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Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

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Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#191

Post by joecool1029 »

stevebmark wrote: post #159
kens wrote: post #146

Since Bluesky is invite-only and there's a lot of clamoring for invite codes, it's easy to think that you're missing out if you're not a member. I'd like to offer a different perspective, that most HN readers would probably be happier on Mastodon than Bluesky. In particular, Bluesky is very small, has a strange vibe, and has almost no technical content or people interested in it. The number of participants on Bluesky…

Mastodon will never take off because of its fundamentally terrible onboarding. Having to pick a server is incompatible with the general public using it. Bluesky is the only real contender right now. It doesn’t matter that it has a low user count. The main threat is that there’s no real incentive for people to run their own BGS. We’ll see how that pans out.

> Mastodon will never take off because of its fundamentally terrible onboarding.

This would only slow growth, invite only is also terrible onboarding so it sort of invalidates that take.

Mastodon won't take off because it is NOT a Twitter replacement. Discoverability and fragmentation are problems that Mastodon will never be able to solve. These problems mean it's never going to be 'the place to go to figure out what is going on'. It might be the place for you to figure out what's happening in your specific interest group and that's fine but it's a different use case.

Go look at the list of servers each instance chooses not to federate with. Some of these are reasonable 'they botted us', some of them are ideological 'they are tankies', some are weirder/legal like 'they did not use the correct GDPR policy'. Some are capricious like 'fuck that homeserver admin, I just don't like them so we're not peering with them'.

I can't wrap my head around it, I know I'm a class of former Twitter user that used the service to figure out what was happening either globally or on a local scale (using geocode searches). I had follow lists on there of people in specific interest areas but I wasn't on there to be a part of a community, I do chat instead for that. I'm on Mastodon now and the people on my homeserver I think are probably all fine but I don't have a lot to relate to them about and they don't post too much about current events outside their interests. I can't just search federated messages, I can view the stream of them, but I can't search and it kills it for me.

I love the concept of federated services, I admin a matrix homeserver, but the structure of Mastodon makes it hard for me to recommend that anyone register anywhere else other than mastodon.social because homeserver admins are extremely reluctant to ban this instance permanently and if you ran your own instance there's going to be a ton of admins that just block you for X reason.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#192

Post by jncfhnb »

kens wrote: post #146

Since Bluesky is invite-only and there's a lot of clamoring for invite codes, it's easy to think that you're missing out if you're not a member. I'd like to offer a different perspective, that most HN readers would probably be happier on Mastodon than Bluesky. In particular, Bluesky is very small, has a strange vibe, and has almost no technical content or people interested in it. The number of participants on Bluesky…

> Since Bluesky is invite-only and there's a lot of clamoring for invite codes, it's easy to think that you're missing out if you're not a member.

Reminder that you really shouldn’t feel like this regardless of the quality.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#193

Post by bushbaba »

emptysongglass wrote: post #133
sbierwagen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops them from changing the protocol. It's like insisting blockchain transactions are immutable when Etherium issues updates all the time to reverse transactions that happened due to hacks.

This is a really, really bad read. The point is that the data is built on the foundations of an enduring protocol, right now, and that if BlueSky were to pull some shenanigans it would be trivial for a user to pick up and move. The protocol provides a built-in incentive not to pull shenanigans. Honestly, so many of the comments here are, but what if?? The what-if scenario is built-in to the design and is in fact more…

Social media is more than the api and posts. It’s the active community. It’s not so easy to pickup and leave.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#194

Post by sbierwagen »

emptysongglass wrote: post #133
sbierwagen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops them from changing the protocol. It's like insisting blockchain transactions are immutable when Etherium issues updates all the time to reverse transactions that happened due to hacks.

This is a really, really bad read. The point is that the data is built on the foundations of an enduring protocol, right now, and that if BlueSky were to pull some shenanigans it would be trivial for a user to pick up and move. The protocol provides a built-in incentive not to pull shenanigans. Honestly, so many of the comments here are, but what if?? The what-if scenario is built-in to the design and is in fact more…

I think it's important to note that 1) The AT protocol is nowhere near complete, and as far as I can tell account portability is not actually implemented yet and 2) There are no third party sites that use AT! Even if account portability existed, there's nowhere to go.

But if account portability existed and worked, imagine this scenario: Larry Ellison wakes up one day and decides that Elon is having so much fun that he wants a social media site too. The minute the sale is announced, all the account portability APIs are disabled, and the website switches to a hard login wall. They start aggressively throttling and banning users that look like scrapers. They send a DMCA takedown to archive.org, who obliges and removes the wayback copies. They disable viewing followers and following so you can't even get your graph out. Now what?

