrities following the burn out of Twitter. But modern Threads just feels like the worst kind of Hype-House crossbred with LinkedIn.
BlueSky feels a lot more like a vintage '00s social media site, which is all people really wanted. Hope it survives its own popularity better than Twitter did. But for now, life is good.
I’m leaving the drama typo. You made it too good to take away
Mastodon is scaling fine though? I’ve been using it for years, and it’s great, and still growing. User base is a bit tech focused, could be more general, but I think it’ll get there eventually.
Are instances federated or rag-tag islands?
islands can be good (for unpopular/generally hated content)
I’m sorry that whoever down voted you didn’t see what you were doing.
Any instance that interacts with any other instance is federated. Which is the vast majority of instances with more than a handful of users.
Well I’d say most of them are federated together, or at least those with a good amount of users. In practice you don’t really get islands other than I guess troll instances that everyone has blocked.
And AFAIK as long as an instance isn’t blocked by yours (and vice versa to be useful), you can follow a person on that unfederated instance and it should just work and get federated.
What are the Mastadon Integration problems?
I’m pretty sure they’re referring to the concept of defederation and how that can splinter the platform.
Bluesky is ““federated”” in largely the same ways as Mastodon, but there’s basically one and only one instance anyone cares about. The federation capability is just lip service to the minority of dorks like us who care.
To the vast majority of Twitter refugees, federation as a concept is not a feature, it’s an irritation.
an irritation
I get it, hearing about federation is the worst part of this site . Y’all sound like coinbros “here’s the most inefficient storage method, lets call it something easy to remember and sell it as a feature!”
You could just stay on the biggest mastadon instance and not care about anything. Wouldn’t be too different than just using bluesky.
Preferring handcuffs because it’s more seemless sounds like a terrible mindset
Preferring handcuffs because it’s more seemless
They’re not handcuffs. You can always log off.
But the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.
the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.
The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.
Do we honestly believe there won’t be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on benefiting users?
…or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?
Here is some more food for thought, given the fact that large western social media corporations and the investors behind them have the equivalent power and cash of small nation states… why all of a sudden the interest now? If Bluesky is a genuine vision of the future why did all these prestigious, highly paid people with more power and R&D resources at their disposal than any of us could hope to ever have…show up AFTER the fediverse already did the R&D, created the vision and took the impossibly hard step of breaking ground and fighting up hill against the network effect and a generally dismissive tech press?
Everything you just said is also true of mastodon.
Yeah I didn’t know Mastadon monetizes
Mastodon doesn’t have a single aggregated community. It’s fractured, such that joining one instance doesn’t guarantee access to another user’s content easily.
Is the same not true of Lemmy?
Partly. Except the time different Mastodon instances were not federated much or at all. If you wanted to go follow someone on Mastodon you had to know the exact server they were on. In an environment like Reddit and Lemmy where you’re there for the communities instead of the people that isn’t an issue. But if you want to go follow some specific podcaster you need to know the instance because there’s no guarantee that whatever instance you happen upon is going to be joined up with the one there on.
Everyone was busy running their own servers and not trying to tie everything together. It was a thing that could be done but a thing not enough were doing.
That sounds worse than I thought it was. I just assumed Mastodon was like Lemmy, where every instance federates with every other instance basically by default and there’s only some high-profile defed exceptions.
A Fediverse where federations are opt-in instead of opt-out sounds like actual hell. Yeah, more control to instances, hooray, but far less seamless usability for people. The only people you will attract with that model are the ones who think having upwards of seven alts for being in seven different communities isn’t remotely strange or cumbersome. That, and/or self-hosting your own individual instances. Neither of these describe the behavior of the vast majority of Internet users who want to sign up on a platform that just works with one account that can see and interact with everything.
I just assumed Mastodon was like Lemmy, where every instance federates with every other instance basically by default and there’s only some high-profile defed exceptions.
