Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to see politics, rage bait, sexism, hate, performative superiority, whining, or negativity. Who invented all of these algorithms? I want none of this. I want good news, awesome things, uplifting stories, cool hacks. That's it. That's literally it.
my tiktok fyp is just that.
Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
61–70 of 240 posts
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#62I wanted to like bluesky, I really tried, but when 90% of it ( after filtering out politics ) is people talking about the platform itself, it's off-putting. I don't want to hear about atproto, or "the atmosophere", I want to hear about actually interesting things. It'd be like if 90% of twitter was talking about twitter the platform, it's an odd thing to focus on.
And I actually wouldn't mind seeing more discussion about atproto. I'm mildly curious about whether anyone is doing anything with it.
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The distinction is that Mastodon doesn't have to grow, and Bluesky does. There's an extent to which Bluesky is viable because its venture-funded owner pays for the infrastructure it operates on (Mastodon communities generally have to stand on their own two feet). If there's no path for Bluesky to grow into a viable business on its current financial runway, the funding for the infrastructure will end.
ATProto infrastructure is mostly open and there are folks operating pieces of it independently even if the landscape is dominated by the Bluesky PBC. It's true that Mastodon grew bottom-up without centralized funding so the shuttering of the PBC will be a big deal for the AT ecosystem but it's all independently doable.
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#64Bluesky's feed algorithm (the "Discover" tab) is the worst I've ever seen. Hands down. I can't imagine anyone enjoying it unless they're 1) super into the US politics/domestic issues AND 2) politically aligned with the main user base of Bluesky. The funniest part is that there is a better algorithm. It's right here: https://bsky.app/profile/spacecowboy17.bsky.social/feed/for-... But somehow the devs of Bluesky never…
> Bluesky's feed algorithm (the "Discover" tab) is the worst I've ever seen. Even worse than Mastodon's?
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#65I hope against hope that people started to realize that the problem isn't the platform, it's the entire approach. Who am I kidding, people just realized that Bluesky wasn't going to be the next big thing and so it collapsed into being a mediocre bubble like Twitter, but without the scale.
> it collapsed into being a mediocre bubble like Twitter, but without the scale. I liked Josh Barro's take: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-isnt-a-bubble-its-a-cont...
It's a lesson I think we all need to learn over and over: the loudest are not really the most representative, they're just the loudest. Online I'd add that they're often the craziest and least able to compromise.
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#66I wanted to like bluesky, I really tried, but when 90% of it ( after filtering out politics ) is people talking about the platform itself, it's off-putting. I don't want to hear about atproto, or "the atmosophere", I want to hear about actually interesting things. It'd be like if 90% of twitter was talking about twitter the platform, it's an odd thing to focus on.
When was this? Other than posts from official the Bluesky account (bsky.app) my feed is roughly 0% about Bluesky itself. There was more discussion about Bluesky itself early on, when the contrast with Twitter was more topical. And I actually wouldn't mind seeing more discussion about atproto. I'm mildly curious about whether anyone is doing anything with it.
And a whole bunch of other stuff about whether people should even be on bluesky, or should be instead on other federations, and it all just feels so meaningless to me.
It's as if someone has invented a few different ways to print, and there's a million interesting things to write about, but everyone in my echo chamber is talking about whether we should be using A4 or letter sized paper.
And to be clear, this is the "for you" feed even after some shaping, the official discover feed is so much US politics it's straight unusable. Plenty of politics still leaks through to "for you", but it's a manageable amount.
There's a dotnet feed I follow too, but honestly it's hard to find any real people to follow between the dotnet foundation reposts, the linkedin grade BS, and the lost musicians. ( Not their fault, the feed picks up any mention of F# as being dotnet! )
Like I said, I want to make bluesky work, it ought to have less engagement bait, and less lock out of anonymous users, but there's a still a lack of critical mass of real people.
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that Bluesky has first class support for me to choose my own feed algorithm is proof it’s NOTHING like truth social.
Whenever I point out (in agreement with your statement) that the idea that the left and the right are somehow equally bad is a kind of fantasy on HN I usually get downvoted. People seem very committed to "shades of gray", moderate thinking to the point that it's viewed as always correct, which is well, just wrong. Yeah, often things are more complicated than they appear, but I find it almost hilarious how often you c…
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real percentage of bots on X is a baseline of 10% and can quadruple around contentious topics; see: https://www.clickguard.com/blog/twitter-spam-bots/ Information on bots on Bluesky is limited, but from digging around for a few minutes, Bluesky users report 15-40% of their followers are bots. You seem fairly confident about Bluesky having far fewer bots and fewer foreign agents, so if you have a good link on Blue…
We get to block them. They may exist but they’re invisible. The bots and trolls and agents on X are always on your front porch.
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I point out (in agreement with your statement) that the idea that the left and the right are somehow equally bad is a kind of fantasy on HN I usually get downvoted. People seem very committed to "shades of gray", moderate thinking to the point that it's viewed as always correct, which is well, just wrong. Yeah, often things are more complicated than they appear, but I find it almost hilarious how often you c…
> People seem very committed to "shades of gray", moderate thinking to the point that it's viewed as always correct, which is well, just wrong. > And for the record I'm definitely not saying the left is somehow perfect. Obviously the left is a bit of a mess too. It's just that they're not the same kinds of messes across party lines. Seems like you've fallen to the same fallacy within the same paragraph, which is quit…
Re: Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
#70The fediverse does literally everything better than it. Bluesky by comparison is completely inferior and redundant.