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Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

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Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm trying to make sense of someone being as irrationally skeptical of the reporting as you are who also somehow believes that a screenshot of all things proves anything and I just can't do it.

BlueSky is a for-profit "Public Benefit Corporation". Let's be honest, it's in their interest to look as popular as possible to attract investors, partnerships, and users. Inflated numbers, if they existed, would be nearly impossible to detect from the outside. So why should I blindly accept these figures just because they’re reported? A screenshot doesn’t magically prove transparency, either. Companies can cherry-pick data or only show specific slices that make them look good. Real transparency would mean regular and verified reports accessible to the public, not just one-off announcements about user growth that we can’t independently verify.

When I said, "Publish the screenshot. Not that hard," I wasn't implying a screenshot would be the ultimate proof, but more that if they claim these numbers are legit, they should be willing to share more than just a headline. If they're not, it's fair to question why.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#63

Unlike previous attempts for groups of people trying to leave Twitter/X post-Elon acquisition for a competitor social network but failed due to the difficulty of getting all their friends to also switch, this time it might actually stick. Even before the election results on Tuesday, the vibes on X have been steadily been getting worse from my perspective, and the fact that Musk will get more power and influence from…

Ehhh, at this point people have been predicting the downfall of X/Twitter for so long such predictions feel a bit meaningless. Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.

Fidelity who invested in X have said it's worth 20% since Musk took over.

So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#64

It's beyond words how much Elon Musk has wrecked Twitter. But, I am not ready join another echo chamber that mirrors the same flaws from the other side of the spectrum. My initial impression of BlueSky is just that. Twitter's greatest flaw—no, I won’t call it "X"—is its obsession with engagement to promote tweets. This creates the worst feed you can think of: - People ask the dumbest questions, just to bait responses…

I do not understand how people have this problem. Follow interesting people and look at the following tab. Unfollow or mute uninteresting or annoying people.

I find it great because there is a ton of interesting people. It is not a website for discussions, it is for one off messages.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#65
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also no porn, since Twitter is the only mainstream platform that allows porn, a real competitor would have to allow porn as well.

There's lots of porn on Bluesky but it tends to be, uh, niche.

I'm talking about Thread, Bluesky does indeed allows porn, that's why many artists are moving from Twitter to Bluesky.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#67
post #18
post #2

I can attest that BlueSky is really nice right now. Feels less combative than Twitter. I started to use it 25 days ago and got 400 or so follows pretty quickly. I am here: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social I used this tool to find accounts that match on both platforms: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-follower-bridge...

Following you, and hope to finally spend more time on the butterfly app instead of the bird app since it seems enough people are moving over there. I managed to primarily use Mastadon for a few months at one point but got sucked back into TWT.

Whenever people mention 'bird app', I think it's is ebird. Now, 'butterfly app' makes me think of iNaturalist. :-)

http://ebird.org/

https://www.inaturalist.org/

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threads has become worse over time due to a series of anti-user policy decisions (no news/politics) and a very weird Discover algorithm that strongly incentivizes clickbait (and said feed is the default on the app and cannot be changed)

a) Given what happened with X during the election, Meta unquestionably made the right call with Threads. If you want news/politics then simply follow your desired journalists. But forcing it on people who don't want it is not making the world better. It's just allowing bad actors a clear vector on how to make it worse. b) You can switch to the chronological feed which is much better. But as you say you can't make it…

I'm not sure what you're alluding to regarding what happened on X during the election. If anything 2024 was smoother (very surprisingly) than what happened in 2020 even when Twitter had a Trust and Safety team, mostly because the election was not contested this time.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh, at this point people have been predicting the downfall of X/Twitter for so long such predictions feel a bit meaningless. Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.

Fidelity who invested in X have said it's worth 20% since Musk took over. So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.

With Trump winning the election, X will either be merged into Truth Social or nationalized.

Re: Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week

#70
My hypothesis is still that the problem isn't Twitter per se, but that Twitter-like failure modes are built in to that structure. A communications platform that has certain qualities will tend to become Twitter-like: Many-to-many, short messages, reposting, etc. These are mechanics that will just create certain kinds of behaviors. So, that would predict Bluesky having many of the same problems as Twitter sooner or later.
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