[HN Gopher] Visualizing 13M Bluesky users
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Visualizing 13M Bluesky users
        
       Author : joelg
       Score  : 215 points
       Date   : 2024-11-12 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (joelgustafson.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (joelgustafson.com)
        
       | OmarShehata wrote:
       | > can't make a map of all of twitter
       | 
       | no, but nothing can stop you & a bunch of people from exporting
       | your tweet archive and visualizing that!
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | Hard to get 13M people to do it, and harder to stop some subset
         | of those 13M people polluting your dataset with fake data.
        
           | jsight wrote:
           | Yep, and there will be self selection biases even among
           | people who don't export fake data.
        
       | OmarShehata wrote:
       | I'd love to see a more NLP look at this data, Google trends
       | style. What topics of discourse come up regularly, what spikes
       | during certain time periods? Can you summarize what economists
       | are discussing? Can you find people talking about the same things
       | but are not in each other's networks?
        
       | cwal37 wrote:
       | Bluesky has really exploded in certain niches over the past week,
       | I think my followers have gone up 5-6x since Saturday.
       | 
       | I'd been a somewhat active user over the past year as
       | conversation on the field I work in (energy) become so degraded
       | on Twitter as to make it kind of worthless (mean in multiple
       | senses of the word as well as ludicrous levels of spam), but
       | Bluesky was pretty relaxed without a lot of traction, now there's
       | some real heat to it as things pick up.
       | 
       | Hopefully this surge is real, has certianly gotten me to be much
       | more active.
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | Yeah, I've had an account for quite a while now (from before
         | registrations were open), but it was largely a ghost town. The
         | last few days there is a lot more stuff happening in my feed.
         | And so far free of all the drama, bots, etc.
        
         | unpopularopp wrote:
         | I yet to find "utility" accounts on Bluesky. I use Twitter to
         | follow news from games, game studios and publishers, news
         | sites, bands, NASA etc. There is nothing like there yet and I
         | don't care about random people (as I don't care about them on
         | Twitter either)
         | 
         | I check time to time but basically it's 0/50
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | It's a chicken-and-egg problem. Fortunately it appears that
           | utility accounts are slowly popping up now that there's an
           | audience.
        
           | jacoblambda wrote:
           | If you are looking for stuff from big publishers then yeah
           | it's gonna be a bit slow/empty but there are a lot of
           | small/indie devs on bluesky and it's awesome being able to
           | interact with them directly without all the spam that usually
           | came with posts on twitter.
        
           | omoikane wrote:
           | For NASA, looks like someone has made an unofficial mirror
           | account:
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/nasa.extwitter.link
           | 
           | Also, some game companies do maintain a presence on bluesky:
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/sega.jp
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/panic.com
        
           | threeseed wrote:
           | You will find a lot of games, studios and bands on Threads.
           | 
           | Since it leverages Instagram and has pretty fantastic photo
           | features.
        
           | SubiculumCode wrote:
           | Yeah. Twitter/X after the Russian invasion quickly let me
           | connect to serious professionals in US-Russia relations, war,
           | etc. e.g. War on the Rocks and Mike Kofman, the Truth of the
           | Matter by CSIS, etc.
           | 
           | Are there easy tools that allow you to post on multiple
           | platforms from the same content, that also supports replies?
        
         | mrits wrote:
         | Considering X is an app used by the world I don't see how there
         | could be any real momentum. To begin with, the world is more
         | conservative than the US.
        
           | threeseed wrote:
           | The facts are that Threads has 275m MAU and has been #1 on
           | the App Store almost continually since it launched. Bluesky
           | is now #2 and rapidly growing. The momentum is real and
           | significant.
           | 
           | And the world is sick of Elon Musk and US politics.
        
             | mrits wrote:
             | The facts are that the world is addicted to Elon Musk and
             | US politics.
        
               | alexriddle wrote:
               | I don't think that's particularly true but even if it
               | was, the site is overrun with crypto spam and porn bots
               | that will drive people away. I know 3 people who have
               | deactivated their account and switched to bluesky in the
               | past week - and anecdotal evidence for many people on
               | bluesky seems to suggest engagement levels are
               | significantly higher. The network effects are really
               | gaining traction as well.
               | 
               | I gave up on Twitter when I opened the app in public to
               | find a porn video playing in the main feed, despite not
               | following or interacting with any accounts of that nature
               | previously. That was ~6 months ago and I haven't looked
               | back.
        
               | Barrin92 wrote:
               | Twitter is quite small as far as big social media
               | platforms go (about 300 million, largest individual
               | userbase by far US citizens [1]). Compared to Telegram
               | with a billion users and Instagram, Facebook,
               | TikTok/Douyin in the billions the constant talking about
               | Twitter/Elon and so forth isn't that internationally
               | relevant.
               | 
               | No offense but it's mostly Americans screaming at other
               | Americans about how important America is. It's a little
               | bit tiresome how much headspace that site and owner
               | occupy these days on certain parts of the internet.
               | 
               | [1]https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/number-of-twitter-
               | users-by...
        
         | threeseed wrote:
         | For me, everything is settling.
         | 
         | Threads is a half Twitter, half Instagram hybrid strong in
         | creative, travel, social etc type content. Bluesky is original
         | Twitter with strengths in news, politics, science etc. These
         | days not sure it will ever be possible to have one app that
         | does it all.
         | 
         | Which leaves X as the new 4chan.
        
           | steve_adams_86 wrote:
           | Whoa, new 4chan is remarkably apt. It's shit-posting for
           | days. It feels degrading to use it at all.
        
           | meme3 wrote:
           | In terms of toxicity, X is way beyond 4chan at this point.
           | But the style is very different. Algorithmic vs organic,
           | retweets vs (You)s, anonymous vs semi-anonymous and much
           | more. All the way to how replies are visually presented which
           | is awful on Twitter and it's clones.
           | 
           | Honestly, I've had more positive interactions and learned
           | more on 4chan than I ever have on Twitter. I wish the few
           | tech people I care about who are still on there would just
           | move (to clarify, move anywhere, not to 4chan obviously).
        
             | bigstrat2003 wrote:
             | Twitter has always been one of the most toxic places on the
             | Internet. It's why I have refused to use it, because I have
             | better things to do with my time than watch terminally
             | online people get into diatribes about their extreme
             | left/right political views. I don't have any faith that any
             | replacement will be better, considering that they are
             | primarily populated by the people who are so extreme left
             | that they couldn't abide the idea of new Twitter ownership.
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | The spammers and trolls will be there soon. Nothing popular is
         | ignored for long.
        
           | jkestner wrote:
           | Nice thing is that block works there.
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | My X never really degraded (I also spend a lot of time on
         | Japanese-language X which is probably a different beast) but I
         | have been spending time on Bluesky over the last year. For a
         | while it was a fun network but fairly quiet. I could go an hour
         | or so without any new posts. Over the last 3 weeks I've seen
         | Bluesky become a lot more active and now it's feeling a lot
         | like X where there's no way to stay on top of my feed. I'm
         | really excited as I'm a firm believer that larger communities
         | lead to more diverse views.
         | 
         | I also run my own Bluesky labeler and Firehose ingester so I've
         | been following as event throughput has roughly doubled over the
         | last 3-4 months.
        
