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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

#71

Post by austin-cheney »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #29
austin-cheney wrote: post #17

Don’t build castles in other peoples kingdoms That is why I devote my energy to enriching my home file server with custom software that I can access anywhere via domain name mapped to a IPv6 address. It is my kingdom and its not going away. I can demo on there full stack applications that would be challenging to demo otherwise. If I had a blog on there I could say what I want. I could host a personal email address on…

I'm not trying to be rude but are you serious or being sarcastic? Because on here it could go either way. There are definitely people who would build everything themselves just because they can. And there are people who would mock someone for doing so. If you're being serious, how much time does it take and how much custom software do you actually have?

I wrote a Node application that serves as a real time dashboard of my docker containers, web servers, port availability, provides a command terminal in the browser, and a system logger. I should also write a symlink manager and a process manager for it. The web servers are executed from this application and allow any kind of traffic redirection via streamed pipes. Then in the docker containers I can run things like pihole, jellyfin, and various other things that I can choose to expose outside the lan via traffic redirection rules on the web servers. Running multiple web servers on the same box allows access via port numbers and different management rules per server.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#72

Post by 4bpp »

daghamm wrote: post #6
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.

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-...

Before the other side took hold of a major platform and started doing it to their ends, "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach", "you don't have the right to a megaphone" etc. were maxims that were regularly fielded by pundits in defense of shadowbanning and any thumbprints being discovered on the algorithmic scale (though they were never so confident in it as to make the manipulation explicit upfront before it was revealed).

The "my free speech is being taken away; they are just being moderated for the common good" conjugation is something that is in fact shared between both camps. The only stable solution going forward may in fact be the pillarisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation) that we are already seeing emerge, which will leave both sides in a state of perpetual discontent about having no means to force their message upon unwilling recipients on the other but at least let the like-minded interact with each other consensually.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#73

Post by saagarjha »

Tarsul wrote: post #15
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 stil don't understand why none of these sites counts downvotes for their algorithm. Look at HN which does; the best comments are at the top which means that the user sees the more interesting posts first. And troll posts would never rise to the top. There's a lot of tinkering that could provide which is the best up/downvotes-algorithm but imo it simply does not work without downvoting. E.g. Tiktok allows a lot of o…

Troll posts definitely rise to the top on Hacker News. That's why there are multiple buttons to bring them down.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#74

Post by vidarh »

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.

I agree with the sentiment, but I'd say specifically the Fediverse is the only real place for a truly decentralised option.

It doesn't need to be Mastodon. You don't need to be on Mastodon to interact with the Fediverse or be part of it, and that is the key strength. Mastodon can be corrupted and the Fediverse is still there.

That could include Bluesky over time - you can follow my Mastodon from Bluesky via a bridge [1] - any desirable parts of their protocol, will be copied or emulated or bolted on the side for other Fediverse projects.

[1] https://brid.gy/

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#75

Post by vidarh »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #48
brightball wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think BlueSky is political, Mastodon is worse. Mastodon ends up creating significant echo chambers where admins ban communication with other instances for having people with different opinions to them (rather than just delisting in the public feed) and on can ban you and stop you moving your data to another instance. On Mastodon, admins can also be pressured into banning users by other admins under fear of hav…

Mastodon is worse if you pick servers that insist on being activist, and bother to care about the drama, sure. You don't need to do either.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#76

Post by GlacierFox »

capl wrote: post #61

Biggest issue is the lack of free speech. It’s a platform with an agenda, which is a huge red flag.

That's my biggest issue with it. I didn't even have twitter to begin with, but after trying out Bluesky I've barely had the patience to use it. Most people on there seem to be ultra-left wing virtue signalling phychopaths. It's obnoxiously progressive with no space for nuanced thought.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#77

Post by stavros »

igravious wrote: post #57
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People being confused by a concept is the definition of it being hard.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#78

Post by sureglymop »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #48
brightball wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think BlueSky is political, Mastodon is worse. Mastodon ends up creating significant echo chambers where admins ban communication with other instances for having people with different opinions to them (rather than just delisting in the public feed) and on can ban you and stop you moving your data to another instance. On Mastodon, admins can also be pressured into banning users by other admins under fear of hav…

I think that is federation working as intended. These instance admins are exercising their right to free speech by not federating with instances that contain content they disagree with or disallow on their instance.

I think it's not at all comparable to a corporate entity like X being in full control and able to censor any content.

You may create your own instance and federate with the instances you want. If an instance chooses not to federate with yours you get to decide what's more important to you, your principles or their content.

The solution is to create your own instance. I understand your frustrations but I have a hard time being empathetic to these issues when you are using someone elses instance, probably administered by volunteers in their spare time.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#79

Post by swed420 »

dartos wrote: post #62
brightball wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Political” and “decentralized” Are not mutually exclusive. In fact, any platform that uses decentralization as a selling point is inherently political, as the only ones that care about decentralization are the ones who care about politics. Everyone else is just trying to see what the famous person said last week or what their friend did on vacation. Corpo social media does solve for that.

> “Political” and “decentralized” Are not mutually exclusive.

> any platform that uses decentralization as a selling point is inherently political

This hasn't said anything of value, since everything is political.

Limiting your interaction with the world to sanitized corporate/Hollywood social media is political. Using no social media at all is political. And so on.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#80

Post by sureglymop »

bookofjoe wrote: post #51
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think that a big part of that could be the financial incentive to be "popular" on Twitter?

I mean, on hacker news it doesn't seem like a person gains any long term advantage from having their posts engaged with and upvoted. That is to say, the focus is on the content and not on the profiles/usernames.

There is no explicit advertising and most content is posted to create interesting discussion about it.

For me, the idea of twitter style micro blogging itself is a turn off. I always thought the arbitrary character limit was inherently a bad idea and "threads" are a terrible solution. Threads force one to split up a message and allow pieces of it to be taken out of context, retweeted and even quoted. Threads are a great propaganda tool because with every follow up "part", engagement decreases. People see the first part of a thread and only look at that, social behavior that can be abused when posting. Even it's main feature set is antithetical to accurately publishing information. It gets much worse when official institutions use it as their official communications channel and a login gate is in place.

I actually don't even think this is malicious but moreso bad design and failure to anticipate what rhe platform could turn into when it was first conceived.

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