101–110 of 238 posts
Reddit is dominated by the left, but there are other voice audible. Twitter has plenty of leftists. They are very, very, very easy to find, as is every other shape and size of political, ideological, or spiritual thought; far easier than, say, a non-leftist viewpoint on the worldnews or politics subreddits, which because of their default status are much more inescapable than any one Twitter account. There are very, v…
I notice that the stat the article repeatedly quotes is MAU for usage of the mobile app, but one of the things I love about Bluesky is that you don’t need to use a mobile app to have a good UX. I use the mobile browser to access it, so I’m not in that MAU number. Perhaps bsky has a larger number of active users that don’t use the app?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of politics, yes. It's a bit like the worst of reddit. Nobody reads the article, everybody gets outraged in the same cliché way. If you try to provide nuance you get derided or blocked. (Blocking seems to be held in high esteem, which I think is also part of the problem.)
Building a social network with people in love with shared blocking lists is not a great recipe.
Unless you want to expose yourself to the constant inundation of piss that social media has become, you have to curate and block aggressively. Shared block lists that you just subscribe to are one of the few useful innovations Bluesky has made and they need to be standard for all social media in the future.
Bluesky and Threads both have a fundamental issue in that their entire pitch is "We are like Twitter, but we are not run by Elon Musk, a Republican." Which only energizes the most radical, fringe, terminally online, who happen to be the ones that were most disliked on regular Twitter in the first place. When you whole pitch has zero appeal to 95% of people, its dead.
Musk is not just a republican, he's pushing far-right parties everywhere else in the world (plus, the "roman" thing). He's the textbook definition of why social networks should not have recommendation algorithms other than "chronological view of who you actively chose the follow". He can say whatever he wants, but buying one of the biggest social network to push his ideology onto billions leaves "freedom of saying wh…
I notice that the stat the article repeatedly quotes is MAU for usage of the mobile app, but one of the things I love about Bluesky is that you don’t need to use a mobile app to have a good UX. I use the mobile browser to access it, so I’m not in that MAU number. Perhaps bsky has a larger number of active users that don’t use the app?
You aren’t logged in on the browser when you use it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I point out (in agreement with your statement) that the idea that the left and the right are somehow equally bad is a kind of fantasy on HN I usually get downvoted. People seem very committed to "shades of gray", moderate thinking to the point that it's viewed as always correct, which is well, just wrong. Yeah, often things are more complicated than they appear, but I find it almost hilarious how often you c…
the thing is that the "left" in the US (and then on HN) have almost no political representation. The Democrats aren't left, just the leftest available. They aren't better than the Republicans at all.
This is exactly the kind of thing the parent poster was talking about.
The Democrats certainly aren't left, and they're not great, but we live in a world where the Republican party ranges between refusing to condemn and openly supporting white nationalism, gloats about making trans people's lives worse, encourages police to use unnecessary force, etc. even before we get in to the impacts of their economic policies.
Despite being a massive disappointment as far as actually making positive changes, one is still obviously miles better than the other because they're not trying to drive the car the wrong way as fast as possible. Claiming that the two major US parties are no different requires willfully ignoring a lot of bad stuff that one party does for which there is no comparison on the other side. There are absolutely specific issues on which there is often no meaningful difference but as a whole there is a universe of difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter's not doing too bad: 550 and 600 million monthly active users according to platform disclosures and industry estimates So maybe the trick is to not just cater to left on your platform.
The only way in which BlueSky is preferentially catering to the left is by existing as an alternative to X and specifically providing tighter control of what is in your feed; and this is only “catering to the Left” because of the groups towards which X either has weakened or stopped enforcing its policies against harassment towards. (In a market with strong network externalities, being the dominant player is self rei…
Reddit is dominated by the left, but there are other voice audible. Twitter has plenty of leftists. They are very, very, very easy to find, as is every other shape and size of political, ideological, or spiritual thought; far easier than, say, a non-leftist viewpoint on the worldnews or politics subreddits, which because of their default status are much more inescapable than any one Twitter account. There are very, v…
How are the X figures computed ? Bluesky is a public network, anyone can analyse and count. What about X, held by Musk ?
Would be hard to gauge, X has a major bot problem, which Musk made big claims about combating but yet has failed to yield realistic results...