           | brendoelfrendo wrote:
           | Japanese language Twitter is indeed a very different beast.
           | It's pretty much the social network over there, and most of
           | Musk's changes that targeted or angered users were primarily
           | targeted at English-language users, mostly in the US. So the
           | Japanese users just kinda trucked on like nothing was
           | happening.
        
         | Applejinx wrote:
         | That's been my experience as well, in every sense. A sudden
         | explosion of incoming people, many new options of interesting
         | and salient people to follow, and the overall experience
         | rapidly getting more engaging.
        
         | IAmGraydon wrote:
         | It's just getting a lot more attention everywhere, as evidenced
         | by Google Trends.
         | 
         | https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...
         | 
         | There is an obvious need for Twitter-like platforms, but
         | Twitter/X has become too right-wing for many users. The left
         | needs a place to talk and vent about the election, and Twitter
         | is no longer friendly to that. Therefore, Bluesky is taking off
         | due to that event.
        
         | jcul wrote:
         | I never really "got" Twitter.
         | 
         | I don't know why, but I always felt like the hype went over me
         | head, and it was a bit boring.
         | 
         | Though I'm tempted to check out Bluesky, the AT protocol seems
         | really interesting.
        
           | saila wrote:
           | In its heyday, before the most recent acquisition, Twitter
           | was really good for local info (ignoring celebrities,
           | shitposting, and the like). Not just news but announcements,
           | alerts, and other local stuff if you followed the right
           | accounts.
           | 
           | Mastodon is cool, but it's hard to consistently find that
           | local info. Bluesky seems like it has a chance of supplanting
           | Twitter in this way, but it's not there yet. Some of the
           | accounts I used to follow on Twitter are on Bluesky, but they
           | don't post. If they started, I think they'd get tons of
           | followers now.
        
       | andreygrehov wrote:
       | Is the "scraper" still running? If so, how many users are there
       | today?
        
         | joelg wrote:
         | there are a other few places tracking those stats too; I just
         | counted 14487454 in my database :)
        
       | kmelve wrote:
       | Pretty cool! The BlueSky API is on point. A colleague of mine put
       | together this visualization based on the firehose:
       | https://bigmood.blue/
       | 
       | Source:
       | https://bsky.app/profile/even.westvang.com/post/3laob7tefxk2...
        
       | willcodeforfoo wrote:
       | Love this kind of post! I was surprised to see you really can
       | drink from the firehose:                 brew install websocat
       | websocat wss://bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.subscribeRepos
       | 
       | ...haven't tried to decode it, though.
        
         | alpb wrote:
         | Twitter used to have a Firehose API, too. Over time they closed
         | it, and made it only available to large users like Google
         | Search with real-time indexing needs.
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | Twitter had a really outstanding search and streaming API,
           | but after Musk bought it they put it behind a $60k/year
           | paywall. You can see a corresponding and abrupt falloff in
           | academic network research papers, with newer ones that
           | revolve around Twitter largely limited to cannibalizing old
           | datasets.
           | 
           | With luck bsky keeps growing and researchers invest effort in
           | studying a more open-by-design platform.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | I hadn't come across this before, looking forward to exploring
         | a new tool. Thanks!
        
         | ericvolp12 wrote:
         | Give Jetstream a try instead, it's all JSON for you already:
         | 
         | websocat wss://jetstream2.us-west.bsky.network/subscribe
        
       | zdimension wrote:
       | Very nice. Modern GPUs really are fast as drawing points.
       | 
       | It's pretty similar to a project I've been working on for the
       | past year, scraping Facebook instead of BlueSky (which is a bit
       | harder since FB doesn't expose an API for that). I currently have
       | about 140 million nodes on my scraped graph and a GUI with
       | pathfinding and stuff like that.
       | 
       | It's a shame though because as nice as the thing is, I'm not sure
       | I can publish it online, given it contains names of people. I
       | don't think the GDPR would be very happy.
       | 
       | Which is why I'm a bit surprised you published this, aren't you
       | afraid of people, uh, disliking the fact that they're present in
       | your dataset?
        
         | jchw wrote:
         | AT proto is an open network. Everything you do is public by
         | default. e.g. anyone else can just drink from the firehose.
        
           | zdimension wrote:
           | Yeah, but that doesn't solve the data privacy problem. Not
           | that I care, I'd love to be able to do all sorts of stuff
           | with scraped datasets.
        
             | jazzyjackson wrote:
             | One would hope the people on bluesky understand that
             | they're posting publically to a centralized database. What
             | data privacy problem are you concerned with?
        
       | Etheryte wrote:
       | Hard to overstate just how much I like this. Not only does the
       | end result convey information in many dimensions, it's also
       | extremely appealing visually. The graininess that stems from
       | rendering such a large number of nodes really adds a nice touch
       | here, something that you don't often see in other graph
       | visualizations.
        
       | andreygrehov wrote:
       | The visualization looks absolutely fantastic. Great work. Would
       | love to dive deeper into the tech behind it.
       | 
       | I'll just share some irony. They say X/Twitter is full of people
       | spreading hate speech. I just logged in into my old BlueSky
       | account. My entire feed is full of people saying how much they
       | _hate_ X/Twitter.
        
         | jamwil wrote:
         | Hate speech is derogatory or harmful speech targeted at a
         | marginalized community. Hating a company or product is not the
         | same thing.
        
           | andreygrehov wrote:
           | I just clicked "Discover" to see popular posts.
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/lepapillonblue.bsky.social/post/3la.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3larj.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://bsky.app/profile/browneyedsusan.bsky.social/post/3la.
           | ..
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | None of that is remotely close to hate speech. President
             | Trump is not a marginalized community.
        
               | andreygrehov wrote:
               | Hate speech or not, there is nothing pleasant about it.
               | 
               | The irony is that the 'holier-than-thou' crowd, who are
               | against hate and for love all over the world,
               | overwhelmingly post negative political comments and are
               | rooting for X/Twitter to collapse.
               | 
               | This ^ is a good problem to solve in social networks.
        
               | rsynnott wrote:
               | > This ^ is a good problem to solve in social networks.
               | 
               | What, that people are mean about a very special website
               | sometimes? Seems a rather niche problem, tbh.
               | 
               | There is nothing inherently wrong with people being
               | negative. If you had a social network where people could
               | only be positive about things... now, that would be
               | unhealthy.
        
