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Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#61

Post by invalidname »

theoryofx wrote: post #49
invalidname wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... About a million dead and a million enslaved might disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Wars . He murdered/enslaved for political gain back home, then killed the people who opposed to him back in Rome to stop democracy. I don't want to compare to these other guys because obviously it was a different time/culture and you can't really make such broad sweeping comparisons. I won't judge people for admir…

"About a million dead and a million enslaved might disagree" You might be very surprised at how differently ancient people viewed the world compared to yourself. Sure, no one wants to be killed or enslaved but the societies of these very people behaved in precisely the same way as the Romans and most ancient societies did. These were not peace loving hippies being invaded by alien monsters. Anyway, Caesar was not dic…

> Caesar was not dictator when he fought in Gaul. He was a Roman proconsul/general fighting in his provinces the way all ancient Roman armies did, and was objectively merciful than most, although fought a much bigger war than most.

He fought it against the wishes of the senate. Notice I didn't say he was a dictator "while fighting it".

> The Gauls and Germans his armies fought against were not some kind of peace loving hippies. Their armies waged war just as violently and invaded and slaughtered (including Romans) in the same way.

Sure. Notice the size of their armies in the link I provided vs. the count of dead people and enslaved people. These were civilians.

Also notice I specifically said I didn't judge him because he's a product of his time. I just criticized the parent post for misrepresenting him and comparing him to more contemporary figures.

> The narrative that Pompey was defending the republic against a tyrant is more ancient propaganda than reality.

Agreed. Both sides were terrible in that conflict. That doesn't make him a non-dictator because he won over another dictator wannabe.

> A reasonable and accurate summary is that Julius Caesar led a violent army against enemies, fought a civil war with unrivaled clemency, and was a benevolent dictator until his assassination by the envious people he had granted clemency.

I think that's revisionism. I don't know all of these things and they are very much a matter of perspective. Frankly, I don't care since none of that is grounded in fact. It's interpretation of facts.

The two facts I provided were: he was a dictator and he was violent.

Those are indisputable objective historic facts. Were others dictators and even more violent?

Sure. That doesn't dispute these facts. Notice I very specifically avoided passing judgement on him and on the OP article.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#62

Post by irelephant »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just crossed 33M users. Maybe your microcosm? https://blueskyusercount.com/

Active monthly is probably a tenth of that. I've made an account 2 or 3 times over the years but never find much to make me stay, I think I delete my accounts tho so I don't know if I'm in that stat.

Clearsky.app reports 31m active.

edit: Misinformation - number is actually 12m.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#63

Post by irelephant »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #31
melodyogonna wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is very usable once you block Elon and the unhinged conspiracy accounts that he retweets.

I frequently have the opposite problem where the algo is pushing liberal accounts tweeting $OUTRAGE_OF_THE_DAY

The algo is designed to surface accounts you may like to follow. Hence, its called "discover". You may enjoy a custom feed more.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#64

Post by _bin_ »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #48
jazzyjackson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active monthly is probably a tenth of that. I've made an account 2 or 3 times over the years but never find much to make me stay, I think I delete my accounts tho so I don't know if I'm in that stat.

https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.app/starter-pack/blueskywins.bsky.social/3ldfxn...

why'd your parent comment get downvoted? 33mm users, bluesky is a pretty niche bubble-y platform. so are mastodon et al. they're fine if you want to follow a specific group but they aren't even close to the reach of X/Twitter.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#65

Post by _bin_ »

hbn wrote: post #50
ivewonyoung wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frequently have the opposite problem where the algo is pushing liberal accounts tweeting $OUTRAGE_OF_THE_DAY

For twitter being supposedly a right wing social media platform, the only tweets I see break 100k likes are extremely left wing political takes (and Elon's tweets cause he's almost surely gotten him to be artificially pushed in the algorithm). I've seen theories that there's like botting happening on those posts, and it kinda seems likely given how little real interaction they get.

i notice the same thing. there are a handful of big rw accounts i've muted and no longer see but big lwers there always seem to be more.

i also muted musk but periodically find my account has magically re-followed him, so i concur that there's almost certainly a special case in the code that artificially boosts/follows him.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#66

Post by theschmed »

arghandugh wrote: post #58
Tade0 wrote: post #38

Perhaps merch is the path to successful monetisation of software products? The Something Awful forums had a $9.95 registration fee. I'm sure markup on those $40 shirts is more than that. Some game developers also embraced this business model: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/745810196/deep-rock-gal... Personally I would not spend this much on a plastic mug, but it seems there were enough takers to fund continued…

I'm reasonably sure they will be able to fund continued development without merch drops: https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuati...