The problem of trusting someone else to host your social media page is that you have to trust them. If your answer is "Jack wouldn't sell the company", then I can't help but note that he sure sold Twitter to Elon. If your other answer is "Larry Ellison would never do something unethical and customer-hostile" then uh...

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#195

Post by climatologist »

svnt wrote: post #156
climatologist wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already mentioned advertising and how it's the only real economic activity enabled by social networks. Unless Twitter enables some kind of payment processing and gives the participants the ability to actually exchange money for goods and services Twitter will continue to be an economic loss leader. Most people on social networks do not contribute to the real economy in any meaningful way. Same logic applies to blue…

I would maybe phrase it differently but I guess I don’t disagree: social networks should be publicly-owned and exist for the public good. The reason the model runs the way it does and collapses is because we inherently understand that most communication should not be economically restricted. We don’t have a good social network because capitalism isn’t a good way to create them.

Yes, that's a good way of putting it.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#196

Post by Ambrosia »

kens wrote: post #146

Since Bluesky is invite-only and there's a lot of clamoring for invite codes, it's easy to think that you're missing out if you're not a member. I'd like to offer a different perspective, that most HN readers would probably be happier on Mastodon than Bluesky. In particular, Bluesky is very small, has a strange vibe, and has almost no technical content or people interested in it. The number of participants on Bluesky…

Same with nostr. Everyone's either talking about nostr or zaps/sats/other cryptocurrency bs. Shame because the protocol itself is mostly cool

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#197

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

tokenadult wrote: post #181
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TOS ≠ law

Contractual agreements are enforceable at law. That's what makes them contracts.

You also can't put illegal stuff into a contract to make it legal.

Also, I didn't sign anything.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#198

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

reaperman wrote: post #183
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TOS ≠ law

Well, feel free to refer to the case law of LinkedIn vs. HiQ, as I said in the comment you replied to. That is law.

I did, thanks. In that case, it looks like the scraper prevailed: "The Ninth Circuit's declaration that selectively banning potential competitors from accessing and using data that is publicly available can be considered unfair competition under California law may have large implication for antitrust law."

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#199

Post by Zetice »

sbierwagen wrote: post #194
emptysongglass wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really, really bad read. The point is that the data is built on the foundations of an enduring protocol, right now, and that if BlueSky were to pull some shenanigans it would be trivial for a user to pick up and move. The protocol provides a built-in incentive not to pull shenanigans. Honestly, so many of the comments here are, but what if?? The what-if scenario is built-in to the design and is in fact more…

I think it's important to note that 1) The AT protocol is nowhere near complete, and as far as I can tell account portability is not actually implemented yet and 2) There are no third party sites that use AT! Even if account portability existed, there's nowhere to go. But if account portability existed and worked, imagine this scenario: Larry Ellison wakes up one day and decides that Elon is having so much fun that h…

That would have to happen soon, and if it did, you'd be right. The vision of a decentralized social web would die again, and one billionaire would make another even richer. Some moaning would be had on the Internet, but the world would continue to spin.

But, if the AT protocol even makes it another ~6 months without that happening, it will become impossible. You won't need to "trust" anyone to host anything, and if you want you'll be able to take your data and go somewhere else. That's the vision, and that's so far exactly what the folks at BlueSky have been building.

So no, the answer isn't "Larry and Jack wouldn't do those things" the answer is, "They'll have to act very quickly and in ways that are completely out of character for them, not to mention the staff at BlueSky would have to all sell their souls which is also completely out of character for them as well."

But yeah, if you're a cynic I guess everything is on the table.

Re: Bluesky facing degraded performance due to record high traffic

#200

Post by dbbk »

kens wrote: post #146

Since Bluesky is invite-only and there's a lot of clamoring for invite codes, it's easy to think that you're missing out if you're not a member. I'd like to offer a different perspective, that most HN readers would probably be happier on Mastodon than Bluesky. In particular, Bluesky is very small, has a strange vibe, and has almost no technical content or people interested in it. The number of participants on Bluesky…

It really worries me that after all this time in development, and with Twitter collapsing, they are still unable to either;

1. Open the site up

2. Implement a polished user interface (bizarrely even Truth Social looks and performs better than this)

I do not have much hope that this is going to quickly change. I think at this point, the best hope we have for a Twitter exodus is to Instagram Threads.

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