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Bluesky signups are now open to the public

bsky.social

111–120 of 284 posts

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#111
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very inspiring answer :( The consequences of taking VC money are going to come home to roost at some point.

We'll see! The history of funded companies popularizing open protocols is not without precedent. I'm inspired by Netscape, which was the VC-backed company that made the web happen.

A notable difference is that Netscape had a business model, namely, selling Navigator. Anyway, enjoy the ride.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#112
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very inspiring answer :( The consequences of taking VC money are going to come home to roost at some point.

We'll see! The history of funded companies popularizing open protocols is not without precedent. I'm inspired by Netscape, which was the VC-backed company that made the web happen.

Saying they "made the web happen" is just nonsense. They had one of several popular browsers, and one of several popular web servers. As much as I stayed up late to download new Netscape betas, had they never existed the web would still be just fine, and the customers of the ISP I ran at the time would have just used another browser.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#113
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it rejects my german phone number. So, double fail. What's this obsession with using phone numbers. It's 2024! Any scammer can buy a burner phone. Owning a phone proves nothing other than that you own a phone.

Did you possibly enter the prefix +49 as part of the number? It seems to expect a number without the country prefix, starting with a number like "174" or whatever your provider prefix is...

I tried all sorts of variations of my number. It just won't take it. I expect their validation is wonky/buggy. I used to work for Nokia and remember talking to people responsible for parsing phone numbers. This is not a trivial problem.

Anyway, it hard rejects +49176..., 0049176..., 0176..., 176...; it correctly normalizes each of those to +49176... and then rejects the number. My number is fine. Their validation isn't.

Anyway, for a new social network to repeat the security/privacy mistake of its predecessors (wrongly assuming phone operators are trustworthy and users never change their number) is just madness. Doesn't instill a lot of confidence that a lot of thought went into the whole thing.

IMHO, phone numbers as a thing should just go away completely. Weird legacy identifiers from the last century. Absolutely no redeeming features. Hard to remember, easy to spoof. Etc. Why build your new network on the crumbling remains of an old one and give a lot of control to the typical abusers of the phone system (spammers, scammers, oppressive regimes, etc.)?

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#115
I sort of wonder if the whole short-form social media era just sort of faded away. After Musk essentially destroyed Twitter, it feels like--although various people casually migrated elsewhere--overall, it feels like a lot of people decided that a Twitter-like thing just wasn't part of their daily lives any more. Sometimes there's a forcing function that takes people off their automatic pilot and it feels like Musk caused a lot of people to do so with Twitter.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandable! We hope to relax this but we felt it was necessary to maintain the quality of the network for now.

Doesn't this go against the comic in the post that claims that it's easy to block what you don't want to see? Also that it's an open network? Why not just let everyone in if the moderation tools are good? I definitely would never give my phone number to a social network.

Having good tools to increase the quality of your network doesn't mean you should willingly let the whole network decline in quality.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandable! We hope to relax this but we felt it was necessary to maintain the quality of the network for now.

Doesn't this go against the comic in the post that claims that it's easy to block what you don't want to see? Also that it's an open network? Why not just let everyone in if the moderation tools are good? I definitely would never give my phone number to a social network.

The SMS verification requirement is only for the Bluesky operated PDS host. Soon (this month) it will be possible for others to self-host their own PDS hosts that do not have this requirement.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#118
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very inspiring answer :( The consequences of taking VC money are going to come home to roost at some point.

We'll see! The history of funded companies popularizing open protocols is not without precedent. I'm inspired by Netscape, which was the VC-backed company that made the web happen.

Maybe I'm just being a hater, but the inspiration being a web browser that failed after being acquired by AOL at dot-com level stupid high prices, doesn't inspire confidence at all. Sure, it helped pave the way for Firefox, but Netscape itself never actually did anything.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#119
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this go against the comic in the post that claims that it's easy to block what you don't want to see? Also that it's an open network? Why not just let everyone in if the moderation tools are good? I definitely would never give my phone number to a social network.

Having good tools to increase the quality of your network doesn't mean you should willingly let the whole network decline in quality.

You assume that requiring a phone number increases quality instead of decreases it. I see it as a filter to keep thoughtful people off the platform.

Re: Bluesky signups are now open to the public

#120
Are there mobile apps for Blueky? When I type bluesky or bsky into f-droid, it comes up blank, and I'm not seeing a custom repository or even just an apk download mentioned on the website either. I thought it was like Mastodon except invite-only (till now), so was expecting a similar client ecosystem, but apparently it's more like Twitter was: open ecosystem closed software?

Or is it like Tildes whose goal is to have a mobile website that is just as good as a native app?

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