               | barbazoo wrote:
               | It was about "hate speech" though, not "unpleasant
               | speech", then you'd be right.
               | 
               | Stop thinking in us/them, everybody hates someone or
               | something and that's fine. That's not what hate speech is
               | I think. Take one example from the Canadian govmnt:
               | 
               | > The bill defines "hate speech" as the content of a
               | communication that expresses detestation or vilification
               | of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of
               | a prohibited ground of discrimination.
               | 
               | > These grounds of discrimination are race, national or
               | ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual
               | orientation, gender identity or expression, marital
               | status, family status, genetic characteristics,
               | disability, or conviction for an offence for which a
               | pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record
               | suspension has been ordered.
               | 
               | https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/chshc-
               | lcdch/index.h...
               | 
               | That's just one "official" definition of many obviously.
        
               | andreygrehov wrote:
               | Sure, there are clear differences between hate speech and
               | unpleasant speech. I can't disagree on the definition.
               | But I'm seeing a lot of hateful anti-Trump posts on
               | BlueSky, and on X/Twitter, there's plenty of pro-Trump
               | content. These two groups have polarized views, so they
               | naturally clash.
               | 
               | What I find ironic is that BlueSky has many openly anti-
               | Trump posts, while X/Twitter tends to have a significant
               | amount of pro-Trump content. Because many minority and
               | marginalized groups lean anti-Trump, again, these
               | opposing viewpoints naturally clash, often leading to
               | Twitter being labeled as a "hate speech platform". Yet on
               | BlueSky, there's no problem with people openly
               | criticizing or spreading negativity about pro-Trump
               | people. Since Trump supporters don't typically fall into
               | minority categories, it seems BlueSky users have the
               | "privilege" to freely bash the Twitter crowd without
               | facing the same scrutiny. Essentially, BlueSky is
               | shielded from the hate speech label despite fostering a
               | different kind of polarized environment.
        
               | jrflowers wrote:
               | It isn't ironic to dislike intolerant people or to voice
               | it. It is an individual's prerogative to imagine that
               | tolerance must be completely uniform, but that doesn't
               | reflect the reality of groups or systems made up of
               | actual humans.
               | 
               | Here is a relevant article
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
        
               | bastardoperator wrote:
               | Social networks require drama in order to stay relevant,
               | this is baked in and by design. Capitalist love this
               | feature. Also you'll never get 100's of millions of
               | people to agree on anything.
               | 
               | Is it really fare to compare a political cartoon to the
               | garbage twitter is allowing? I might still visit twitter
               | if it wasn't so out of control.
        
             | rsynnott wrote:
             | ... So, wait, two political cartoons (the first one's been
             | on the go for years; it's pretty much a classic at this
             | point) and a cat? Like, unless you're going to claim that
             | ol' minihands is a marginalised group of one, very hard to
             | read any of these as hate speech. Actually, even if one
             | _was_ to accept that obviously silly premise, still
             | probably not. Maybe the cat, at a serious push.
        
           | throw7 wrote:
           | So derogatory or harmful speech toward white people is
           | perfectly fine.
        
           | jkestner wrote:
           | Corporations are people, my friend. This is being tested
           | again with anti-boycott laws and lawsuits.
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | https://bsky.app/profile/mnateshyamalan.bsky.social/post/3ju...
        
         | beardicus wrote:
         | Seems weird to find irony there, unless you think people and
         | websites are the same thing.
        
         | YetAnotherNick wrote:
         | While I don't think it's technically hate speech, but yeah
         | bluesky is either just unanimous negativity or positivity for
         | different things, and it feels like groupthink. There is no
         | middle ground.
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | Almost all social networks have been ideologically polarized
           | since 2016. It's not new or specific to Bluesky.
           | 
           | The only reason Hacker News avoided that fate is due to
           | downvote/flag mechanisms.
        
             | bigstrat2003 wrote:
             | > The only reason Hacker News avoided that fate
             | 
             | It hasn't avoided that fate. If you doubt me, go into a
             | thread about US politics and praise Donald Trump and watch
             | as your comments get not just downvoted, but flagged so
             | that they are hidden. This will happen no matter how good
             | your arguments are.
             | 
             | Make no mistake, this site is ideologically polarized just
             | like all the others. The only saving grace is that the vast
             | majority of topics are about tech, not politics, so the
             | polarization is usually hidden.
        
         | jacoblambda wrote:
         | That's a current wave going through. There's a bit of discourse
         | going on where some users were rage baiting by constantly
         | posting twitter screenshots over to bluesky and people who left
         | bluesky are pushing back about how they don't want to see that
         | content.
         | 
         | That discourse comes in waves each time a major migration
         | happens from twitter to bluesky but it settles down fairly soon
         | after each time. Give it a few days and people will have moved
         | on to the new topic of the day.
         | 
         | Also it's worth noting that the "Discover" feed is trained
         | specifically per person so while the defaults aren't great, if
         | you use the "show more like this" and "show less like this"
         | options on posts (under the triple dot) then pretty quickly it
         | tunes in towards content you care about vs content you don't.
        
           | andreygrehov wrote:
           | That's a reasonable explanation. Thanks.
           | 
           | > Also it's worth noting that the "Discover" feed is trained
           | specifically per person so while the defaults aren't great,
           | if you use the "show more like this" and "show less like
           | this" options on posts (under the triple dot) then pretty
           | quickly it tunes in towards content you care about vs content
           | you don't.
           | 
           | This is the first time I clicked "Discover". I haven't logged
           | into BlueSky for almost two years.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | For the avoidance of doubt, saying you hate a website is not
         | hate speech. That is not what hate speech means.
        
         | yen223 wrote:
         | > They say X/Twitter is full of people spreading hate speech.
         | 
         | I've recently created a brand new account on X for a project.
         | Looking at what was being recommended to the brand-new account
         | with no interactions or likes or anything, they are not wrong.
        
           | andreygrehov wrote:
           | Can you share some examples?
        
             | yen223 wrote:
             | Within the first 15 recommended posts or so there was
             | 
             | - a post about how Canada is overrun by Indians
             | 
             | - a post about how Melbourne is overrun by n-worders (they
             | replaced the Gs with PSs)
             | 
             | - a post about how a trans person is ugly
             | 
             | - 2 "nudes in bio" bot posts. This was not hate speech, and
             | arguably the most positive posts I got.
             | 
             | This is not counting the Elon posts and the Trump posts,
             | which were the first and second thing that got recommended.
             | Nor the posts from Elon Musk imitators, who I assume are
             | trying to take advantage of the fact that Elon Musk gets
             | special treatment from the algorithm.
             | 
             | When you create a new account, X asks you to follow an
             | account to determine what your interests are. I picked
             | NASA. I did not get recommended a single space photo.
        
       | declan_roberts wrote:
       | Bluesky to me still seems like a place completely dominated by
       | software type (HN crowd). I know there are obvious exceptions
       | there's no need for you to list them.
       | 
       | Threads has extreme normies, bluesky has the nerds, and twitter
       | seems to have just the right mixture of both.
        
         | YetAnotherNick wrote:
         | Bluesky seems to be also very common among artists.
        
