[HN Gopher] Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
___________________________________________________________________
Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again
Author : ianrahman
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-12-29 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chrisholdgraf.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chrisholdgraf.com)
| darthrupert wrote:
| My experience is that fundamentally there's nothing better with
| Bluesky or Mastodon when compared to Twitter. They're all toxic
| doom scrolling applications and if one does use them, it will be
| a good idea to control your usage as if it was cocaine.
| daghamm wrote:
| Yes, but hopefully it is more free speech than om twitter where
| Elon wants to decide what you can and can't see.
|
| It is well known that he is obsessed that things that align
| with his own views get more visibility while things he doesn't
| like is suppressed
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/report-musk-had-...
| fastball wrote:
| And that doesn't apply to the powers that be at other social
| networks (or management at Twitter pre-Elon)?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm not on Twitter. And the jury is still out on BlueSky.
|
| I'm happy to abandon BlueSky though as soon as it is
| revealed to be a shitsocket.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It certainly doesn't seem to so far.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| 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.
| jl6 wrote:
| "These sites are all as bad as each other" remains a very
| workable hypothesis.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Also a very lazy approach.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Before the other side took hold of a major platform and
| started doing it to their ends, "freedom of speech is not
| freedom of reach", "you don't have the right to a megaphone"
| etc. were maxims that were regularly fielded by pundits in
| defense of shadowbanning and any thumbprints being discovered
| on the algorithmic scale (though they were never so confident
| in it as to make the manipulation explicit upfront before it
| was revealed).
|
| The " _my_ free speech is being taken away; _they_ are just
| being moderated for the common good " conjugation is
| something that is in fact shared between both camps. The only
| stable solution going forward may in fact be the
| pillarisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation)
| that we are already seeing emerge, which will leave both
| sides in a state of perpetual discontent about having no
| means to force their message upon unwilling recipients on the
| other but at least let the like-minded interact with each
| other consensually.
| meowkit wrote:
| Great wiki link thanks for sharing.
|
| Also commenting to reiterate that if one spends just a
| little time (with an open mind) in any of the camps
| (X/Mastodon/Bluesky, whatever) its just so obvious that
| while the messages differ, the behaviors are exactly the
| same.
|
| In most contexts we prefer consensus - its just more energy
| efficient! Your brain is going to expend more energy
| critically listening and rewiring thoughts when new
| evidence is presented. Its hard even for the best of us.
|
| Pillarisation from a modeling perspective is interesting. I
| wonder if that could be codified at a legal level, and then
| anyone running for public positions of power would be
| required to have their own media algorithms curated by the
| public.
| tehjoker wrote:
| it wont work well bc ppl need enemies to fight for
| engagement. without that ppl just get bored
| prisenco wrote:
| Right now Bluesky's feed is time-based (although there is a
| suggestions tab). This will change as advertiser needs take
| over, but at least for the time being it's a noticeable
| difference.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I stil don't understand why none of these sites counts
| downvotes for their algorithm. Look at HN which does; the best
| comments are at the top which means that the user sees the more
| interesting posts first. And troll posts would never rise to
| the top. There's a lot of tinkering that could provide which is
| the best up/downvotes-algorithm but imo it simply does not work
| without downvoting. E.g. Tiktok allows a lot of options to
| downrank things that you do not like, meaning the user who
| curates his own feed gets a stream of posts that are more
| aligned with what he wants than anywhere else. And that's why
| TikTok won.
| luma wrote:
| Social media orgs discovered a while back that what they want
| is "engagement", not "good content". Enraging content is as
| good as "good" content in terms of clicks, and downvotes
| would bury that enraging content.
|
| Making you mad is as good as making you feel any other thing
| in terms of engagement.
| Tarsul wrote:
| yeah that's the story that I read a lot. But it doesn't
| make sense. E.g. I don't use Twitter because it's just a
| shitshow (e.g. even before Musk took over). Of course the
| algorithm from Twitter doesn't see it like that because it
| never analyzed me. It only analyzes those who are there not
| those who are not there. Thus, there's a hole in their
| algorithm. Or in other words: It's a short-termin
| optimizing algo (for those who are already there), not a
| long-term optimizer (long-term user growth).
