When I joined it, just as when I joined Mastodon, most of what I saw was just anti-Twitter and anti-Musk content, which I didn't really care to read about, either for or against both of them. It might just be who I was following but the people I followed were similar in both Twitter and Bluesky / Mastodon, mostly indie hackers and other small time SaaS founders, and even these people started posting a lot of anti-Twitter stuff, more than even talking about their own products. On Twitter, the same types of people just...didn't give a shit about any of the drama and I actually learned a lot about product building from their threads.
It seems like if you start a platform mostly as a reaction to another platform, you're gonna get the same sort of social media bubble, only of the opposite variety. That's why I still use Twitter currently, I just don't see the same issue that other people seem to have, and that's likely because I don't engage in politics or respond to trolls on there.
It will take a lot to break the network effect of X, probably more so than many other platforms, because it's very detrimental to their reach (and income/revenue share) for people with a lot of followers to move. So the important people will mostly stay, and they will attract back the people who leave, we've seen this a couple of cycles. Contrast that to something like Facebook. It had large network effects too, but all it takes is a few of your best friends switching at the same time, and nobody is losing a lot of reach by leaving. So they keep posting to both, but that takes work to keep up.
As much as I hoped Mastodon to win (even backed their Patreon for a year), they kept underestimating the onboarding friction and now that the general audience was ready to switch, of course they went for the twitter clone that is easy to join and looks familiar.
I don't really do any twitter style social media but just from checking the occasional post I can tell it's taking off because angry right wing trolls have started appearing in the replies.
I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site.
> I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site.
One thing that Bluesky has over Twitter is the first-party concept of a moderation list; people can maintain lists of accounts, and people who trust those lists can use them to mass-mute/block the people on the lists. This actually used to be a somewhat common user-driven behaviour on Twitter (I once managed to offend Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter, back when he was still a darling of the far-right, and use of mass-block-lists was the only way to remove the hordes of angry teenagers from my at-mentions), but it was always clunky due to lack of first-party support, and post-Musk it became increasingly difficult with the death of the API.
- Blocklists and other more sophisticated custom moderation available.
- Threads and profiles accessible to non-logged-in people (note that you can read the linked post and its replies without being logged in; on Twitter you at minimum couldn't see the replies, and depending on the account/phase of moon might just get an error for the actual post.)
- Less deranged leadership (at least now that Dorsey has flounced off).
They've started charging for an easy verified domain thingy (https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan - Doing it yourself involves messing with DNS records), and I _think_ they said they'd charge for longer/higher quality video uploads (video currently limited to 60s) and profile customisation stuff. They've claimed they won't do targeted ads; we'll see how long that lasts.
For a side project I created a new account on X and on Bluesky, both before the election.
Bluesky asks what my interests are. I said software engineering, science and tech. Bluesky showed a lot of posts of cool space photos.
X asks me to follow an account from a list. I chose NASA. Out of curiosity I checked out the "For you" tab on this brand new account. I did not get recommended space photos. X pushed a lot of political posts, some bordering on hate speech (one used the n-word).
I don't quite know what explains the differences between the new-account experiences, but I had a much better time on Bluesky. I don't know if this will last, or if Bluesky is destined to follow in Twitter's footsteps once more people start joining, but I think right now Bluesky is in a good spot.
It doesn't stop the dunking because people will quickly adjust to use screenshots instead of detachable quote-tweets, but you're less likely to stumble on it, everyone remains in their bubble.
It seems like if you start a platform mostly as a reaction to another platform, you're gonna get the same sort of social media bubble, only of the opposite variety. That's why I still use Twitter currently, I just don't see the same issue that other people seem to have, and that's likely because I don't engage in politics or respond to trolls on there.
Still not really what I'm after, but that's what the 'Following' tab is for.
I'm guessing the technical and social response to that (ignoring and blocking seems to be recommended, dunk-quoting their idiocy actively advised against) will determine the long term success as a useful site.
One thing that Bluesky has over Twitter is the first-party concept of a moderation list; people can maintain lists of accounts, and people who trust those lists can use them to mass-mute/block the people on the lists. This actually used to be a somewhat common user-driven behaviour on Twitter (I once managed to offend Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter, back when he was still a darling of the far-right, and use of mass-block-lists was the only way to remove the hordes of angry teenagers from my at-mentions), but it was always clunky due to lack of first-party support, and post-Musk it became increasingly difficult with the death of the API.
Won’t it be the same with fewer but growing number of users?
- Third party clients available.
- Blocklists and other more sophisticated custom moderation available.
- Threads and profiles accessible to non-logged-in people (note that you can read the linked post and its replies without being logged in; on Twitter you at minimum couldn't see the replies, and depending on the account/phase of moon might just get an error for the actual post.)
- Less deranged leadership (at least now that Dorsey has flounced off).
- Blocking works.
I ask because if they are operating on red, chances are they might start doing some of the things Twitter currently does.
I was a private alpha tester "when it was cool" but I get the feel they're taking the discord approach of things.
I predict that in a year you will soon be charged for uploading videos and or something of the likes.
Last week I deleted my account. Now proud to be 99.8% (HN, LinkedIn) social network free.
Bluesky asks what my interests are. I said software engineering, science and tech. Bluesky showed a lot of posts of cool space photos.
X asks me to follow an account from a list. I chose NASA. Out of curiosity I checked out the "For you" tab on this brand new account. I did not get recommended space photos. X pushed a lot of political posts, some bordering on hate speech (one used the n-word).
I don't quite know what explains the differences between the new-account experiences, but I had a much better time on Bluesky. I don't know if this will last, or if Bluesky is destined to follow in Twitter's footsteps once more people start joining, but I think right now Bluesky is in a good spot.
I know one technical difference: if someone quote-tweets to dunk on you, you can stop it.
There must be more like that, because the effect is readily noticeable.