That’s…Not how Lemmy works either. In fact, and someone may correct me if I’m mistaken here, your hell is sort of how it works as I understand it. Instances don’t have any built-in crawlers to seek out others running on ActivityPub with the same software, e.g. Lemmy or Mastodon or the like. That’s genuinely been one of the biggest stumbling blocks with the whole protocol, as discovery is largely a manual affair. The only crawlers we have are the people using the service and following remote people or communities or channels from other instances to let the one we’re on see them.
One of the basic reasons for this that I’ve read is that it’s related to handling scaling, as each instance trying to handle all of the data of all the people on each other instance right away would bog down the servers and probably crash them. It also arguably works out, to a degree, that there’s a good chance not everyone on each instance is of interest to each other anyway, so you may not want or need each server to know about every other server’s people/channels/communities/etc.
But I’m going to stop before I get too much further into the weeds of all this. The irony is that the simplest solution to discovery issues with all of this presently is to invite those you want to have a similar experience to you, or want to connect to with the fewest jumps, to the same instance as you to mitigate any of those issues. Does that tend to undermine many of the benefits of it all? In a lot of ways, yeah, but that’s where many ActivityPub platforms are at currently, at least the more popular ones as I understand them.
My true hell would be instances only federating explicitly through whitelist. If what the other reply I received about Mastodon is correct, and if Lemmy behaves similary, then they operate on an implicit auto-federation with every other instance. Actual transaction of data needs to be triggered by some user on that instance reaching out to the other instance, but there’s no need for the instances involved to whitelist one another first. They just do it. To stop the transfer, they have to explicitly defed, which effectively makes it an opt-out system.
The root comment I initially replied to made it sound, to me, like Mastodon instances choose not to federate with one another. Obviously they aren’t preemptively banning one another, so, I interpreted that to mean Mastodon instances must whitelist one another to connect. But apparently what they actually meant was, “users of Mastodon instances rarely explore outward”? The instances would auto-federate, but in practice, the “crawlers” (the users) aren’t leaving their bubbles often enough to create a critical mass of interconnectedness across the Fediverse?
The fact we have to have this discussion at all is more proof to my original point regardless. Federation is pure faffery to people who just want a platform that has everything in one place.
But apparently what they actually meant was, “users of Mastodon instances rarely explore outward”? The instances would auto-federate, but in practice, the “crawlers” (the users) aren’t leaving their bubbles often enough to create a critical mass of interconnectedness across the Fediverse?
It’s more along the lines of, as Mastodon’s been one of the more popular ActivityPub platforms for awhile longer, there’s a longer history of federation faffery, i.e. instance admins/people not getting along leading to defederations leading to a somewhat more fragmented network. Lemmy’s only grown in adoption more recently and hasn’t had as much time for that faffery to crop up as much, and has a different style and audience to it anyway, so it may be less prone to that, time will tell.
Regardless, your conclusion is basically on point for many folks. Federation stuff is no better to them than the erratic moderation/management of larger platforms that’s driving them elsewhere. Of course problem is, moderation/management’s not really something tech can solve (as Bsky’s already run into with its attempts at enabling third-party moderation).
It sounds like an asocial network - something for me finally, perhaps :)
Mastodon federation is not opt-in. As soon as anyone on one server is following one person on the other server, the servers are fully federated. From there, it’s opt-out, via blocking.
That’s nonsense. I’m on one of the main servers, and like 90% of my feed is from other servers, and it includes lots of small servers. And that’s been true for years.
It’s try the search function was bad prior to earlier this year, but it’s improved a bit. And if you are looking for someone specific, then presumably their account would be listed somewhere on their website?
Go to your favorite content creators and ask them to create a profile on Bluesky. If you don’t ask them, how are they supposed to know?
I’m still on the fence about that…I think it’d make more sense for many to drop social media and opt for their own site with RSS feeds. A lot of social media for some is little more than a noisier RSS reader. Sometimes even literally with those with auto-playing videos. 😬
Y’all are delulu/out of touch with normal people if you think they’re gonna set up an RSS feed
Nah, I get that normal people wouldn’t, but I can dream. It’s so much better than making Yet Another Account. Plus I know in set up we’re talkin’ people pulling the feed into a reader, but also for content creators making sites, loads of sitebuilding software already has RSS baked in, so it’s not even that big an ask from them.
