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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

#221

Post by tqwhite »

emseetech wrote: post #197
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's a lot of appealing to prevailing HN sentiment in this post. So much so that there's little substance. What actual things are you worried about or unhappy regarding with Bluesky? It's not perfect, and if you have problems with its decentralization posture, Christine Lemmer-Webber has a fantastic post [1] detailing her problems with the protocol. Bluesky has the AT Protocol underneath it and has inf…

| What actual things are you worried about or unhappy That it is following the same funding model that resulted in the problems we've seen. Bluesky currently doesn't generate any significant revenue. At some point they will have to in order to satisfy investors. If they were concerned about preventing the problems previous social media sites experienced, they would have sought out a different funding model. | if you…

I’m hoping they turn into a Wikipedia sort of funding model. Avoid viewpoint discrimination and serve messages to everyone with lots and lots of composable moderation tools.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#222

Post by amatecha »

griomnib wrote: post #145
simonw wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"every user is attached to a server and the server operator holds all the power, while the user holds none" So run your own server.

I found it a lot easier to set up my BlueSky instance than Mastodon. Mastodon to me feels like it was built with the explicit goal to keep out anybody non-technical, and for technical people, only the type that wants to corner you at a party and discuss the deep philosophical and moral choices of your Linux desktop environment.

You didn't really set up a completely separate server that can exist without Bluesky's central servers (because that's not possible), so it's not a fair comparison.

No, Mastodon was not designed to keep out anybody non-technical. In any given social circle, there is almost undoubtedly at least ONE person who can fire up a server and administrate it. You only need one sysadmin for your whole community - the rest can be moderators, and members can chip in some coin here and there to keep things running. That's about the simplest and most sustainable model I can possibly picture. If you don't know of someone in your social circles who runs a community, that's fine: start out on a public/larger one in the meantime to get things started, and you can move over later! If this is still too hard for someone, that's fine, there are countless centralized services they can remain on, like Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, etc.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#223

Post by iteria »

everybodyknows wrote: post #195
whimsicalism wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me it is extremely political and boring i’ve also found that due to shareable ban lists, im often already banned by someone i want to follow (merely on the basis of who i follow, i don’t think i’ve ever posted on bkuesky)

So your "follow" list is required to be public? Seems like a design flaw.

It is definitely a perk. If I see someone whose posts are abhorrent and someone is following them, then I understand that they share values in some way and I don't want to see them either. Some people are block happy, but being able cut off chains of people is a perk. I'm also pretty sure OG Twitter and Mastodon let you see followers. If you could make them private, I never found any user that actually did that.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#224

Post by tqwhite »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #202
emseetech wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| What actual things are you worried about or unhappy That it is following the same funding model that resulted in the problems we've seen. Bluesky currently doesn't generate any significant revenue. At some point they will have to in order to satisfy investors. If they were concerned about preventing the problems previous social media sites experienced, they would have sought out a different funding model. | if you…

> My other comments expand on the biggest issue which is the advertiser-optimized engagement algorithm. A site which does not cater to advertising (using an alternative source of income such as a user-driven subscription model) can instead maintain a time-based feed. This is a much better user experience. It doesn't favor negative engagement, it's less addicting, and it doesn't create artificial virality. Thanks I pr…

There are increasing numbers of new ways to generate feeds that suit your needs. I use the list functions to segregate people I follow into categories. There are a couple of built-in feeds that help discover new people.

But, the best thing is exemplified by graze.social which gives you a huge amount of ways to filter the firehose feed into whatever you want. Leave out the rage bait? It’s a filter sequence away.

Me? I do not want to avoid the villain a day problem. I want to see and block them myself, to know what’s going on.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#225

Post by iteria »

ziml77 wrote: post #143
Gigachad wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, maybe for a fresh account today. I just checked and my discover feed is pretty much just art and photography.

Maybe Bluesky needs to ask a few questions the first time a new user looks at the discover feed to prime it for them. Personally I'd prefer if there was no default algorithmic feed but I know that just doesn't work. People will create an account, see nothing in their feed, and leave because the site seems dead or because they can't even fathom how to get started finding people to follow or custom feeds to add.

Discover is based off your follows and likes after a certain threshold. Before that it's based on everyone's likes and follows. For a new user it's not the best, but as you use the site it gets better.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#226

Post by [deleted] »

biggestlou wrote: post #150
simonw wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"every user is attached to a server and the server operator holds all the power, while the user holds none" So run your own server.

That sounds like a recipe for a social media platform that never has enough people on it to be even remotely interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#227

Post by tqwhite »

emseetech wrote: post #200
wmf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has Bluesky degraded?

Bluesky has not yet degraded. But the funding model it chose has proven to degrade the user experience of every other service.

Would agree except for the part where they have not said anything concrete about their funding model.

If you’re talking about venture money, it’s a public benefit LLC. The demands that can be made on them are limited by that.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#228

Post by amatecha »

griomnib wrote: post #147
vidarh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But then you need to research the severs, shop around, and a bunch of other shit people don’t have time for. A bad user experience is just that: bad.

Mastodon/ActivityPub is not Twitter. It's not millions of people in one stadium. It's more like dozens of rooms in a big mansion. (sorry, the analogy isn't perfect) ... You don't just walk into the room with a bunch of nazis because that place is probably going to suck to have a conversation in. Look at what the conversations and social expectations are before you jump in, and things will work out a lot better for everyone. That's not a bad user experience, that's just "socializing with fellow humans".

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#229

Post by MichaelZuo »

amatecha wrote: post #219
ghaff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky, Mastodon, and what's left of Twitter/X are all pretty much dead in my experience. There's just so much fragmentation or migration away generally that none of it is very interesting. I think a lot of people took the Musk Twitter takeover as an excuse to re-evaluate their whole relationship to that sort of platform which basically led to a death spiral.

Mastodon is absolutely not dead, and will outlast both Twitter and Bluesky as far as I can tell -- as someone who has been an early adopter in every single social media platform (or precursor thereof) since the mid-90's. Why? There isn't some top-down capitalistic motive to destroy the platform. It will continue to exist, because it is a protocol defined/evolved by the community with zero incentive for profitability…

I don’t see how it can be a Twitter replacement, at best a reddit/Discord/IRC replacement but even that seems very unlikely.

e.g. Are there even guarantees that a bad admin can’t mess with someone’s previous posts?

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#230

Post by tqwhite »

snowstormsun wrote: post #152

I predict Bluesky will add some form of targeted advertisements in the future once the user base has grown to a certain size. Isn't that obvious? I'd assume that's also why investors are willing to invest.

They are trying to avoid that. I hang around there pretty much. I expect premium services subscriptions will be the first try. If that works, and I think it could, that will be fine. The fact of it being a public benefit LLC makes the profitability requirement much less pressing.

Also, there will be revenue opportunities from being the canonical AT Proto first mover. It’s way too early to tell, or worry.

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