           | kps wrote:
           | The mid-October bump was artists discovering that posting on
           | Twitter allows them to use posts for training AI.
           | 
           | https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/bluesky-year.html
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | That and the change to how blocking works on Twitter, which
             | coincided with the AI policy change.
        
             | YetAnotherNick wrote:
             | If Bluesky is decentralized, can't twitter still train on
             | Bluesky posts?
        
               | rsynnott wrote:
               | There's arguably a moral difference between having your
               | stuff stolen, and giving it up as part of the TOS. Most
               | artists, you'd assume, would prefer the former.
        
               | YetAnotherNick wrote:
               | Bluesky's TOS[1]:
               | 
               | > You grant us permission to: Use User Content to
               | develop, provide, and improve Bluesky Social, the AT
               | Protocol, and any of our future offerings
               | 
               | [1]: https://bsky.social/about/support/tos#user-content
        
         | anamexis wrote:
         | I won't list out exceptions, but my Bluesky experience is not
         | at all how you describe. Obviously it just depends on who you
         | follow, but I don't think "dominated by software type"
         | describes the Bluesky demographic as a whole, and it hasn't for
         | some time.
        
           | seanvelasco wrote:
           | if you don't follow anyone, like me, the timeline is
           | dominated by journalists, furries, and people who post
           | nudity. i'm not saying these are bad, just an observation.
        
         | joelg wrote:
         | one of my biggest subjective takeaways from spending hours
         | scrolling around the map is that my impression that the
         | userbase was dominated by software types was ~mostly wrong!
         | feels like less than half, and the rest is huge swaths of
         | normie, artist, furry, and media people
        
         | sundarurfriend wrote:
         | This thread (no pun intended) is the first I'm hearing that
         | anyone uses Threads at all. To me, it seemed like after the
         | initial week or so, there was only bots left on Threads, trying
         | to hook people to the person's Instagram, or whatever other
         | place they actually post content at.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | Threads is the highest ranked "social" app on the Play Store
           | right now, so a lot of real people must be using it despite
           | appearances. Next down the list is TikTok, then Instagram,
           | Bluesky, Facebook, X (below Bluesky!), and finally Reddit.
        
             | dgellow wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure app stores rankings are regional. You
             | should mention your region and device type if you want
             | others to compare
        
             | threeseed wrote:
             | Also at least here in Australia, Threads is ranked #3 of
             | all free iOS apps.
             | 
             | And it's been in the top 3 ever since it launched a year
             | ago. X is #69.
        
         | spankalee wrote:
         | There's starting to be lots of news and politics sources on
         | there. The Swifties are moving over, there's a nice "BlackSky"
         | movement, and there's a bit of sports popping up now too.
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | I find Mastodon much more dominated by that crowd. Bluesky
         | seems to have a decent mix of software nerds and artists, but
         | yes there's definitely a "nerd" bias there that Threads doesn't
         | have which is more aggressively "normie".
        
         | seanvelasco wrote:
         | > dominated by software type (HN crowd)
         | 
         | i find this very surprising. i don't see a lot of technical
         | people out there, except for the bsky devs or devs who are
         | building apps on top of atproto.
         | 
         | i've visited bluesky enough over the months, and to me, there's
         | 3 types of users you will always see on the Discover or What's
         | Hot timeline - journalists, furries, and people who post
         | nudity.
         | 
         | tech people are still on twitter. i feel like the "exodus" of
         | tech people following the election are just them making an
         | account, and then returning to X after some time. it happened
         | then during the private beta, and i feel like the same is
         | happening now
        
       | parsimo2010 wrote:
       | That looks really cool. I would also be interested to see
       | examples of what commonality links the clusters of nodes- like
       | are there clusters of people with the same hobby? Are there
       | clusters of people speaking the same language, or living in the
       | same city?
       | 
       | Another thought since Bluesky is a pretty inclusive place, are
       | the LGBTQIA+ folks clustering into their own respective labels,
       | or is everyone mixing together? Is any of this behavior similar
       | or different to what we see on other social networks?
        
         | treyd wrote:
         | Those groups are more on Mastodon.
        
           | rsynnott wrote:
           | Nah, lots of LGBT+ people on Bluesky, too. Especially in the
           | last week or so.
        
       | bradgessler wrote:
       | The best thing about Bluesky is you can use your domain as your
       | username. I'm @bradgessler.com on there, so if people want to
       | "verify" me, they see something more meaningful than a blue
       | checkbox, which is my website.
       | 
       | If I ever get blocked, banned, deplatformed, whatever--people
       | would see my domain and be able to go there to determine what's
       | going on. In a sense it's "censorship-evident".
       | 
       | I think this will be great for businesses--it's so much more less
       | ambiguous if I can @example.com a business and get a response. I
       | put a starter pack together of SaaS built on Rails that's already
       | doing this at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u
       | 
       | I really like what BlueSky is doing and hope it doesn't get
       | enshitified as the future plays out. Even if it does, it seems
       | like now is a goldilocks moment where things are feeling really
       | good there.
       | 
       | I highly recommend spending the 5 minutes it takes to setup an
       | account and point it at your domain.
        
         | ZacnyLos wrote:
         | Verifying your identity on Mastodon is for everyone as well and
         | based on open web standards.
         | 
         | https://joinmastodon.org/verification
        
           | bradgessler wrote:
           | Problem with Mastodon is you're forced to associate with the
           | identity of the sever or run your own instance, both of which
           | are very awkward.
           | 
           | I'm @bradgessler@ruby.social, but I'm more than a Ruby dev.
           | 
           | I could run a Mastadon instance for bradgessler.com, but I
           | have no desire to spend even 3 minutes figuring out how to
           | set all that up. Maintaining my own instance sounds even
           | worse.
           | 
           | Bluesky gets the ergonomics of this right: the usernames feel
           | like they occupy a global namespace and I can point the
           | aliases at my domains in a few minutes without having to
           | worry about a bunch of standards that I don't really care
           | about.
           | 
           | For some reason I can't explain, it also really bothers me
           | that I have to @ people on Mastadon via
           | @brad@bradgessler.com. I don't want to say "@" twice if I'm
           | verbally telling somebody where to find me when presenting
           | and "@me@bradgessler" is weird too. Much easier to say
           | "Follow me @bradgessler.com"
           | 
           | Am I lazy? Yes, but most people are. Bluesky strikes a nice
           | balance of control and identity that I'm comfortable with for
           | the amount of time and effort I'm willing to put into it.
        
             | panic wrote:
             | It's possible to set up a Mastodon alias using WebFinger:
             | https://domenicoluciani.com/2022/11/19/how-to-create-
             | mastodo...
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | Neat thing about BlueSky using DNS TXT record is I don't
           | actually have to host a landing page. The way mastodon does
           | it feels like a quid pro quo way of making you put a mastodon
           | icon on your website. Bluesky is really good for corporate
           | and government users who can get an @name.whitehouse.gov
           | account or @name.npr.org etc without polluting the npr.org
           | markup with a thousand "rel" links for each of their
           | employees. I think bluesky is thinking about a different
           | audience than mastodon.
           | 
           | Also I took a look at https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry as
           | an example of a verified profile and the UX is quite bad.
           | Green check in a green box with a green border. The title tag
           | just says "Website" and there's no indication of what it
           | means.
        
