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Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

joelgustafson.com

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Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#151

Post by dylan604 »

mapt wrote: post #137
dylan604 wrote: post #63

"We can't make a map of all of Twitter, because the data isn't available and scraping it would be difficult and illegal." What makes scraping illegal?

Post-2024, with Elon running the government as fiscal/regulatory czar, Twitter policy is evidently stronger than judicial interpretation of Constitutional rights.

What happens to Twitter when Musk has to step down from his roles with Twitter/SpaceX/Tesla? Will sanity be allowed to fill the void? I really doubt anything at SpaceX/Tesla changes, but Twitter has the most wiggle room under someone else's leadership

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#152

Post by ZacnyLos »

Mastodon seems to be the most versatile app of all of them. With Mastodon account you can follow people from BlueSky (if they use BridgyFed) and people from Threads (if they turn on fediverse sharing).

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#153

Post by chefandy »

fsflover wrote: post #113
josteink wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastadon has a massive problem with furries, people with loli anime-avatars or people who fit the «purple haired» stereotype. It’s very off-putting and alienating for normal people.

It strongly depends on the instance. You don't have to read the global timeline.

The tough thing is that for the vast majority of end users, the interface that they see is the software or service. So if their instance has a bunch of disgusting pornography, as far as they’re concerned, mastodon has a bunch of disgusting pornography. For a lot of folks, the browser/server abstraction for regular websites and how that differs from native apps is about as far as they’re willing to go in their understanding of Internet architecture and for many, it’s too far. Requiring people understand that not all mastodon is mastodon despite it being kind of the same, in order to avoid explicit hentai, is a non-starter. My grandparents are dead, but they would probably take their computer out back and set it on fire if that shit flashed up on their screen. They sure wouldn’t have used it as an opportunity to get all of the base knowledge they needed to even realize they had to instance shop. Facebook is just riiiiight over there.

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#154

Post by xavdid »

mhartz wrote: post #42
typical182 wrote: post #40

Bluesky and atproto seem to be built to be hackable. Someone in the community recently built a searchable directory of Bluesky "Starter Packs" (which are a way for a user to publish a set of interesting people & feeds to follow, primarily to help newcomers bootstrap their experience): https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs/all Dan Abramov posted about it earlier today, saying he liked it and: "the fact that it ca…

Wasn't this also sort of a feature with Twitter? iirc the retweet and other now popular features were originally hacked together by users

The word "tweet" itself came from a 3rd party developer:

> The Iconfactory was developing a Twitter application in 2006 called "Twitterrific" and developer Craig Hockenberry began a search for a shorter way to refer to "Post a Twitter Update."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet_(social_media)#History

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#155

Post by [deleted] »

fckgw wrote: post #138
josteink wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastadon has a massive problem with furries, people with loli anime-avatars or people who fit the «purple haired» stereotype. It’s very off-putting and alienating for normal people.

These are also "normal people", they just choose to express themselves differently. Maybe you should get over it?

[deleted]

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#156

Post by seanvelasco »

anamexis wrote: post #25
declan_roberts wrote: post #19

Bluesky to me still seems like a place completely dominated by software type (HN crowd). I know there are obvious exceptions there's no need for you to list them. Threads has extreme normies, bluesky has the nerds, and twitter seems to have just the right mixture of both.

I won't list out exceptions, but my Bluesky experience is not at all how you describe. Obviously it just depends on who you follow, but I don't think "dominated by software type" describes the Bluesky demographic as a whole, and it hasn't for some time.

if you don't follow anyone, like me, the timeline is dominated by journalists, furries, and people who post nudity. i'm not saying these are bad, just an observation.

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#157

Post by bradgessler »

ZacnyLos wrote: post #140
bradgessler wrote: post #38

The best thing about Bluesky is you can use your domain as your username. I'm @bradgessler.com on there, so if people want to "verify" me, they see something more meaningful than a blue checkbox, which is my website. If I ever get blocked, banned, deplatformed, whatever—people would see my domain and be able to go there to determine what's going on. In a sense it's "censorship-evident". I think this will be great for…

Verifying your identity on Mastodon is for everyone as well and based on open web standards. https://joinmastodon.org/verification

Problem with Mastodon is you’re forced to associate with the identity of the sever or run your own instance, both of which are very awkward.

I’m @bradgessler@ruby.social, but I’m more than a Ruby dev.

I could run a Mastadon instance for bradgessler.com, but I have no desire to spend even 3 minutes figuring out how to set all that up. Maintaining my own instance sounds even worse.

Bluesky gets the ergonomics of this right: the usernames feel like they occupy a global namespace and I can point the aliases at my domains in a few minutes without having to worry about a bunch of standards that I don’t really care about.

For some reason I can’t explain, it also really bothers me that I have to @ people on Mastadon via @brad@bradgessler.com. I don’t want to say “@“ twice if I’m verbally telling somebody where to find me when presenting and “@me@bradgessler” is weird too. Much easier to say “Follow me @bradgessler.com”

Am I lazy? Yes, but most people are. Bluesky strikes a nice balance of control and identity that I’m comfortable with for the amount of time and effort I’m willing to put into it.

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#158

Post by sph »

loevborg wrote: post #98

I'm part of the wave of users who migrated to bluesky last week. I have to say I really like it so far, which surprised me a bit given that I had been underwhelmed by mastodon before. I already spend more time in bluesky than in twitter. For those (like me) who don't know what bluesky is, it's basically a carbon copy of twitter circa 2015, down to an almost identical UI. Except that there's no monetization, no ads, n…

I tried it, the tech seems cool but I'd like more diversity. Now that Twitter mostly is crypto scams and American far-right political nonsense, I'd like something a little more interesting than American far-left political nonsense.

The world is much larger than American or Western internet drama, and there seems to be no way to escape it. As a European reading any mainstream social media, BlueSky included, makes me roll my eyes out of their orbit.

I do not care about politics or gender identity or keyboard activism. Can we please have something else on the menu? Literally anything else. I wonder if I should learn Russian or Chinese to be exposed to something new which isn't US politics or which gender people are most attracted to in their private lives. Who gives a damn. /rant

(I enjoyed Nostr tech-wise, but it never broke past the cryptobro phase and that saddens me)

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#159

Post by mjmsmith »

colesantiago wrote: post #145
fckgw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are also "normal people", they just choose to express themselves differently. Maybe you should get over it?

Nobody important or relevant enough is moving to Mastodon.

If it always remains so, I'm never leaving.

Re: Visualizing 13M Bluesky users

#160

Post by jazzyjackson »

atemerev wrote: post #78
dylan604 wrote: post #63

"We can't make a map of all of Twitter, because the data isn't available and scraping it would be difficult and illegal." What makes scraping illegal?

Nothing. A precedent determining that scraping is legal is already established.

not if its behind a login wall.
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