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Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

bsky.social

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Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#141

Post by packetlost »

hathawsh wrote: post #112
packetlost wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That study is based on user sentiment/survey, so I wouldn't really put any stock in to be completely honest. The only thing this study tells me is there was a change relative to some baseline, not that there was any sort of absolute lean.

Fair enough. Personally, I like to watch both sides, and it has been interesting to see conservatives becoming more favorable toward Twitter/X. If I were working on a social network (like Bluesky, the topic of this discussion), I would be watching Twitter/X closely right now to try to understand the effects that certain tweaks (such as moderation policy) may have.

Agreed! My own gut feeling is that it leaned pretty heavily left and it's now closer to center than ever, and people are noticing the delta.

Every time I open BlueSky it's like 50% Liberal rage-bait and like 40% people posting mostly about their sexual and gender identities.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#142

Post by djur »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88
emceestork wrote: post #31

I switched to Bluesky but then moved back to twitter. I'm glad that they are trying to compete with Twitter (Twitter is a conservative cesspool), but all of my non-technical friends have stayed on Twitter. So, I end up going where they are. I think the reason my friends did not join Bluesky despite me inviting them is that it just isn't as good of a product as Twitter. You can't post videos or DM. I am not a tech exe…

[flagged]

Twitter has a lot of very right-wing posters and a lot of very left-wing posters. Which of these you're likely to see as a huge problem and which you're likely to dismiss as a few insignificant goofballs is probably going to be based on your own political orientation. It would be surprising if there hasn't been a rightward shift, though, considering that causing such was one of the current owner's explicit goals. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to perceive Twitter as favoring the political right when the owner is actively doing so.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#144

Post by shkkmo »

j-james wrote: post #123
steveklabnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm especially curious to learn about the moderation layer in-depth. You'll want to read: * "Composable Moderation," this is the core conceptual idea: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation * "Moderation in a Public Commons," which describes specific features that were added in pursuit of the previously-described goal https://bsky.social/about/blog/6-23-2023-moderation-proposal... * "Bluesky 2023 Moder…

I cannot see how BlueSky's moderation system can ever work. Decoupling moderation and hosting means there's no onus to do the moderation that they describe: which makes me think it will be BlueSky Inc., and only other corporations, that have resources to throw employees at a now thankless, Facebook-style moderation job. And instances have to moderate anyway , in order to not host illegal content.

> Decoupling moderation and hosting means there's no onus to do the moderation that they describe:

I'm not sure this follows. There is a similarity to the reddit model of moderation. The host provides some base amount of moderation but supplemental moderation comes from members of the community. In the Bluesky model, a 'subreddit' is analagous to an indexer/aggregator (aka Relay/AppView) that provides a moderated and/or weighted feed of content. The same incentives for volunteer mods on Reddit will exist for volunteer mods on Bluesky.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#145

Post by steveklabnik »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #134

Does Bluesky allow different federations to require everyone they federate with to share a block list? Mastodon has this problem and it makes it where you have to have multiple accounts if you actually want to use the platform. This might sound like not a problem, but it'll naturally lead to whatever account has access to 51% of your content being the one you use consistently, and you eventually just forget about the…

I linked to primary sources on moderation upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471973

Block lists don't work at the instance level, so the answer to your question isn't just "no", but that it is impossible.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#146

Post by hellojesus »

basil-rash wrote: post #121
hellojesus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Twitter like most socials feed you things with which they predict would increase your engagement or time on platform? If the GP's social circle leaned more conservative than them, it may just be bad predictions. And I can see how that would degrade user experience. I often hear things like X service skews left/right and find it odd that people can have such differing experiences. Hence my belief that the feed…

When somebody else is wrong on the internet , one feels compelled to comment and explain one’s righteousness, or at the very least read through the comments to see if somebody else already has. Thus algorithms that optimize engagement (most of them) are most likely to show you stuff you disagree with. The antidote is Linkedinification: “Thanks for bringing up this point it’s really smart and I fully agree!”

Understood. But if you, as a company, realize you're losing users because everything you show is rage bait, maybe adjustments are made.

Or your point stands and helps to describe why the non conservative GGP was of the belief that X is conservative leaning.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#147

Post by numpad0 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #87
numpad0 wrote: post #46

Bluesky is starting to look like an elaborate reboot of Mastodon with a fancy username redirect, but I'm guessing its technical aspects, while those are series of great achievements, were not the crucial part to its success so far; the part that worked was community building. Nostr worked to some extent despite existence of Mastodon because Mastodon bodged that part. Mastodon took off because Twitter broke its commun…

> Bluesky's successes is really making me feel that the first S of the abbreviation S.N.S. do stand for what it stands. There's tons of alternate social media out there. Forums, Subreddits, Tildes, Discourse, Matrix, IRC, Mastodon, Lemmy, Usenet, and on and on. The truth is the S in SNS is always what social networks have been about.

And a lot of them failed for their technical shortcomings and many others from social aspects.

IRC failed in technical side due to the failure in committee development model around IRCv3, Reddit succeeded by sole social factor despite being a carbon copy of Digg. To me, Bluesky vs Mastodon, and also Twitter vs Mastodon situations seems closer to the latter, even with controversial waitlist and the big turmoil, respectively.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#149

Post by j-james »

steveklabnik wrote: post #129
j-james wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see how BlueSky's moderation system can ever work. Decoupling moderation and hosting means there's no onus to do the moderation that they describe: which makes me think it will be BlueSky Inc., and only other corporations, that have resources to throw employees at a now thankless, Facebook-style moderation job. And instances have to moderate anyway , in order to not host illegal content.

I hear you on some level. That said, we are already seeing people creating blocklists, and tools to share them with others. That is happening alongside the company's investment in paying people to work on T&S related issues on their instance. I am not sure if it will succeed or fail, but I am interested to see how it plays out.

That relies upon the benevolence of corporations to much more of an extent than I am comfortable with. 20 years of social media has convinced me that that's a bad idea. And, I think, it removes much of the benefits of federation: if the only way to sustainably moderate is to rely upon gifts from BlueSky Inc., moderation is going to be necessarily dependent upon them.

Re: Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters

#150

Post by djur »

packetlost wrote: post #141
hathawsh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Personally, I like to watch both sides, and it has been interesting to see conservatives becoming more favorable toward Twitter/X. If I were working on a social network (like Bluesky, the topic of this discussion), I would be watching Twitter/X closely right now to try to understand the effects that certain tweaks (such as moderation policy) may have.

Agreed! My own gut feeling is that it leaned pretty heavily left and it's now closer to center than ever, and people are noticing the delta . Every time I open BlueSky it's like 50% Liberal rage-bait and like 40% people posting mostly about their sexual and gender identities.

The posts you see on Bluesky by default are the posts made by people you follow. There are other options to select whichever feeds you prefer. If you're seeing a lot of that content, it's because you're following people who post a lot of that stuff.
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