         | extraduder_ire wrote:
         | The default handles (ending in .bsky.social) you get from
         | signing up also redirect to your profile on bsky.app by
         | default. Even if someone has no idea what bluesky is, they can
         | load up that URL (even with the @) and be looking at your
         | social profile right away.
        
       | typical182 wrote:
       | Bluesky and atproto seem to be built to be hackable.
       | 
       | Someone in the community recently built a searchable directory of
       | Bluesky "Starter Packs" (which are a way for a user to publish a
       | set of interesting people & feeds to follow, primarily to help
       | newcomers bootstrap their experience):
       | 
       | https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs/all
       | 
       | Dan Abramov posted about it earlier today, saying he liked it
       | and:
       | 
       | "the fact that it can be done in the ecosystem is awesome. let
       | the ecosystem cook" [1]
       | 
       | And maybe more poignantly:
       | 
       | "seeing random projects pop up in the atproto ecosystem reminds
       | me just how much public web common were stifled by social
       | companies closing down their APIs. an entire landscape of tools
       | given up on and abandoned" [2]
       | 
       | [1] https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3lar3sdna222d
       | 
       | [2] https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3lar3xpuu4c2d
        
         | mhartz wrote:
         | Wasn't this also sort of a feature with Twitter? iirc the
         | retweet and other now popular features were originally hacked
         | together by users
        
           | frabcus wrote:
           | Retweet was original using the text "RT". Hashtags were also
           | invented by Twitter users.
        
             | FranklinMaillot wrote:
             | Wasn't the @ also invented by users? I remember it was
             | fascinating to watch this network self organize and create
             | conventions of its own, that are now used everywhere.
        
               | rsynnott wrote:
               | Also hashtags. Though I think some of this stuff came
               | from other social networks.
        
             | singleshot_ wrote:
             | Seems to me like Jarkko Oikarinen or one of his crew
             | invented hashtags, no? Denoting the context of your
             | communication with something like #warez or #hack
             | significantly predates web2.0.
        
               | chefandy wrote:
               | That use-- to define IRC channels-- seems distinctly
               | different than Twitter hashtags to tag individual posts.
               | I wouldn't be surprised if hash tags started as a nod to
               | that, perhaps even jokingly, but I don't think you could
               | consider them a descendent.
        
               | sph wrote:
               | Rather I think Twitter-style hashtags take inspiration
               | from IRC channels in the format of # _topic_
               | 
               | Because channel names are not hashtags. The syntax is
               | purely because IRC is a text-based protocol, so you need
               | a special way to distinguish channel names from regular
               | text.
        
               | extraduder_ire wrote:
               | # also has the advantage of being on a key on a T9 keypad
               | while using twitter over SMS was in style.
        
             | soco wrote:
             | I think reblogs as a technical feature were added first in
             | 2009 by Tumblr and slightly later adopted by Twitter - not
             | that it matters in this context.
        
           | skybrian wrote:
           | Hashtags were invented. It's a convention that happened to
           | work well with Twitter's search engine.
        
           | xavdid wrote:
           | The word "tweet" itself came from a 3rd party developer:
           | 
           | > The Iconfactory was developing a Twitter application in
           | 2006 called "Twitterrific" and developer Craig Hockenberry
           | began a search for a shorter way to refer to "Post a Twitter
           | Update."
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet_(social_media)#History
        
         | nuz wrote:
         | Another argument is that it could lead to a bot problem 10x
         | worse than twitters ever was.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | The Twitter bot situation only seems to have got worse since
           | they shut down free API access. LLM engagement farming bots
           | everywhere in replies, hordes of scam bots replying if you
           | use certain keywords, porn bots following and DMing everyone
           | non-stop...
           | 
           | Evidently the people running the bots don't really care
           | whether or not you give them an API to work with.
        
             | Pxtl wrote:
             | Reminds me of this meme:
             | 
             | https://www.reddit.com/r/webscraping/comments/w1ve97/virgin
             | _...
        
               | Retr0id wrote:
               | Presumably the bots weren't using the "proper" APIs even
               | when they existed, so as to be less easily detectable.
        
             | extraduder_ire wrote:
             | I think that coincided with them removing phone number
             | verification for accounts. Probably due to my browser
             | looking unusual (content blocker, linux user-agent string,
             | other addons) any time I set up a new account and used it
             | for a few minutes a few years ago, it'd lock the account
             | and redirect every logged in page to one demanding SMS
             | verification to unlock the account.
             | 
             | I would usually get support to manually unlock it after a
             | few days by emailing them and mentioning why I didn't want
             | to give them a phone number. Now the process only involves
             | solving captchas. (and maybe some hidden waiting)
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | Computers that are operated by humans that are using APIs
           | designed for computers is not a bug, but a feature.
        
             | nonethewiser wrote:
             | Well yeah that's why you can expect it to increase 10x
        
           | realusername wrote:
           | I'm not sure you could be worse than Twitter right now on
           | bots unless you are pursposely trying to be worse.
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | Check out bluesky's "labeling services", I think it will be a
           | very simple matter to crowdsource lists of obvious bots and
           | prevent their having any reach. You can create bots that make
           | as many posts as you want, but bots aren't entitled to being
           | included in any feed. It comes down to the posts that the
           | relay choose to aggregate, and what the appview chooses to
           | display according to user preferences.
        
         | zft wrote:
         | Starterpacks are great, what about seeing what is current top
         | engaging accounts ? https://www.graphtracks.com
        
           | consumer451 wrote:
           | That's the best looking Bsky tool that I've seen so far.
           | Nice!
        
         | arcalinea wrote:
         | Yep, we intentionally built it to be hackable! We believe that
         | social media will improve when people are free to build on it,
         | change it, fork it, and remix it. Bluesky and the atproto
         | ecosystem can evolve as fast as users and developers want them
         | to.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | I was contemplating coming over, but this comment is the most
         | convincing to me.
         | 
         | I think one of the fatal flaws tech companies have been making
         | is locking things in. But what made the computer so great, what
         | made the smartphone so great, was to make them hackable. You
         | build environments, you build ecosystems. Lockin only slows you
         | down. I mean how long would it have taken for smartphones to
         | have a flashlight if it weren't for apps? A stopwatch? These
         | were apps before they were built into the operating systems.
        
       | SubiculumCode wrote:
       | A lot of high profile commentators were waiting until after the
       | election to move to Bluesky. They felt that they'd be giving up
       | their influence if they left then, but now that the election is
       | over they have time to rebuild onto a new platform. Bluesky seems
       | quite nice. I was on Mastadon for a while, but after the initial
       | burst of activity, its silo-like orientation led to stagnant
       | servers. That is, it neither fully embraced the community-first
       | services that Discord provides, nor the easy-discoverability of
       | open-platform of Twitter/X/.
       | 
       | Also, this may seem silly, but I like the butterfly logo.
        
