I imagine there is a large call-centre style barn somewhere for every social media product and the people in it are paid to dis detractors and otherwise act as fan-boys. The article is pointing out a problem with blue sky that we should attend to. Saying "bluesky is great" might be true but ignores the content of the article. (I am now going to watch my whole 24 points on hn disappear and change my name again)
Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
321–330 of 561 posts
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#322It’s an interesting point but social media (especially X and Bluesky) is largely ephemeral content. If it goes away, what have you really lost? Hot takes?
Running your own blog on your own domain is a good idea and anything long-form would be on there not Bluesky, no? The vast majority of people will run their blog on a platform though, be that Wordpress or Bear or Ghost etc all of which (in theory!) could go away. Where does it end?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot with my blogging platform (https://pagecord.com). It’s hard not to lock people in with a platform, but most people WANT a platform because it’s easy to use. I’ve made Pagecord open source and I’m working on an export so the whole site can be exported to Jekyll-compliant Markdown, so in theory you could leave and be up and running in a self-hosted way (fairly) easily.
So maybe transportable content standards is the most important thing to solve?
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that is federation working as intended. These instance admins are exercising their right to free speech by not federating with instances that contain content they disagree with or disallow on their instance. I think it's not at all comparable to a corporate entity like X being in full control and able to censor any content. You may create your own instance and federate with the instances you want. If an insta…
Of course they have a right to free speech, but when I'm choosing a platform it's the user experience that matters to me and not the rights of the operators. Twitter lets me visit or follow any other account on the platform and see what they have to say, and the ability to do that across a wide range of interests and viewpoints is exactly why I use it. If Mastodon requires setting up a custom server to replicate that…
> Twitter lets me [...] see what they have to say
* if their viewpoint agrees with Mr. Musk.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#324My interest for bluesky is practically non-existent as long as they ban people for posting commonly held views and scientific facts.
I’m not going to invest in a platform where fear of banning is a thing from the get go.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#325My interest for bluesky is practically non-existent as long as they ban people for posting commonly held views and scientific facts. I’m not going to invest in a platform where fear of banning is a thing from the get go.
Can you give an example? It sounds like you have something specific in mind.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll be surprised how many people think they can just use first.lastname@gmail.com and have email magically appear in their account. And even more people have no idea what the @gmail.com/@ibm.com is about. All they know is that some of their emails don't reach their contacts, probably because "the computer broke again". It's not a hard concept, but it's a concept that was only ever explained in school to a sliver o…
I have my own domain, and have email set up so that any email to that domain goes to me. You'd be surprised (well, nobody here on HN would be) to know how many times I tell a business that my email is "their-business@my-domain.com", and they ask me how I got that email address, whether I work for their company, etc.
Even giving them "email+their-business@gmail.com" (instead of email@gmail.com), as every single Gmail user is able to do, will no doubt sow confusion.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#327>“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@ibm.com are different email-people, too. This is not a hard concept.
This was the weakest point of the whole article, particularly because Mastodon and Bluesky are identical in this respect. The reason he doesn't realize it is that almost everyone is on the same instance. So yes, you will have: @stephenking.bsky.social and @stephenking.bsky.otherinstance Unless Bluesky remains a single server, in which case it's not at all decentralized.
You've highlighted the exact reason this is a problem for mastodon and not for bluesky: on the latter, there's a default, so people who don't realise why it matters don't need to worry about it.
For the record, there are other differences - on Bluesky, you use your non-default domain to login in exactly the same place, there aren't 'weird gaps' between different domains.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your "follow" list is required to be public? Seems like a design flaw.
It is definitely a perk. If I see someone whose posts are abhorrent and someone is following them, then I understand that they share values in some way and I don't want to see them either. Some people are block happy, but being able cut off chains of people is a perk. I'm also pretty sure OG Twitter and Mastodon let you see followers. If you could make them private, I never found any user that actually did that.
> then I understand that they share values in some way and I don't want to see them either.
komerad iteriasky, our sources tell us that you poses book on kaptialism. Why you share depraved views, komerad? This very bad for you.
alternatively...
Mr. iteria, we see that you've checked out a book by Marx from the public library. Why are you a communist mr iteria, and do you know that by being one you're putting our brave republic in grave danger? We shall revoke your right to work in any government position from now on. Red danger, mr iteria.
----
How on earth did we go through all that crap in our recent history, and people still think that reading something is sharing those values?! And banning them preemptively?
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that doesn't apply to the powers that be at other social networks (or management at Twitter pre-Elon)?
Pre-Elon moderation was (somewhat) sensible. Every online space needs a janitorial crew to keep it from turning into a wasteland (look at 4chan /b/, and even b isn't completely unmoderated). But it didn't take actions at the emotional whims of a megalomaniac ruler.
The funny thing is that if you filter by the most active posters, I believe Twitter now very possibly (I'd even say likely) has a higher ratio of far-right posters than 4chan /b/ currently does.
Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Openness",as far as for-profit businesses are concerned, is a marketing strategy. Once enough users are locked in, there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.
> there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free. Well that's of course OK with me : Bluesky should make their users pay. 10 % of users paying 1€/month, 1 % paying 10 €/month, for instance. That's ok, we're paying a service. But the API access and federation should remain free.
I keep seeing people say BlueSky should be a paid service, but X gets mocked ruthlessly for this.