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Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

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Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#91

Post by tootie »

pixl97 wrote: post #80
tootie wrote: post #60

This is not a new Twitter. This is a new phpBB or something. Absent centralization you don't get the "town square" factor. In marketing parlance, you don't get "reach". And you avoid controversial moderation tactics by making it not your problem. Dorsey just cut bait and declared moderation and profitability to be impossible while watching Google pull off both. Even Zuckerberg is looking like a genius next to this gu…

>Dorsey just cut bait and declared moderation and profitability to be impossible while watching Google pull off both. I guess you've been ignoring watching Google squirm for years about moderation, they left China because of this. They've been fined for years in the EU for violating laws around this and privacy and this is only expected to get worse and more expensive for them. Moreso Google has deleted plenty of ind…

I'm specifically thinking of YouTube. They run a massively profitable ad business, pay creators, sell a premium membership program with a clear value prop, and successfully moderate video content faster than Twitter can moderate text.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#93

Post by pixl97 »

tootie wrote: post #91
pixl97 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dorsey just cut bait and declared moderation and profitability to be impossible while watching Google pull off both. I guess you've been ignoring watching Google squirm for years about moderation, they left China because of this. They've been fined for years in the EU for violating laws around this and privacy and this is only expected to get worse and more expensive for them. Moreso Google has deleted plenty of ind…

I'm specifically thinking of YouTube. They run a massively profitable ad business, pay creators, sell a premium membership program with a clear value prop, and successfully moderate video content faster than Twitter can moderate text.

>and successfully moderate video content faster than Twitter can moderate text.

There was the whole creepy men in diapers videos ending up on kids YT for months on end (Elsagate?), and mass demonetization issues if the topic is even close to controversial (of course they still show ads to you, the creator doesn't make income). Along with bans across all types of topics that are leaving more and more people confused. When you add in recent pushes for YT shorts because sites like Tik-Tok are pulling lots of viewers away, I still don't think the picture is near as rosy as you make it.

The one thing that YT has is a near monopoly on video serving and a 'special' relationship with the movie and music industry that prevents them from being sued off the face of the planet.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#94

Post by muglug »

sempron64 wrote: post #72
muglug wrote: post #63

You can have decentralisation or you can have sub-second responses to whole-network search queries, but you cannot have both. Twitter has two killer features: the people who use it, and search functionality that allows you to get near-instant results. Mastodon (and I assume Bluesky) cannot compete on either.

You absolutely can have sub-second responses to search queries for publically accessible decentralized content, if it is indexed by a regular search engine. That is what the web is. Privately accessible content tends to be much smaller so local caching works. And if communication is not meant to be instant, email proves that a decentralized system works. What gets a little more difficult is content that is widely ava…

Google is reasonably centralised, though.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#95

Post by lob_it »

bobthepanda wrote: post #23
labster wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam is 100% legal in all jurisdictions, so your legal free speech plan sounds like a total hellscape.

Probably not remotely practical, but I wonder what an online equivalent to the "do not call" list would look like.

Domestic network protocols make SPAM, sim jacking (sim swapping, sim hacking), malware and ransomeware limited to TCP/IP (aka the Internet).

Mobile phones utilize IP networks (VoLTE or voice over data networks), so dialtone 2.0 becomes an easy option with domestic network protocols as well.

ESIM is about to change dynamics as well, so any use of a phone number/SMS/2FA for identity verification is rendered null with the current system in place.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2019/10/sim-swap-sc...

Domestic networking protocols and dialtone 2.0 easily address most ransomware, malware, SPAM, etc much easier than trying to police 3rd world countries.

That severe limitation of regulating 3rd world countries is also the same argument with climate change. The can continue to regulate their own soverign borders.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#96

Post by dqpb »

SilverBirch wrote: post #3

I think there are two interesting sides to this here: First is that essentially a key part of this strategy is ideological, not pragmatic. Centralization came out of pragmatism, not ideology. It seems hard for me to believe that deliberately choosing the less efficient solution is a good idea for a start up. The second is that we seem to be seeing a lot of VC brain here. By that I mean, I can scream at a VC "OMG THER…

As someone who is frequently rated limited on HN and occasionally scolded by HNs beloved religion-apologist moderator, I find decentralization to be not only pragmatic but truly essential for the next generation of social platforms.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#97

Post by tootie »

pixl97 wrote: post #93
tootie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm specifically thinking of YouTube. They run a massively profitable ad business, pay creators, sell a premium membership program with a clear value prop, and successfully moderate video content faster than Twitter can moderate text.