Funding =/= monentization, and the former presupposes a need for the latter

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#67

Post by croisillon »

sejje wrote: post #2

> (Yes, it is weird that Zuck goes out of his way to compare himself to a violent dictator.) Why can't news sites just report the news? Why do they need to tell me what to think about it?

because apparently 77M Americans can't add 2 and 2 when it comes to wannabe dictators

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#68

Post by usrusr »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #24
ceejayoz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What company-branded shirt isn't?

selling out is a marketing piece. If they wanted to raise money for development of AT Proto they could raise more by taking backorders and shipping when available. Selling a limited edition in order to sell out is because it's cheaper to get people to write about you than it is to buy ad placement.

It can be both, and there's nothing wrong with that. Could they have gathered a few bucks more if they had taken orders as long as they come in? Sure. But at some point they'd inevitably go "we could make even more with larger batches" only to end up with considerably loss on that one last batch.

Taking the publicity instead of squeezing the lemon past the easy part is a perfectly rational decision.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#69

Post by Gud »

theoryofx wrote: post #49
invalidname wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... About a million dead and a million enslaved might disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Wars . He murdered/enslaved for political gain back home, then killed the people who opposed to him back in Rome to stop democracy. I don't want to compare to these other guys because obviously it was a different time/culture and you can't really make such broad sweeping comparisons. I won't judge people for admir…

"About a million dead and a million enslaved might disagree" You might be very surprised at how differently ancient people viewed the world compared to yourself. Sure, no one wants to be killed or enslaved but the societies of these very people behaved in precisely the same way as the Romans and most ancient societies did. These were not peace loving hippies being invaded by alien monsters. Anyway, Caesar was not dic…

No, that is not a reasonable take at all. Julius Caesar came as an invader.

Re: Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

#70

Post by theoryofx »

invalidname wrote: post #61
theoryofx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"About a million dead and a million enslaved might disagree" You might be very surprised at how differently ancient people viewed the world compared to yourself. Sure, no one wants to be killed or enslaved but the societies of these very people behaved in precisely the same way as the Romans and most ancient societies did. These were not peace loving hippies being invaded by alien monsters. Anyway, Caesar was not dic…

> Caesar was not dictator when he fought in Gaul. He was a Roman proconsul/general fighting in his provinces the way all ancient Roman armies did, and was objectively merciful than most, although fought a much bigger war than most. He fought it against the wishes of the senate. Notice I didn't say he was a dictator "while fighting it". > The Gauls and Germans his armies fought against were not some kind of peace lovi…

> He fought it against the wishes of the senate.

This is factually incorrect. He was a proconsul in command, fully authorized by the Senate.

You're probably referring to the fact that some of his political opponents in the Senate tried to score political points criticizing his war in Gaul. There was no real question of the legality then or now. False legal claims like this were standard practice and everyone took them for the partisan maneuvering they obviously were.

> Sure. Notice the size of their armies in the link I provided vs. the count of dead people and enslaved people. These were civilians.

These claims are all incredibly speculative. We actually have no real idea how many people (civilians or otherwise) died in these wars. Caesar himself is the primary source and we know for a fact that he tended to wildly exaggerate his numbers.

> Agreed. Both sides were terrible in that conflict. That doesn't make him a non-dictator because he won over another dictator wannabe.

> The two facts I provided were: he was a dictator and he was violent. Those are indisputable objective historic facts.

Another indisputable fact: he wasn't violent as dictator.

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