         | pohl wrote:
         | There's another narrative that I've heard about the recent
         | flood of former-X users into Bluesky: a new Terms of Service
         | document goes into effect in about 4 days, giving X ownership
         | of your content with respect to its use in training LLMs.
        
       | notconsidering wrote:
       | Great. A place for narcissistic psycopathats to hang. Just like
       | Reddit.
       | 
       | so we can keep the rest of the internet clean.
        
       | dylan604 wrote:
       | "We can't make a map of all of Twitter, because the data isn't
       | available and scraping it would be difficult and illegal."
       | 
       | What makes scraping illegal?
        
         | barbazoo wrote:
         | Perhaps even the threat of being sued might be enough to even
         | consider doing this.
        
         | atemerev wrote:
         | Nothing. A precedent determining that scraping is legal is
         | already established.
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | "legal" doesn't imply that Twitter/X won't send a C&D due to
           | scraping that is expensive for a normal person to fight.
           | Moreso if Twitter/X invokes the CFAA which has been common
           | for scraping cases post HiQ vs. LinkedIn.
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | not if its behind a login wall.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | The LinkedIn vs HiQ case makes it so that scraping data behind
         | a login screen is not okay but publicly accessible pages are
         | fair game.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Was this the main reasoning for moving everything behind
           | login more than data hoarding of the viewers?
        
             | fragmede wrote:
             | My personal belief is yes. Legal talks to management after
             | the case concludes, tells them this is the new reality, and
             | management tells product to make the change.
             | 
             | At no time is management obligated or even remotely
             | motivated to tell end users the real reason for making the
             | change, because users believing that the platform is just a
             | greedy corporation is better than them realizing that the
             | platform will just roll over if the police presents them
             | with a subpoena to snitch on a user.
        
         | mapt wrote:
         | Post-2024, with Elon running the government as
         | fiscal/regulatory czar, Twitter policy is evidently stronger
         | than judicial interpretation of Constitutional rights.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | What happens to Twitter when Musk has to step down from his
           | roles with Twitter/SpaceX/Tesla? Will sanity be allowed to
           | fill the void? I really doubt anything at SpaceX/Tesla
           | changes, but Twitter has the most wiggle room under someone
           | else's leadership
        
             | jazzyjackson wrote:
             | Why would he step down? He doesn't seem the type to give up
             | power just because something shiny is taking his attention.
             | It's not like the incoming administration has signed a
             | pledge to avoid conflicts of interest or anything
        
       | TinkersW wrote:
       | Twitter used to be a left wing cesspool, and now is turning into
       | a right wing one..
       | 
       | Recently I tried mastodon, looked up the gamedev channel, and it
       | was 100% left wing cesspool LGBTA(or whatever the letters are)
       | nonsense.
       | 
       | When I went to Bluesky just now(no account), it just shows
       | endless political spam from what appears to be insane people.
       | 
       | I think we might all be better off if all 3 ceased to exist..
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | Huge social media sites are not going to be legible without
         | some sort of preference function from the individual. Whether
         | that's follows, hashtags/keywords, or engagement-oriented
         | algorithms, that's the way. If you're not the kind of person
         | who enjoys socializing In The Large that's fine. That's what
         | topical sites (like Reddit, HN) or group chats are for.
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | People are still making lame jokes about how "confusing" the
         | LGBT acronym is? Get some new material.
        
       | atemerev wrote:
       | Scraping data is not illegal. Everything a human can see, can be
       | legally scraped.
        
       | openrisk wrote:
       | > Building and querying the quadtree is intrinsically
       | heirarchical
       | 
       | Glad to see I am not the only one having problems with hierarchy.
       | 
       | Interesting work at many levels (no, no pun): starting with the
       | bluesky data availability, the processing and the visualization
       | algorithms.
       | 
       | But its not quite clear where to place these visualizations in
       | the data science spectrum. Conventional numerical graphics have
       | (over time) developed a sophisticated grammar that allows fairly
       | precise reasoning and inference. So they are heavily used in
       | scientific publications, in the financial sector etc. for real
       | information transmission (People might even reverse engineer a
       | plot to recover data!).
       | 
       | With networks and graphs, besides a general feel for the topology
       | / connectivity or clustering its kinda hard to pin down what is
       | the transmitted information. Not clear if useful grammars
       | covering such large graphs are yet to be invented or if this is
       | the nature of the beast.
        
       | josefresco wrote:
       | I must be one of those tiny dots just floating in nothingness
       | because my BSKY feed is a dead zone. I've posted, I've replied,
       | I've liked and tried to be an active participant but nothing
       | seems to stick. There's only so many posts I can publish "for
       | myself" before I lose interest.
       | 
       | Contrast this with early Twitter where everyone was just super
       | excited, and eager to follow new people. I don't get it,
       | shouldn't a new social network be full of people looking to
       | create new... social networks?
        
         | fsflover wrote:
         | Did you try Mastodon? Many have a better experience there.
        
           | josteink wrote:
           | Mastadon has a massive problem with furries, people with loli
           | anime-avatars or people who fit the <<purple haired>>
           | stereotype.
           | 
           | It's very off-putting and alienating for normal people.
        
             | fsflover wrote:
             | It strongly depends on the instance. You don't have to read
             | the global timeline.
        
               | chefandy wrote:
               | The tough thing is that for the vast majority of end
               | users, the interface that they see _is_ the software or
               | service. So if their instance has a bunch of disgusting
               | pornography, as far as they're concerned, mastodon has a
               | bunch of disgusting pornography. For a lot of folks, the
               | browser /server abstraction for regular websites and how
               | that differs from native apps is about as far as they're
               | willing to go in their understanding of Internet
               | architecture and for many, it's too far. Requiring people
               | understand that not all mastodon is mastodon despite it
               | being kind of the same, in order to avoid explicit
               | hentai, is a non-starter. My grandparents are dead, but
               | they would probably take their computer out back and set
               | it on fire if that shit flashed up on their screen. They
               | sure wouldn't have used it as an opportunity to get all
               | of the base knowledge they needed to even realize they
               | had to instance shop. Facebook is just riiiiight over
               | there.
        
             | lepus wrote:
             | If you have a problem with too many furry posts I have bad
             | news for you about Bluesky
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | Bluesky is trying to differentiate itself with moderation
               | tools -- people have created lists of furry accounts so
               | you can bulk-ignore. But yeah I haven't found my "people"
               | there yet, most of the activity is people I wouldn't
               | choose to interact with.
        
