The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#21

Post by dingnuts » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

isn't it obvious to everyone that the X/Twitter exodus is just a forum split?

haven't all of us of a certain age participated in a forum that eventually devolved into drama, and then everyone picks sides, and someone makes a new forum, and half the group leaves?

That's all that's happening on X. Now we have a bunch of twitters: X, Bluesky, Truth, Fediverse.

They're all twitters and the X exodus is just a twitter split. X will go on, but smaller, and people will share posts between the twitters the way they always have shared posted between social media sites: with screenshots.

Nature is healing.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#22

Post by ulfw » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

marban wrote: post #10

Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.

[flagged]

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#23

Post by tuveson » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:07 PM UTC

marban wrote: post #10

Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.

I think the real problem on Twitter is the massive amount of spam that now exists. It's much worse than it was a couple of years ago. If all it consists of is bots and hucksters that pay to appear at the top of viral posts, it will cease to be a useful "pulse". That being said, this might just be the end of there being a single, central Twitter-like platform. There are already right-wing clones like Gab and Truth Social, it could be that more and more niche platforms pop up.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#24

Post by ldjb » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:08 PM UTC

McBainiel wrote: post #16

Has a clone of a social media site ever replaced an original? The closest I can think of is Tiktok being kinda similar to Vine but that feels like a stretch. I don't think Bluesky will succeed unless it offers something different to the basic Twitter experience. It's hard to picture enough people giving up Twitter (or using both) for it to reach the critical mass required to sustain it.

I feel like Facebook was often considered a MySpace clone in its early days, despite certain differences, and I certainly think it took its place.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#25

Post by kyriakos » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:13 PM UTC

tuveson wrote: post #23

marban wrote: post #10

Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.

I think the real problem on Twitter is the massive amount of spam that now exists. It's much worse than it was a couple of years ago. If all it consists of is bots and hucksters that pay to appear at the top of viral posts, it will cease to be a useful "pulse". That being said, this might just be the end of there being a single, central Twitter-like platform. There are already right-wing clones like Gab and Truth Soc…

90% of the suggested posts are clickbaity threads people post for engagement. Its become very hard to navigate to real content.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#26

Post by mcintyre1994 » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:14 PM UTC

I'm not familiar with the other similar sites, but Bluesky seems much more interesting as a product than Twitter/X ever did. I think the way they encourage users to build/share custom feeds, and especially how they can be independent of your follow graph, is really interesting. The problem with these sites has always been having a single algorithmic feed controlled by someone else IMO.

Some interesting feeds I've seen are only posts by mutuals, lots of curated feeds that just show a subset of posts by a small number of accounts (whether or not you follow them), a following feed that filters out reposts/replies, a custom open source Discover algorithm based on your likes.

This feels way more interesting to me than anything Twitter/X has ever tried to do, even if you really like their single algorithm and the way their following feed works.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#27

Post by blactuary » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

mvelbaum wrote: post #7

mountainriver wrote: post #4

Strange article, social media isn’t going anywhere, it’s just evolving. The decline of X is due to Elon, that’s all.

[flagged]

Before Elon bought Twitter, if someone called me the n word and I reported it, they took action. After Elon bought Twitter, they tell me no rules were broken. So this is absolute nonsense

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#28

Post by jlengrand » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #26

I'm not familiar with the other similar sites, but Bluesky seems much more interesting as a product than Twitter/X ever did. I think the way they encourage users to build/share custom feeds, and especially how they can be independent of your follow graph, is really interesting. The problem with these sites has always been having a single algorithmic feed controlled by someone else IMO. Some interesting feeds I've see…

And the starter packs who make it easy and quick to straight up build a follow base of curated content uniquely. That stuff only makes Twitter less relevant in an instant.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#29

Post by raesene9 » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

marban wrote: post #10

Unless Bluesky or Threads tap into the Zeitgeist, Twitter isn't going anywhere. As much as whatever political side would love to see it falter, those invested in its downfall might have to temper their expectations. Twitter is a mirror of the human fabric — messy, contradictory, brutal. For all its flaws, it's the only service that reflects society's pulse in real-time.

It used to, now it's got a load of ads and heavy prioritization of accounts that pay money to use it. It's also locked down on technologies like the API that used to make it interesting.

All social networking sites seem inevitable till they fail, remember digg?

Bluesky and threads are building interesting sets of communities, and with the number of active users they have now, it's likely that they'll stay there.

There are 15k+ starter packs on the directory now https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs and just a quick scroll through them shows the diversity of groups using the platform.

Bluesky appears (for now at least) more open to API driven interaction and doesn't default to an algorithmic view, avoiding some of the more annoying things on twitter.

Now as they grow there will be inevitable problems with scammers/spammers and the rest but all popular sites that allow user generated content have to deal with that eventually.

Re: The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix

#30

Post by hattmall » Sat, Nov 16, 2024, 6:19 PM UTC

McBainiel wrote: post #16

Has a clone of a social media site ever replaced an original? The closest I can think of is Tiktok being kinda similar to Vine but that feels like a stretch. I don't think Bluesky will succeed unless it offers something different to the basic Twitter experience. It's hard to picture enough people giving up Twitter (or using both) for it to reach the critical mass required to sustain it.

I can't really understand why people use Twitter at all, since it's inception. It's never felt like a compelling platform and everyone I know has an account, like myself, but made it years ago for some reason and never used it.