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Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

chrisholdgraf.com

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Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#51

Post by bookofjoe »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #40
thrance wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use none of these, and generally agree that the world would be a better place if we could magically get rid of all social media. But Twitter is filled with much, much more hate and disinformation than its alternatives. I'd say it is definitely worse than the others.

Serious question: would you include HN under the umbrella of 'social media'? If not, why not, where is the line?

This is the best comment on this thread: I hope others answer your question.

IMHO HN is social media, in fact the ONLY social media where I read the posts and comments, oftimes more informative and interesting than the posts.

I post to X many times daily but that's all I do there, using it as a sort of commonplace book/journal.

I never bother looking at my feed.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#52

Post by soneca »

crimsoneer wrote: post #14
soneca wrote: post #11

I understand a blog on your own domain is your land in regard to microblogging platforms. But what would be my land in regard to community software, like Telegram or Discord? Is there any software like this that I can host on my domain?

Matrix/Discourse? But like all self hosted solution, it's harder to use than a managed product. I think they're both excellent though, and pretty common in some circles.

Actually, it doesn’t have to be self-hosted for me.

A managed product, hosted by a company, that I can point to my domain would work (just like some blog or website makers solutions).

Discourse has managed option though, so thanks for pointing it out.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#53

Post by igravious »

emseetech wrote: post #7

When Bluesky announced they were taking on large amounts of capital to handle the growth that's when I knew their days were numbered. Capital requires returns, and a lot of the degradation of the user experience in the past few years is due to catering to investors and advertisers (who are the actual customers). Decentralization as is promised is one way to mitigate this, but there's no economic incentive to go throu…

I dream of a “classic web” as well.

Principles:

(a) non minification and no binary code – this is so that the platform is user and dev centred and not corpo and advertiser centred

(b) static only mode as default, as in a site will be considered broken if it needs dynamic scripts to work, or at least it won't be considered a "classic" site – this is for (1) accessability and (2) command line (non-GUI) browser access and (3) easier automation – push as much common dynamic stuff into CSS as possible

(c) cookies are in plain text and by default can only store essential information, cookies must be versioned and have a corresponding description file on the site's server – no information can be stored on the user's computer that is opaque to the user

(d) instant messaging is to be a standard of the “classic” web – it must be federated and decentralised, just like the web is – it is not a separate information space, it is part of the same information space as the “classic” web

that's off the top of my head – i view the web and instant messaging (or microblogging or whatever you want to call it) as fundamentally broken and user hostile

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#54

Post by soneca »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #25
crimsoneer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix/Discourse? But like all self hosted solution, it's harder to use than a managed product. I think they're both excellent though, and pretty common in some circles.

But will anyone come? Plenty of the people I follow, Jeff Geerling for example (hi!) have their own sites/kingdoms but I don't make the rounds of their personal sites every morning.

Someone will come, and, for me at least, it is ok if it’s fewer people than what would come on mass reach platform

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#55

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

fastball wrote: post #9
daghamm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but hopefully it is more free speech than om twitter where Elon wants to decide what you can and can't see. It is well known that he is obsessed that things that align with his own views get more visibility while things he doesn't like is suppressed https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/report-musk-had-...

And that doesn't apply to the powers that be at other social networks (or management at Twitter pre-Elon)?

Pre-Elon moderation was (somewhat) sensible. Every online space needs a janitorial crew to keep it from turning into a wasteland (look at 4chan /b/, and even b isn't completely unmoderated). But it didn't take actions at the emotional whims of a megalomaniac ruler.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#56

Post by igravious »

brightball wrote: post #34
emseetech wrote: post #7

When Bluesky announced they were taking on large amounts of capital to handle the growth that's when I knew their days were numbered. Capital requires returns, and a lot of the degradation of the user experience in the past few years is due to catering to investors and advertisers (who are the actual customers). Decentralization as is promised is one way to mitigate this, but there's no economic incentive to go throu…

IMO Mastodon is the only real place for a truly decentralized option. BlueSky became immediately political in its narrative and many people just view it in the same light as Truth Social now. It has a future, but the branding in very tainted.

The whole https://chrisholdgraf.com/blog/2024/bluesky#why-not-use-mast... section is very unconvincing

??? i'm not using it because no one else is using it

> If social media is about having interesting, dynamic interactions with people, then you need to go to the place that maximizes the chance of this happening

if that was the case people would stay with Twitter/X

> For example, one of its core features - federated servers and identity - is actually a pretty confusing UX pattern for the vast majority of people that don’t care about that kind of thing (“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!”).

how on earth is this confusing to anyone? it's a different model

> Moreover, while having federated servers means that communities have more control over their norms and rules, it also means communities have to do a lot more work to understand the idiosyncratic policies of each server. These are features if you think of a social networks as a tightly-interconnected and self-contained community, but the appeal of these kinds of platforms is having global reach to people that you may otherwise never have met.

people forget in real life that we aren't all in the same social network and there are different protocols for different meat-space social networks and we internalise and navigate them all the time – in fact there are genres of literature out there (comedy of manners) that exploit social misunderstandings

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#57

Post by igravious »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #32
dsr_ wrote: post #16

>“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@ibm.com are different email-people, too. This is not a hard concept.

Yet, people are confused by it. I think this is at least partly because there's even less to differentiate the different mastodon domains than there was to differentiate gmail and yahoo. And, of course, there are a lot of people growing up now who don't really use email, so the analogy can't be taken for granted.

they may be confused by it yet it is not a hard concept

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#58

Post by maelito »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #45
maelito wrote: post #38

This is true but still, Bluesky enables things that X just cannot. I've spend hours building a website (1) that counts which members of the French parliament still actively tweet on X, and which actively use Bluesky. The "analyse.ts" script for X did have to go through scraping, in a real browser connected to a real account. It got blocked every 30 or so profile views... The Bluesky script was a delight, using the op…

> a significant difference from what X ever permitted I'm glad you specified "X" there; Twitter, of course, used to have a very good API. The bar has undoubtedly lowered.

My memory fails, despite the fact that in 2012 I used the Twitter API, but I don't think it was this easy and open for Twitter before X, was it ?

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#59

Post by maelito »

glimshe wrote: post #46
maelito wrote: post #38

This is true but still, Bluesky enables things that X just cannot. I've spend hours building a website (1) that counts which members of the French parliament still actively tweet on X, and which actively use Bluesky. The "analyse.ts" script for X did have to go through scraping, in a real browser connected to a real account. It got blocked every 30 or so profile views... The Bluesky script was a delight, using the op…

"Openness",as far as for-profit businesses are concerned, is a marketing strategy. Once enough users are locked in, there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.

> there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.

Well that's of course OK with me : Bluesky should make their users pay. 10 % of users paying 1€/month, 1 % paying 10 €/month, for instance. That's ok, we're paying a service.

But the API access and federation should remain free.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#60

Post by chickenfeed »

thrance wrote: post #21
darthrupert wrote: post #2

My experience is that fundamentally there's nothing better with Bluesky or Mastodon when compared to Twitter. They're all toxic doom scrolling applications and if one does use them, it will be a good idea to control your usage as if it was cocaine.

I use none of these, and generally agree that the world would be a better place if we could magically get rid of all social media. But Twitter is filled with much, much more hate and disinformation than its alternatives. I'd say it is definitely worse than the others.

If we could cut people's tongues out the world would be a better place.

I don't know, I think communication can provide a fertile ground for good exchanges as well as bad. It's just somewhat stifled in the current forms.

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