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Bluesky now has 30 million users

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Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#151

Post by half-kh-hacker »

Krssst wrote: post #18
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it didn't involve a really confusing question as a barrier to entry.

Bluesky asks about which server to use on registration like mastodon.social does. For me the difference seems to be better marketing for Bluesky which makes people want to deal with the change and somewhat enjoy it rather than see every obstacle as a pain. Bluesky does have some advantages like starter packs (and network effect now that it has so many accounts).

one cool difference between Bluesky and Mastodon (et al) is that server choice on registration is not an immutable permanent decision and you can choose to seamlessly migrate at a later time by updating your DID document

so the slick registration flow nets you less lock-in compared to if e.g. the mainstream Mastodon app were funnelling users onto one megainstance, since you can still get away afterwards without needing people to re-follow you

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#152

Post by half-kh-hacker »

agumonkey wrote: post #23
nspattak wrote: post #13

half the comments so far talk about bluesky being similar to x ie private companies. However AFAIK the use of the "AT protocol" seems to me to be a major difference https://bsky.social/about/faq . I am really curious to know how I am wrong in that. As a long time X user and now on bluesky i can tell that there is a huge difference in the content which makes it clear that the platform was pushing accounts with specifi…

shallow knowledge on my side, but it seems that the AT proto requires some fancy relay node that, as of now, are only hosted by big corps, so no one has a a fully independent bsky instance

you can run a resequencing relay good enough to feed an atproto appview pretty cheaply - it just needs to subscribe to a few thousand websocket endpoints to get a live tail of the whole network (incoming traffic is well under 50Mbps at peak in my experience)

running an archival mirroring relay is storage-intensive (on the order of tens of TB iirc?) but only serves as an optimization (you can backfill full atproto repositories straight from the relay instead of needing to reach out to the relevant data server)

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#153

Post by archagon »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #137

And with that, I think the door on Mastodon gaining widespread adoption is closed forever. We had a very brief window when the Twitter Exodus was happening and non-techies were giving Mastodon a try. But it wasn't good enough, as far as giving the Twitter refugees what they wanted to see, and so they simply moved on to the nearest Twitter-With-The-Numbers-Filed-Off platform and stayed there instead. There's probably…

Most tech discussion I follow is still on Mastodon. And when Bluesky inevitably goes the way of Twitter due to VC toxicity, Mastodon will still be standing.

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#154

Post by jovial_cavalier »

pfraze wrote: post #142
jovial_cavalier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot run a bluesky instance on your own. The AT protocol isn't really a protocol in the same way that matrix or mastodon is. It's just an API, you know like all platforms used to have?

None of that is true

Please point me to instructions on how to make my own bluesky instance that federates with the existing bluesky, and which does not rely on bluesky's authentication.

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#155

Post by mozzius »

Krssst wrote: post #139
apichat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bluesky asks about which server to use on registration" No he doesn't ask, you're wrong. And there is no single one alternative server where we can register and interact with people on bsky.app

You're right, when I tried again the field was hidden behind a link. Last time I checked (sometime last month) it was a field that defaulted to bsky.social (maybe within the account name?). Or I could be misremembering. In any case, my previous comment is wrong indeed.

Yeah - technically the same button, but with a slightly more subtle treatment. People were getting confused by it and bouncing. IMO, since it's only really useful if you already know what you're doing and already have a PDS ready to go, there's no harm making the first-time experience smoother.

This is all totally going to change when OAuth rolls out, so hopefully we can find a better compromise then.

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#156

Post by obliviousgyy »

bpoyner wrote: post #73

You mean the social network that keeps showing my wife dick pics even though she turned off adult content? That social network? Pass.

That’s strange. AFAIK my wife has never had this experience with her feed. But then again she hasn’t been using it too much lately as she has been too busy going to karate competitions with her instructor, Jacques.

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#157

Post by mariusor »

LelouBil wrote: post #89
homebrewer wrote: post #3

You would think people would learn from their mistakes and not move onto another centralized platform backed by VC money, but here we are.

What put me off from mastodon is the fact that you can't migrate your account easily. Yes, Bluesky is more centralized, but I feel like it is decentralized in the ways that matter for a Twitter/X Alternative use case : - Self hosting of data, easy migration - Automatic verification via DNS - Custom feeds, Custom moderation, but you can still use the official ones

Depending on when you tried things might be much better now. Moving accounts can be done in a couple of simple clicks. You might have issues with your history, which stays behind because cool URIs don't change.

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#158

Post by stiltzkin »

glimshe wrote: post #150
bloopernova wrote: post #103

My experience with bsky.app is good so far. It's more like twitter was before 2015: I've had enjoyable conversations with a few different people, blocked some trolls, and discovered some new history books to read. The XBlock Screenshot Labeler moderation service has mostly kept the reposted screenshots to a minimum. When reporting a post you can choose which service to inform, so a screenshot would get reported to XB…

I use both of them. My experience is that they are sort of mirror images on opposing ends of the political spectrum. I don't want to see politics at all , so for now Bluesky is inferior because it has way fewer people in my interest areas.

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Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#159

Post by mariusor »

rkangel wrote: post #122
homebrewer wrote: post #3

You would think people would learn from their mistakes and not move onto another centralized platform backed by VC money, but here we are.

In theory Bluesky is not centralised. In practice there's only one company operating a relay. The model of "identity backed by domain ownership" is a nice one, and deals with the Mastodon identity portability issue.

It also tramples on the idea that Resources on the internet have Unique Identifiers that don't change: https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI#:~:text=A%20cool%20URI...

Re: Bluesky now has 30 million users

#160

Post by stiltzkin »

kavenkanum wrote: post #148
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #137

And with that, I think the door on Mastodon gaining widespread adoption is closed forever. We had a very brief window when the Twitter Exodus was happening and non-techies were giving Mastodon a try. But it wasn't good enough, as far as giving the Twitter refugees what they wanted to see, and so they simply moved on to the nearest Twitter-With-The-Numbers-Filed-Off platform and stayed there instead. There's probably…

But to be honest the UX of Mastodon is just unusable. Following someone is not a click on Follow button. It's the most basic feature I can think of. And it's complicated there. It just couldn't work. Bluesky just did it better.

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