               | saila wrote:
               | I used to see a lot of furry accounts in the Discover
               | feed, but I mute them when I see them, and now I rarely
               | see them any more. I don't have anything against furries,
               | but it's not content I'm interested in. This is more a
               | comment that Bluesky does seem to have an algorithm (at
               | least in the Discover feed) that is sensitive to what you
               | do or don't show interest in. Or it could just be that a
               | lot more people have joined recently, so the furry stuff
               | just isn't as prevalent.
        
               | extraduder_ire wrote:
               | Discover has a separate "show more/less like this" button
               | too.
               | 
               | Every feed on the site is its own algorithm, and most are
               | made by third-parties. Some of the more interesting ones
               | have fallen over and broken a little as the volume of
               | posts has increased. The various "catch up" feeds that
               | show the most popular recent posts give a good impression
               | of what's happening site wide (minus any blocks/mutes).
        
             | kstrauser wrote:
             | Mastodon's only algorithm is newest-on-top, so your
             | complaint is that the people you're following seem strange
             | to you. Uh, follow other people then.
        
             | fckgw wrote:
             | These are also "normal people", they just choose to express
             | themselves differently.
             | 
             | Maybe you should get over it?
        
               | colesantiago wrote:
               | Nobody important or relevant enough is moving to
               | Mastodon.
        
               | mjmsmith wrote:
               | If it always remains so, I'm never leaving.
        
               | djbusby wrote:
               | One can engage on multiple platforms. Don't have to leave
               | something else to use Mastodon.
        
               | colesantiago wrote:
               | > One can engage on multiple platforms. Don't have to
               | leave something else to use Mastodon.
               | 
               | Sure, and those who have a technically savvy audience can
               | use Mastodon can post on multiple platforms.
               | 
               | In this instance of bad changes X has made, the majority
               | of those who are moving away from X this time round are
               | more likely not going to engage on Mastodon as a second
               | platform.
               | 
               | Too much hassle for them.
               | 
               | They are more likely to engage on platforms that have
               | more engagement, like Bluesky or Threads.
               | 
               | I cannot see artists, journalists, etc going to Mastodon
               | when X makes changes to their platform time and time
               | again.
        
             | rsynnott wrote:
             | Twitter and Bluesky are also full of furries. Frankly, if
             | your social network lacks furries, it is probably in
             | trouble; they seem to be a viability indicator.
             | 
             | (Not that it's a guarantee of anything; notably, SecondLife
             | is essentially _only_ furries.)
        
       | Applejinx wrote:
       | "Bot rings show up clearly exposed, for one."
       | 
       | I like the sound of that. Surely there's usefulness in that
       | observation.
        
       | loevborg wrote:
       | I'm part of the wave of users who migrated to bluesky last week.
       | I have to say I really like it so far, which surprised me a bit
       | given that I had been underwhelmed by mastodon before. I already
       | spend more time in bluesky than in twitter.
       | 
       | For those (like me) who don't know what bluesky is, it's
       | basically a carbon copy of twitter circa 2015, down to an almost
       | identical UI. Except that there's no monetization, no ads, no
       | growth hacking, which means that in the main features are there
       | to serve the user. My favorite example is the simple expo/react
       | native based mobile app, which lets you open links in safari
       | rather than a useless in-app browser.
        
         | testfoobar wrote:
         | How does it compare to Threads?
        
           | wittekm wrote:
           | Anecdotally, I see a lot more "normal" human to human
           | engagement than the addressed-to-millions engagement bait I
           | see on Threads.
        
           | msluyter wrote:
           | At some point Threads started to suppress (or at least, not
           | boost?) political content or news. Which sort of crippled it
           | as a "current events + hot takes" Twitter/X competitor.
           | Bluesky doesn't appear to have this limitation (though
           | perhaps for some this is a feature).
        
             | kristofferR wrote:
             | https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/continuing-
             | ou...
        
           | Pxtl wrote:
           | The loudest complaint I see about threads (lack of
           | hyperlinks) doesn't apply there. Also, Threads seems
           | _covered_ in growth-hacking dark patterns, like the
           | notification /activity screen being flooded with "picked for
           | you".
           | 
           | edit: my big worry about BSky is the lack of any coherent
           | monetization plan. This isn't community-funded stuff like
           | Mastodon, it's VC-funded software - there will be a need for
           | revenue at some point and then what happens?
        
             | threeseed wrote:
             | > notification/activity screen being flooded with "picked
             | for you"
             | 
             | Strange. Have been on Threads since launch and have never
             | seen this.
             | 
             | Nor have I seen any growth-hacking dark patterns other than
             | the For You algorithm pushing high-engagement content which
             | they've said they are sorting out. But a lot of this is
             | because Threads has the legacy of being built on Instagram.
        
             | consumer451 wrote:
             | > my big worry about BSky is the lack of any coherent
             | monetization plan.
             | 
             | That's a reasonable concern. I assumed there would be ads
             | at some point, but that's not the way that they are going
             | for now.
             | 
             | > we will begin developing a subscription model for
             | features like higher quality video uploads or profile
             | customizations like colors and avatar frames.
             | 
             | https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a
        
         | ZacnyLos wrote:
         | > it's basically a carbon copy of twitter circa 2015, down to
         | an almost identical UI. Except that there's no monetization, no
         | ads, no growth hacking, which means that in the main features
         | are there to serve the user
         | 
         | Wow, that's just like Mastodon.
        
           | Pxtl wrote:
           | BlueSky's big killer features that Mastodon fails at:
           | 
           | 1) Better (optional) algorithmic feeds. Mastodon's "explore"
           | is weaker than Bluesky's "popular with friends" and
           | "discover"
           | 
           | 2) Quote-tweets.
           | 
           | 3) Easier onboarding. Mastodon forces you to care about which
           | server you're on and it _does_ matter and migrating later is
           | hard. Meanwhile, BSky has  "starter packs" that people can
           | produce for each other with lists of users to follow to
           | easily jump into a community.
           | 
           | 4) Username-as-domain is better than the Mastodon "confirmed
           | links in profile" thing for self-verified accounts.
           | 
           | I wish the properly-federated OSS community-funded one had
           | won but I'll take either to be done with Twitter.
        
             | panic wrote:
             | I don't think either platform is going to "win" in the
             | sense of reaching the size and influence of Twitter, but
             | both will hopefully be more resilient than Twitter was.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | I tried it, the tech seems cool but I'd like more diversity.
         | Now that Twitter mostly is crypto scams and American far-right
         | political nonsense, I'd like something a little more
         | interesting than American far-left political nonsense.
         | 
         | The world is much larger than American or Western internet
         | drama, and there seems to be no way to escape it. As a European
         | reading any mainstream social media, BlueSky included, makes me
         | roll my eyes out of their orbit.
         | 
         | I do not care about politics or gender identity or keyboard
         | activism. Can we please have something else on the menu?
         | Literally anything else. I wonder if I should learn Russian or
         | Chinese to be exposed to something new which isn't US politics
         | or which gender people are most attracted to in their private
         | lives. Who gives a damn. /rant
         | 
         | (I enjoyed Nostr tech-wise, but it never broke past the
         | cryptobro phase and that saddens me)
        
           | lukev wrote:
           | If you are good about curating your follows, you can get a
           | nice nonpolitical feed on Bluesky.
           | 
           | That said this is definitely not the week to try to calibrate
           | that, since everyone currently has Big Feelings even if
           | they're normally not overtly political.
        