| biddit wrote:
| To my understanding, removing downvoting removes a vector of
| abuse. ie: "downvote brigades" on Reddit
|
| While Twitter doesn't have downvoting, it is still dealing
| with "report brigades" - various interest groups will
| organize via Telegram (or similar) to mass-report tweets they
| don't like.
|
| I wonder if you could strike a balance by incorporating
| downvotes as a visual metric, but not using it to rank
| content, thus allowing the expression of dislike while
| removing the abuse vector.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Troll posts definitely rise to the top on Hacker News. That's
| why there are multiple buttons to bring them down.
| mogoh wrote:
| Fediverse does not have to be doom scrolling if you just follow
| accounts around your hobbies and interests and filter certain
| keywords.
| thrance wrote:
| I use none of these, and generally agree that the world would
| be a better place if we could magically get rid of all social
| media.
|
| But Twitter is filled with much, much more hate and
| disinformation than its alternatives. I'd say it is definitely
| worse than the others.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Serious question: would you include HN under the umbrella of
| 'social media'? If not, why not, where is the line?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| This is the best comment on this thread: I hope others
| answer your question.
|
| IMHO HN is social media, in fact the ONLY social media
| where I read the posts and comments, oftimes more
| informative and interesting than the posts.
|
| I post to X many times daily but that's all I do there,
| using it as a sort of commonplace book/journal.
|
| I never bother looking at my feed.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Do you think that a big part of that could be the
| financial incentive to be "popular" on Twitter?
|
| I mean, on hacker news it doesn't seem like a person
| gains any long term advantage from having their posts
| engaged with and upvoted. That is to say, the focus is on
| the content and not on the profiles/usernames.
|
| There is no explicit advertising and most content is
| posted to create interesting discussion about it.
|
| For me, the idea of twitter style micro blogging itself
| is a turn off. I always thought the arbitrary character
| limit was inherently a bad idea and "threads" are a
| terrible solution. Threads force one to split up a
| message and allow pieces of it to be taken out of
| context, retweeted and even quoted. Threads are a great
| propaganda tool because with every follow up "part",
| engagement decreases. People see the first part of a
| thread and only look at that, social behavior that can be
| abused when posting. Even it's main feature set is
| antithetical to accurately publishing information. It
| gets much worse when official institutions use it as
| their official communications channel and a login gate is
| in place.
|
| I actually don't even think this is malicious but moreso
| bad design and failure to anticipate what rhe platform
| could turn into when it was first conceived.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| No financial incentive at all for me on Twitter.
| thrance wrote:
| I think HN qualifies as a social media, a lot of it is
| user-generated. I do use some of them as I don't want to
| live as a total outcast.
|
| If I could "draw the line", I'd probably start by banning
| all forms of for-profit social media.
| chickenfeed wrote:
| If we could cut people's tongues out the world would be a
| better place.
|
| I don't know, I think communication can provide a fertile
| ground for good exchanges as well as bad. It's just somewhat
| stifled in the current forms.
| thrance wrote:
| That's obviously not what I meant. Communication on current
| social media has only led us into a new era of populism,
| and seems to only worsen political polarization. Unless
| something changes, I will continue to think it does more
| harm than good.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I think Mastodons API-centric approach has lead to user-
| friendly results that feel fundamentally different. Mastodon
| gives me an in-order timeline of just the accounts I follow. I
| configured it to hide images by default, reduce animations, and
| to require user action to load more posts (no infinite scroll).
| It feels so much more tuned to my well-being versus apps that
| are tuned to maximize adverisement views by trapping you in
| doom scrolling.
| schism15 wrote:
| "The toxicity is coming from inside the house!"
|
| I agree. These platforms are best when the communities are
| smaller. The main tipping point will be when it becomes
| perceived (just perceived, even) as a viable option for
| advertising/monetization.
|
| The only real option is to just keep pushing to the next
| frontier...
