Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again • Hacker News Board

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#441

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:26 PM UTC

mozarella wrote: post #340

Related : Corey Doctrow's article (again) about how he doesn't trust Bluesky enough to move there from mastodon. Especially Bluesky's promise to allow users to migrate to another host in the fediverse. https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-11-02... Older article : https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get...

> Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I’ve entered into community with there. While there are many independently maintained servers that provide services to Bluesky and its users, there is only one Bluesky server.

I'm not sure this is up to date, but Bluesky/AT Proto's architecture is pretty complex to wrap my head around so maybe I just misunderstand. The biggest difference is that unlike Mastodon, Bluesky doesn't really have a single concept of an 'instance' that represents an independent segment of the network like Mastodon does. Instead you have PDSs (which is a user and their data), relays (which centrally relay multiple PDSs like a firehose), and the app view (the frontend for visualising the relay and interacting with PDSs).

You can host your own PDS so you are in control of your own data and identity, and you can migrate away from Bluesky-operated PDS to your own, though at the moment you can't migrate back https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/ACCOUNT_MIGR... https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3l5ii332pf32u

Bluesky's AT Proto design has different trade offs to Mastodon. Bluesky seems like the more feature complete, technically superior, twitter-scale design, being expectedly more complex. Mastodon/ActivityPub is easier to boot up something completely decentralised, but hosters often complain about scale. The real test comes down to the resiliancy of the service is the main provider shuts down. At the moment I think Bluesky would suffer a lot more than Mastodon if the company just went away.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#442

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:31 PM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #378

Open question, why do people keep caring about socials that much? Especially educated people should stay away from that toxicity. Boards like HN and occasionally Reddit, where it's mostly about discussing and being anonymous are the only places worth contributing on the internet other than personal blogs.

> Open question, why do people keep caring about socials that much?

> Especially educated people should stay away from that toxicity

I believe commerical, closed social networks are the ones that specifically breed this 'toxicity' people talk about. They're incentivised to promote engagement bait to drive DAU, page views and ad revenue.

Granted, it's audience is significantly smaller, but I think Mastodon immediately showed what a social network that had incentives aligned with users could look like. Bluesky has neat features putting users in control, like user-built custom moderation settings to hide things you don't want to see (like engagement-bait accounts, politics, spoilers, gaming etc). I think these are all user-centric features that Twitter or Facebook would never add people they conflict with their other business goals of promoting ads or other partner content.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#443

Post by epolanski » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

khafra wrote: post #414

epolanski wrote: post #378

Open question, why do people keep caring about socials that much? Especially educated people should stay away from that toxicity. Boards like HN and occasionally Reddit, where it's mostly about discussing and being anonymous are the only places worth contributing on the internet other than personal blogs.

On Twitter I get to see interactions between the people that built games I played as a kid, famous actors, Nobel prize winners, heads of state, and authors I had assumed died decades ago. If I write something insightful and relevant enough, I might get a gesture of appreciation from a FAANG research director, a prominent philosopher, or just someone who writes the funniest aphorisms I've ever seen. It's toxic in some…

I can see your point, the issue is that those rare insightful interactions are buried under tons of scrolling, irrelevant content, and people desperately trying to get noticed for whatever reason.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#444

Post by epolanski » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

dom96 wrote: post #396

simplyluke wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a broadly believed myth that it produces meaningful professional opportunities among certain folks in the industry. In my observations this is very rarely true, and in many more cases it’s a professional liability.

It's not a myth. I got 2 amazing offers (one of which is now my job) via Twitter. I hope Bluesky can eventually offer the same.

I don't think Twitter was required for someone with a rather good track record/cv like yours to get good jobs.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#445

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #440

khafra wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Twitter I get to see interactions between the people that built games I played as a kid, famous actors, Nobel prize winners, heads of state, and authors I had assumed died decades ago. If I write something insightful and relevant enough, I might get a gesture of appreciation from a FAANG research director, a prominent philosopher, or just someone who writes the funniest aphorisms I've ever seen. It's toxic in some…

sounds like an interactive tabloid. who gives a shit about famous people? authors I assumed died decades ago? Literally I do not give a single shit what Stephen King or JK Rowling thinks have fun with that, but you just explained why it never appealed to me. Weird idolatry. Reddit has the same problem. Interesting people talk about ideas, not other people > something insightful enough you mean if you play the game an…

No one is making you care what Stephen King has to say. You don't need to idolise someone just to be interested in things they might say

You're here in the comments of Hacker News so you clearly are interested in social networks. You reguarly check in here to see popular links others have shared, and occasionally participate in conversations. It's seems pretty easy to understand that others might be interested in a slightly different UI on top of this.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#446

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #444

dom96 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a myth. I got 2 amazing offers (one of which is now my job) via Twitter. I hope Bluesky can eventually offer the same.

I don't think Twitter was required for someone with a rather good track record/cv like yours to get good jobs.

Not required, but it could present opportunities.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#447

Post by epolanski » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:36 PM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #436

epolanski wrote: post #378

Open question, why do people keep caring about socials that much? Especially educated people should stay away from that toxicity. Boards like HN and occasionally Reddit, where it's mostly about discussing and being anonymous are the only places worth contributing on the internet other than personal blogs.

All social media is bad, except for the ones you personally use? If it's about discussing pseudo/anonymously, you can do that on other plaforms too, right?

You can't possibly miss the huge difference between a discussion board and doom scrolling machines.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#448

Post by IceDane » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:36 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

jeroenhd wrote: post #108

Earlier 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.

This is simultaneously a brilliant idea and hilarious because I can imagine how this must confuse them.

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#449

Post by khafra » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:38 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #440

khafra wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Twitter I get to see interactions between the people that built games I played as a kid, famous actors, Nobel prize winners, heads of state, and authors I had assumed died decades ago. If I write something insightful and relevant enough, I might get a gesture of appreciation from a FAANG research director, a prominent philosopher, or just someone who writes the funniest aphorisms I've ever seen. It's toxic in some…

sounds like an interactive tabloid. who gives a shit about famous people? authors I assumed died decades ago? Literally I do not give a single shit what Stephen King or JK Rowling thinks have fun with that, but you just explained why it never appealed to me. Weird idolatry. Reddit has the same problem. Interesting people talk about ideas, not other people > something insightful enough you mean if you play the game an…

> who gives a shit about famous people? authors I assumed died decades ago? Literally I do not give a single shit what Stephen King or JK Rowling thinks

I meant, like, Joyce Carol Oates; who I had mentally placed in the same "historic personage" category as Sylvia Plath and Angela Carter before learning she had a twitter account.

And, yeah, it's somewhat toxic to engage in idolatry; yeah, I would more profitably spend my time trying to become a research director or founder myself. Having John Carmack like my Arxiv recommendation isn't an achievement, the way inventing the fast inverse square root algorithm is. But it sure does feel nice!

Re: Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

#450

Post by fastball » Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 2:38 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #329

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being far-right is not what made /b/ a wasteland, so that doesn't surprise me at all.