If there’s another more convenient no-sign-up method of keeping up with sites and stuff online, I’d love to know, 'cause I know many aren’t about to use RSS.
But how would the bots reply? That’s what generates foot traffic, which is what brings ads, which is what is not enough to pay for the bills!
Perfect business model, I had a VC review it and got high marks
RSS is kinda a pain to set up though, not everyone wants to go through that.
It can be, yeah. However, similar may be said of responsible social media setup.
Once again, Lemmy vastly overestimates how much hassle people will put up with as far as technology is concerned.
As a counterexample to this comment, if any of my creators switched over to an RSS feed I probably would stop getting updates from them because that’s more hassle than when I can just go to one service and see everything in one place
What you describe is basically the flipside of what happened to RSS folks, so I know what you mean. It sucks to stop getting updates the way you’re used to, and more hassle making the transitions to whatever the different method is.
It’s basically the reason Twitter/X still has anyone there, except they have higher switching costs compared to an open following format.
Honestly I take the compromise approach where I can, which is social media that still generates RSS, like Bluesky/Mastodon/etc. and use that to avoid making additional accounts.
Yea I think that’s a good compromise, I want creators to go on Bsky so its all in one place… (and I can escape the Political and ad succumbed hell that is X), RSS would be an interesting route but like, it would need a feed for every creator wouldn’t it? unless the social media platform allows it built-in like BSky does
RSS would be an interesting route but like, it would need a feed for every creator wouldn’t it? unless the social media platform allows it built-in like BSky does
If I understand ya right yeah, with BSky/Mastodon you pull the individual feeds for each account if you go that route (or maybe someone has an .opml file of several already grouped by topic to import). To me it’s no worse than having to individually follow them on-platform, but I know I’m atypical in that respect
Once ya have’em it’s all in one feed in your reader so not too different than the following feed
They should know they have options at least. Then they can make the decision for themselves.
The problem with this at least in my circle of content creators is that they’re all millennials or older(no offense to millennials I’m one myself) but because of that, they either have a I’m not putting more effort into make an additional social media platform or they take their handle on blue sky but then actively participate in the mainstream Services more, neglecting BSky. I’ve only ever really seen artists use that platform so the other forms of content creation hasn’t followed
Is Bluesky federated?
Theoretically, yes. Practically, the way their model is set up, it costs a lot to host a federated server so no one is doing it.
Wait really? I thought cost were relatively low since a lot of people do it themselves
What you see on Bluesky is a lot of people using their own domains for their handles. They are not hosting their own instances though, it’s only their identities. Their connection to the AT protocol still goes through the central Bluesky server.
lot of people using their own domains for their handles. They are not hosting their own instances
This is something the AT Protocol does well. Your identity is portable and can be separate from the instance you use.
In theory, you can move to a different instance but keep your handle the same. There’s no way to do that with ActivityPub. If you move to a new Lemmy or Mastodon server, you have to change your username to one at the instance’s domain.
If we’re talking about self-hosting your own personal data storage (PDS), a few hundred people are doing that, here is a list. Apparently a Raspberry Pi is sufficient to host a PDS.
you can also follow bsky users on mastodon and mastodon users on bsky using bridgyfed.
The wolf ate our babies, let’s go see hyenas.
I love that a Twitter founder founded Bluesky and the logo went from the outline of a white bird on a blue background to the outline of a white butterfly on a similar shade of blue background.
jack didn’t found bluesky he was just on a board which provided some early funding; he had no role in the development.
and the butterfly was partially due to the community. https://bsky.social/about/blog/12-21-2023-butterfly
blueskys previous logo was just a real sky fun fact till they change it to butterfly
At the rate we’re going all that will be left on X is EM and his 200 sockpuppets.
bsky is currently the only social network with a woman of colour ceo, which is pretty awesome imo (i hate how people always try to incorrectly say jack dorsey created it when it erases jay’s work)
Great point. And Jay won the power struggle with Jack, which almost nobody gives her credit for.