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I've organically come across more mastadon instances than
| bluesky. But that's just me. I wish it was easier to surf
| mastadon though, where you have to log in to see content unlike
| bluesky.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| You don't need to be logged in to see content on Mastodon.
| There are privacy settings that could hide content from non-
| followers, and mastodon users may be more privacy conscious,
| but log in is not generally required.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Must just be in the app then. Brave is supposed to block
| opening links in apps in iOS but it's broken lately.
| keiferski wrote:
| A similar but I think simpler approach is to just act like a
| celebrity or a brand. When X celebrity joins a social network,
| their fans follow them on that platform. When the celebrity
| leaves and goes elsewhere, the fans follow. The value follows the
| celebrity because the celebrity's value isn't in the content on
| the social network, it's in their personal brand itself.
|
| Therefore if you're going to invest in creating valuable content
| on TikTok/Instagram/Bluesky/X/wherever, make sure you're
| publishing it from a specific brandable name - and not
| generically posting good identity-less content. It doesn't need
| to be your real name, as there are plenty of successful
| pseudonymous individuals out there. It just needs to be
| reasonably memorable and consistent.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The blog post (and your comment) presumes someone _is_ a
| celebrity, _has_ a kingdom.
|
| A lot of us are just busking on the street corners.
| keiferski wrote:
| Not necessarily. I think it's perfectly possible to be a
| random non-famous person that builds a following because they
| have insightful tweets/images/content. But the risk is that
| if you don't give yourself a reasonably memorable publisher
| name, you won't be able to transfer that audience to another
| platform, because no one is going to see your name and
| recognize it from elsewhere.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I'm an exemplar of the person you describe above. I started
| my blog on Typepad in 2004 and am in year 21, with things
| pretty much as they were in the beginning. When/if Typepad
| collapses (there are those who say it already has, since
| they stopped adding new customers in 2020 after being sold
| and posting is VERY janky and broken since then), I'll find
| a new home under the same brand name.
|
| Back in the day, around 2010-2012, I averaged 15,000 page
| views and 10,000 visitors/day. In recent years it's been
| around 500 page views/day, so about 3% of where I was at
| maximum blog.
|
| The nice thing about being this marginal is that I can
| easily respond to each comment/email.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >their fans follow them on that platform
|
| A percentage of their fans, and it can be a small percent.
|
| You see this phenomenon all the time on people leaving X to
| Bluesky they expect their audience to just follow them and the
| engagement to be comparable and when it just isn't you see them
| either quietly come back or just cross post and pretend they're
| not back.
| kurayashi wrote:
| I'm not sure if this actually works. In 2019 the live streaming
| platform mixer tried this and payed several of the biggest
| streamers a lot of money for exclusive contracts. The userbase
| didn't follow and the service was shut down a year later.
| prisenco wrote:
| When Bluesky announced they were taking on large amounts of
| capital to handle the growth that's when I knew their days were
| numbered. Capital requires returns, and a lot of the degradation
| of the user experience in the past few years is due to catering
| to investors and advertisers (who are the actual customers).
|
| Decentralization as is promised is one way to mitigate this, but
| there's no economic incentive to go through with it. Investors
| will encourage Bluesky to kick that can down the road until
| people forgot they ever promised it in the first place.
|
| That said, we will have a good amount of time with Bluesky as a
| more positive site before these changes kick in. But my hunch is
| that it'll be shorter than previous cycles. The rate of profit
| has fallen and investors don't have as much grace for companies
| that grow without revenue as they did 10-15 years ago.
|
| Of all the sites that emerged out of the internet renaissance
| starting in the late 90's, it seems the only one that has hung on
| and still provides a good value, despite all it's issues, is
| Wikipedia. And that has to be because it's a non-profit powered
| by volunteer labor with no need to optimize revenue or make a
| profit.
|
| I often dream of recreating the classic web using a very low cost
| subscription model (since cheap is better than free, because free
| is never truly free) and apps that are bootstrapped or
| crowdfunded instead of vc funded. Decentralization in that
| circumstance is much more achievable and way less of a threat,
| although it still comes with a ton of technical and political
| considerations.
| brightball wrote:
| IMO Mastodon is the only real place for a truly decentralized
| option.
|
| BlueSky became immediately political in its narrative and many
| people just view it in the same light as Truth Social now. It
| has a future, but the branding in very tainted.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| If you think BlueSky is political, Mastodon is worse.
|
| Mastodon ends up creating significant echo chambers where
| admins ban communication with other instances for having
| people with different opinions to them (rather than just
| delisting in the public feed) and on can ban you and stop you
| moving your data to another instance.
|
| On Mastodon, admins can also be pressured into banning users
| by other admins under fear of having their instances blocked,
| and admins are usually political activists.
|
| I've avoided BlueSky because people are allowed to boast and
| defend being attracted to kids or spam death threats
| (including addresses attached), but not have differing
| political opinions, even when they're arguably mainstream.
| BodyCulture wrote:
| Can you please give some more details about the pressure
| methods in mastodon you are writing about, this is very
| interesting and important.
|
| Is there any systematic study going on about the mechanism
| of censorship in the fediverse?