>and successfully moderate video content faster than Twitter can moderate text. There was the whole creepy men in diapers videos ending up on kids YT for months on end (Elsagate?), and mass demonetization issues if the topic is even close to controversial (of course they still show ads to you, the creator doesn't make income). Along with bans across all types of topics that are leaving more and more people confused.…

They've had loads of problems and they've fixed almost all of them. And they have strangleholds on business because they made themselves into such an invaluable and reliable platform. They've done the opposite of what Musk is doing to alienate advertisers. They obviously leveraged their position in search, but they did a lot of things right to get to where they are.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#98

Post by dane-pgp »

pfraze wrote: post #90
dorkwood wrote: post #21

> closer inspection reveals that the underlying technology will not be purely blockchain-based. “I’m confident in our decision not to put social media content on a blockchain,” tweeted Bluesky CEO Jay Graber. “It’s blockchain independent and optional." What does it mean to be blockchain optional?

We use DIDs for identity but presently no blockchain DID methods. Some people ask us for that, eg did:ethr or did:ion. Unsure it’ll happen (I’m skeptical) but that’s what Jay was talking about.

> We use DIDs for identity but presently no blockchain DID methods.

I notice that the documentation[0] says:

"We introduced DID Placeholder because we weren't totally satisfied with any of the existing DID methods. ... We cheekily titled the method "Placeholder", because we don't want it to stick around. We're actively hoping to replace it with something less centralized. We expect a method to emerge that fits the bill within the next few years, likely a permissioned DID consortium.

which seems to be an admission that the hard part of distributed social networking isn't actually solved yet, and the project relies on "actively hoping" that a solution will eventually "emerge". I'm also not sure what a "permissioned DID consortium" even is, let alone how it would be useful here.

Anyway, it seems a bit premature to abandon ActivityPub and introduce yet another incompatible social networking silo, based on the hope that the new project's magic placeholder beans eventually grow into a sturdy beanstalk. Perhaps "Beanstalk Social" would therefore be a better name for Jack's project (and he could even keep the same acronym).

[0] https://atproto.com/specs/did-plc

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#99

Post by yrgulation »

pfraze wrote: post #87
yrgulation wrote: post #31

I feel like he should have taken a long holiday. Not being rude or anything, but a new social network needs thorough thinking. For instance everywhere i read about the topic on casual forums, someone mentions myspace. Maybe it is time that such a network is built - fun customisations and neutral content.

Something that isn’t clear to folks is that Jack is on the board and advises us, but Bluesky’s founder and team are pulled from the dweb community.

Respectfully, the issue i see with bluesky and at is that it’s solving a problem no casual user really cares about solving. And jack hasnt been particularly great at solving the issue social media suffers from these days: toxicity. Facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit are all ridden by toxicity. Give us a place where nana and that weird cousin can socialise without risking being radicalised one political way or another, cant be misinformed and cant be scammed. On twitter i follow strictly science, book writer, game dev, and tech topics yet politics and identity issues are always creeping in. Angry mobs of glorified nobodies and their followers toxify.every.single topic. So instead of solving protocols please solve the quality of content and emotion. We need to fix the habits social media helped create instead of creating new ghettos.

Capture the beauty of life not the garbage of it. Look at human psychology and see what else other than anger can increase engagement and what algorithms can create a better culture. There is more than that emotion that can drive growth. I refuse to believe we are all angry shits, we can do better.

Re: Jack Dorsey Unveils Bluesky Social, the Decentralized Twitter

#100

Post by nullc »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #36
nullc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleh, I find your position is boring because it's so easily shown to be unworkable. Imagine there have a platform run as you suggest and I don't like what you're saying on it: I flood you and anyone that supports you with not-quite-illegal abuse, misinformation, non-sense, spam, false flag support from people with deplorable views. Copy-cats of you that take your positions but weakly argued or with a touch of added g…

There are quite a few websites with little or no moderation working just fine, like 4chan. But I honestly don't understand this whole argument. Twitter is a social network, you just need to only receive messages from your network or "friends of a friend". You can't have both a global network and get offended given the multitude of opinions and laws in the world. The problem seems to be less that people are offended b…

> There are quite a few websites with little or no moderation working just fine, like 4chan.

4chan is actually heavily moderated. It may just not be legible to you because they're not removing the stuff you're expecting but different stuff instead.

There are factors like topicality, being small sized, or being highly ephemeral which make moderation easier or lower amounts more viable-- but twitter is pretty weak in those respects, sadly-- I think that's how it manages to both have a reputation for being toxic and overly moderated.

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