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When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

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Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#301
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why some people vote for some parties and why they’re “voting on inflation” or “right to abortion” but I guess, for me, keeping checks and balances and democracy is the one value above ALL for me. In the span of human history, not a lot of countries and civilizations have lasted long, marked by constant instability and uncertainty for the future. We have a boring and imperfect political system created by…

Trump refusing to accept the 2020 election results should've been the line for many voters, but sadly it wasn't. And the potential crimes he and some of his allies may have committed while trying to overturn it will now never be prosecuted.

2024: > More than 155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. It's second only in U.S. history to the 2020 election. Turnout in 2024 represented 63.9% of eligible voters, the second-highest percentage in the last 100 years, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available.

2020: > More than 158 million votes were cast in the election

So 3 millions of Democrats suddenly decided to not go out to vote "to save democracy" against "fascism"?

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#302
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why some people vote for some parties and why they’re “voting on inflation” or “right to abortion” but I guess, for me, keeping checks and balances and democracy is the one value above ALL for me. In the span of human history, not a lot of countries and civilizations have lasted long, marked by constant instability and uncertainty for the future. We have a boring and imperfect political system created by…

> we got 250 years so far without imploding We may have arguably recovered from it, but we rather famously did not get 250 years without the union violently fragmenting. (Our best record on that is right around 160, currently.)

While it’s true we came close during Civil War, we still decided to keep the same system of government. In the end, while the Civil War did result in some constitutional crises, the root of the problem was more that one half of the country completely disagreed with the other half… I don’t think any political system can really work with that level of division and yet we kept the same one. Obviously the Civil War did very much bring into the question of states’ rights but, for better or worse, the founders were a little vague on that so we can still keep most of the same system and quabble over the details for the rest of eternity…

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump refusing to accept the 2020 election results should've been the line for many voters, but sadly it wasn't. And the potential crimes he and some of his allies may have committed while trying to overturn it will now never be prosecuted.

2024: > More than 155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. It's second only in U.S. history to the 2020 election. Turnout in 2024 represented 63.9% of eligible voters, the second-highest percentage in the last 100 years, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available. 2020: > More than…

The simpler and much more likely answer, my friend, is that people didn’t vote from a combination of disillusionment, assuming Kamala would win, and likewise factors.

I saw many people close to me not bother voting because they didn’t enjoy Biden’s presidency, despite voting for him in 2020.

So, I find that FAR more likely as a reason than supposed election fraud.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump refusing to accept the 2020 election results should've been the line for many voters, but sadly it wasn't. And the potential crimes he and some of his allies may have committed while trying to overturn it will now never be prosecuted.

2024: > More than 155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. It's second only in U.S. history to the 2020 election. Turnout in 2024 represented 63.9% of eligible voters, the second-highest percentage in the last 100 years, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available. 2020: > More than…

> The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available.

You answered your own question. Voting was made more difficult in 2024, so fewer votes were cast.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what I said in the second sentence

AppView is a specific term of art within the Bluesky federation architecture: https://atproto.com/guides/glossary#app-view , you were incorrect in identifying the public frontend repo as the AppView.

The glossary specifically calls out the UI as part of an app view. Can you explain why it is not according to you?

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter didn't start doing it (the pay-for-attention model) until 17 years after it was founded, so, I mean, bsky will probably be okay for a _while_.

Alternative reading: It took 17 years for venture capitalists to figure out the pay-for-attention model, at which point they immediately applied it to everything they could.

Nah, the pay-for-attention model (the bluetick thing) was Musk; other than dating/hookup sites (and even then, they usually _ration_ it) I think it’s the only significant social media site to do it. No VCs involved.

It’s not like it’s a new idea; dating sites have been trying it since the 90s. But it, ah, a _bad_ model; it is why any popular post on Twitter is now drowned in irrelevant replies from idiot blueticks. It’s a reasonable rule of thumb that, if you have to pay to have your posts amplified, they’re probably not good enough for anyone to want to read them.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they "insert" even non-celebrity posts into each follower's timeline? That is not intuitive to me.

Think of it as pre-rendering. Of pre-rendering and JIT collecting, pre-rendering means more work but it's async, and it means the timeline is ready whenever a user requests it, to give a fast user experience. (Although I don't understand the "non-celebrity" part of your comment -- the timeline contains (pointers to) posts from whoever someone follows, and doesn't care who those people are.)

Perhaps I misunderstanding, I thought the actual content of each tweet was being duplicated to every single timeline who followed the author, which sounded extremely wasteful, especially in the case of someone who has 200 million followers.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#308

I don’t see much call for blusky anymore….

I mean: https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/static/dynazoom.html?cgiurl_gr... Posts/sec are just off record levels.

So it’s bluesky this week? What about mastodon? What about threads? I thought X was going to die.

I’ll just stay with X, that’s where everybody is, contrary to the bluesky cheerleaders here.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#309
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this... but without profit, people can't get paid, and they'll stop building. I do hate this incredibly need for growth, of course, but financial growth is necessary to pay people and give them raises and allow them to have upward mobility at the company. I hope Bluesky is able to find a model that works for them AND for consumers. (I do know it's an open protocol, so it'll live on without Blu…

It's semantics but I like to separate money from profits. You need money to pay people and to survive but you don't need to be raking in endlessly growing piles of it. This is something that was really demoralizing about working for a big company, they could be making like 50000000000 a year in just profits but still be ruthless in getting more. Like I just want to make a product I'm proud of and I'm happy living a s…

That is not semantics. It is fundamental economics.

Re: When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as pre-rendering. Of pre-rendering and JIT collecting, pre-rendering means more work but it's async, and it means the timeline is ready whenever a user requests it, to give a fast user experience. (Although I don't understand the "non-celebrity" part of your comment -- the timeline contains (pointers to) posts from whoever someone follows, and doesn't care who those people are.)

Perhaps I misunderstanding, I thought the actual content of each tweet was being duplicated to every single timeline who followed the author, which sounded extremely wasteful, especially in the case of someone who has 200 million followers.

From the linked article: "Additionally, a reference to your post is 'fanned out' to your followers so they can see it in their Timelines."

So not the content, just a sort of link to it.

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