             | sph wrote:
             | Fair enough. My issue is that it seems people have Big
             | Feelings for one reason or another since 2015 and
             | increasingly so. I really do not wish to have to work to
             | train the "algo", especially when Twitter-like social media
             | is worse than useless. It takes no time for my favourite
             | people I follow to suddenly start spamming my timeline with
             | the drama-du-jour.
             | 
             | On these social networks, either you are (un)willingly
             | enlisted in the American Culture Wars, or you're best
             | served not using them at all.
        
               | lukev wrote:
               | No no that's my point: Bluesky has no algorithm. You see
               | only the posts of people you follow, in order, and
               | nothing else (unless you deliberately subscribe to
               | "discovery" feeds.)
               | 
               | So you have complete control.
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | Given that Bluesky is VC funded, I imagine it'll just be a
         | matter of time until the monetization, ads, and growth hacking
         | start. Enjoy it while you can, I suppose.
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | Or avoid it if you value your time and effort:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119658
        
       | nomdep wrote:
       | > "I filtered out accounts that follow more than 50k accounts, or
       | follow less than 5 accounts and have less than 5 followers,
       | leaving 7.7 million nodes."
       | 
       | So not quite 13M but almost half of them, pretty cool nonetheless
        
       | IAmGraydon wrote:
       | As a broader comment about Bluesky, it seems to me that it's
       | heavily left-leaning, while Twitter/X is obviously leaning more
       | and more to the right. Amazingly, it seems that the BlueSky/X
       | dichotomy is another emergent manifestation of a fracturing and
       | continually more polarized society. In my opinion, what we will
       | ultimately end up with is two echo chambers, each catering to
       | opposite ends of the spectrum, each radicalizing their respective
       | userbase, and each further amplifying the divide in society
       | today.
        
         | purplethinking wrote:
         | I have no interest in being in a left-leaning bubble. I get
         | both sides on X, so far. People think X has been leaning more
         | and more to the right, but in truth it's just not being
         | censored (sorry, moderated) anymore, leading to more right-
         | leaning content. Leftists can't really tolerate any difference
         | of opinion so they move to other platforms, it's sad. But I
         | think they'll be bored and eventually come back for some more
         | drama.
        
           | MeetingsBrowser wrote:
           | What specific type of content was being censored before Elon
           | took over that is being allowed now?
        
             | samatman wrote:
             | I seem to recall at some point that that old Twitter banned
             | the account of the sitting President of the United States.
             | 
             | Later, Twitter banned a comedy account, the Babylon Bee.
             | That pissed Elon off enough to buy it.
             | 
             | Both are back on Twitter now, both the comedy account, and
             | the politician who will be President for a second term in
             | January, having won both the Electoral College and the
             | popular vote.
             | 
             | That's just two examples, but I would call them salient
             | ones.
        
       | nightski wrote:
       | I created a new account and the feed was flooded with anti-X,
       | anti-gop, anti-religion content. Don't get me wrong, it's not
       | that any of those particularly bother me but it doesn't seem any
       | different than X except without the people I follow.
        
         | ZacnyLos wrote:
         | On Mastodon there are no longer people dragged by the crowd,
         | only those who have something interesting to say remain.
        
       | kristofferR wrote:
       | How do you guys crosspost to X, Threads, Mastadon and Bluesky?
        
         | ZacnyLos wrote:
         | Using Mastodon you can follow people from Bluesky and Threads
         | if they only turn on sharing or use Bridgy Fed option as well.
         | Mastodon is the most versatile piece of software.
        
       | ZacnyLos wrote:
       | Fortunately using Bridgy Fed we can connect BlueSky with
       | Fediverse and IndieWeb.
       | 
       | https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/
        
         | rustyboy wrote:
         | can I get a ELI10 on this - If I host a mastodon server, would
         | I need to run this software along side it then and then
         | everyone on my server could see these other platforms posts and
         | such?
        
           | extraduder_ire wrote:
           | Accounts on any supported platform can follow the bot on
           | their platform, and their posts get bridged to all the other
           | ones as a subdomain of the bridgy bot. e.g. a mastodon
           | instance with a handle for every bridged account.
           | 
           | It changed to require opting in to bridging because many
           | mastodon users got very mad about it.
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | _> What happens if we throw the BlueSky matrix into UMAP? Well,
       | we can 't, at least not directly. Even though UMAP technically
       | accepts sparse matrices, our scale is just to big for my home
       | server. Instead, we can settle for using some other technique to
       | derive embeddings for every user, in a medium-sized dimension
       | like 32, and then feed that into UMAP. Easy!_
       | 
       | How, exactly, are the embeddings derived?
        
       | ZacnyLos wrote:
       | Mastodon seems to be the most versatile app of all of them. With
       | Mastodon account you can follow people from BlueSky (if they use
       | BridgyFed) and people from Threads (if they turn on fediverse
       | sharing).
        
       | swat535 wrote:
       | It looks like the Internet is now being compartmentalized based
       | on one's political affiliation and groups.
       | 
       | X is turning out to be where Conservatives are going to be
       | living, Bluesky, Reddit and Treads will be for Liberals. These
       | platform don't outright ban opposing views but I think moderation
       | policies and the users will shift these groups into one or the
       | other.
       | 
       | I'm not sure if one can have a platform where respectful
       | discourse can take place. The only site I've seen so far is HN
       | and its due to its small community and the relentless effort by
       | Dan.
       | 
       | The days of having everyone connected on the same platform is now
       | dead, which might ironically usher a revival of the old, non-
       | centralized web.
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | Promise of bluesky is that different front ends can have
         | different moderation policies, and you have account portability
         | should you be prevented from interacting with bsky.app
         | (provided you were self hosting your pod. I don't actually know
         | if you can export your data if you are "banned" from the main
         | instance, I'll have to look into that)
        
       | gravico wrote:
       | As a platform trying to connect aspiring founders with successful
       | experts, is it worth creating a Bluesky grouping consisting of
       | founders, ceo's and successful experts wanting to help aspiring
       | founder. Goal is to gain traction for https://www.gravi.co
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | It would be interesting to see a community onboarded where
         | everyone's username is a subdomain @name.gravi.co, so people
         | know they're officially associated. There's lots of software
         | folk there so it would probably be a good place to try.
        
           | gravico wrote:
           | Thanks, that's the plan where each expert has a dedicated
           | subdomain (e.g., jazzyjackson.gravi.co), allowing them to
           | showcase their profile and offer bookable consultancy slots
           | for entrepreneurs seeking personalised advice, focusing on UK
           | and Europe but tempted to target US which is a more mature
           | and willing to explore and experiment market.
        
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