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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

#81

Post by dsr_ »

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.

Stages of enlightenment:

1. That didn't work as I expected.

2. I am confused!

3. Oh, that's how it works! I learned something.

Humans go through this every day, in domains technological and not.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#82

Post by bookofjoe »

sureglymop wrote: post #80
bookofjoe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

No financial incentive at all for me on Twitter.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#83

Post by Zak »

> “you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!”

While the author has a valid point about Bluesky having more momentum and some UX advantages over Mastodon, this is silly. Most people already know that choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@hotmail.com might be different people.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#84

Post by thrance »

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?

I think HN qualifies as a social media, a lot of it is user-generated. I do use some of them as I don't want to live as a total outcast.

If I could "draw the line", I'd probably start by banning all forms of for-profit social media.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#85

Post by 998244353 »

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.

My team uses Matrix and I must say I'm not satisfied. There are messages that I get a notification for every time I open the app, and "mark as read" buttons that do nothing, especially if you use threads. This is something that has supposedly been fixed many times, but it's one of these persistent issues that keep coming back.

Also, as far as I can tell, there is no real diversity in clients even though Matrix is in principle an open protocol. Everything is either Element or a fork of it, or at least is built on matrix-react-sdk, which makes them all effectively the same.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#86

Post by threatofrain »

swed420 wrote: post #79
dartos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Decentralization is political because even from a sniff test it is very very concerned about evading existing centers of power.

Common Lisp is not political. Technical people might say it is political, but non-technical people outside would just chuckle at the conversation — nerds fighting among themselves in an unseen corner with no power, thinking that there's "politics" there and perhaps everywhere too.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#87

Post by Zak »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #69
BodyCulture wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please give some more details about the pressure methods in mastodon you are writing about, this is very interesting and important. Is there any systematic study going on about the mechanism of censorship in the fediverse?

Eh, I don't have any links to hand, but I vividly remember when I used Mastodon an instance of an admin being tagged and pressured to remove an individual off their server or be blocked. was around a year ago

From what I've seen, some niche servers have very detailed and very strict rules intended to address the needs of certain marginalized groups. An example I've seen is requiring a content warning for any image where a person or animal is staring directly into the lens, appearing to make eye contact with the viewer.

Of course pressuring mainstream servers to adopt such a rule is not reasonable. Automatically applying a content warning to all media from servers that don't have the same rule would be a good solution. Bluesky's labelers provide a way to do something similar, but I don't think the Bluesky appview has a way to express something like "blur all media without the 'safe for my needs' label".

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#88

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

sureglymop wrote: post #78
ChocolateGod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insta…

Of course they have a right to free speech, but when I'm choosing a platform it's the user experience that matters to me and not the rights of the operators. Twitter lets me visit or follow any other account on the platform and see what they have to say, and the ability to do that across a wide range of interests and viewpoints is exactly why I use it. If Mastodon requires setting up a custom server to replicate that experience, it's not a good replacement for me.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#89

Post by rayiner »

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…

They should complete the circle and allow instances to invade and take over other instances/subjecate other instances’ users.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#90

Post by ChocolateGod »

sureglymop wrote: post #78
ChocolateGod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insta…

> I think that is federation working as intended

My email provider doesn't prevent me from sending an email from someone at Gmail because someone at Gmail happens to have opposite views to the admin.

Yet email is still federated.

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