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Eh, I don't have any links to hand, but I vividly
| remember when I used Mastodon an instance of an admin
| being tagged and pressured to remove an individual off
| their server or be blocked.
|
| was around a year ago
| Zak wrote:
| From what I've seen, some niche servers have very
| detailed and very strict rules intended to address the
| needs of certain marginalized groups. An example I've
| seen is requiring a content warning for any image where a
| person or animal is staring directly into the lens,
| appearing to make eye contact with the viewer.
|
| Of course pressuring mainstream servers to adopt such a
| rule is not reasonable. Automatically applying a content
| warning to all media from servers that don't have the
| same rule would be a good solution. Bluesky's labelers
| provide a way to do something similar, but I don't think
| the Bluesky appview has a way to express something like
| "blur all media without the 'safe for my needs' label".
| vidarh wrote:
| Mastodon is worse if you pick servers that insist on being
| activist, and bother to care about the drama, sure. You
| don't need to do either.
| griomnib wrote:
| But then you need to research the severs, shop around,
| and a bunch of other shit people don't have time for.
|
| A bad user experience is just that: bad.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I think that is federation working as intended. These
| instance admins are exercising their right to free speech
| by not federating with instances that contain content they
| disagree with or disallow on their instance.
|
| I think it's not at all comparable to a corporate entity
| like X being in full control and able to censor any
| content.
|
| You may create your own instance and federate with the
| instances you want. If an instance chooses not to federate
| with yours you get to decide what's more important to you,
| your principles or their content.
|
| The solution is to create your own instance. I understand
| your frustrations but I have a hard time being empathetic
| to these issues when you are using someone elses instance,
| probably administered by volunteers in their spare time.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Of course they have a _right_ to free speech, but when I
| 'm choosing a platform it's the user experience that
| matters to me and not the rights of the operators.
| Twitter lets me visit or follow any other account on the
| platform and see what they have to say, and the ability
| to do that across a wide range of interests and
| viewpoints is exactly why I use it. If Mastodon requires
| setting up a custom server to replicate that experience,
| it's not a good replacement for me.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Look at how many instances agreed to block Threads even
| before it added ActivityPub support because Mark
| Zuckerberg doesn't ban (legal) opinions and comments he
| doesn't agree with.
|
| Some people are so insecure about their own opinions that
| the pure idea that someone exists that might not agree
| the same is a threat, never mind seeing their content.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > I think that is federation working as intended
|
| My email provider doesn't prevent me from sending an
| email from someone at Gmail because someone at Gmail
| happens to have opposite views to the admin.
|
| Yet email is still federated.
| vidarh wrote:
| Plenty of email servers will throw you off for using the
| domain to email things they disagree with. It's just that
| most people have migrated to general purpose providers
| for their personal addresses.
| rayiner wrote:
| They should complete the circle and allow instances to
| invade and take over other instances/subjecate other
| instances' users.
| igravious wrote:
| The whole https://chrisholdgraf.com/blog/2024/bluesky#why-
| not-use-mast... section is very unconvincing
|
| ??? i'm not using it because no one else is using it
|
| > If social media is about having interesting, dynamic
| interactions with people, then you need to go to the place
| that maximizes the chance of this happening
|
| if that was the case people would stay with Twitter/X
|
| > For example, one of its core features - federated servers
| and identity - is actually a pretty confusing UX pattern for
| the vast majority of people that don't care about that kind
| of thing ("you're telling me there's a
| @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and
| they're two different people?!").
|
| how on earth is this confusing to anyone? it's a different
| model
|
| > Moreover, while having federated servers means that
| communities have more control over their norms and rules, it
| also means communities have to do a lot more work to
| understand the idiosyncratic policies of each server. These
| are features if you think of a social networks as a tightly-
| interconnected and self-contained community, but the appeal
| of these kinds of platforms is having global reach to people
| that you may otherwise never have met.
|
| people forget in real life that we aren't all in the same
| social network and there are different protocols for
| different meat-space social networks and we internalise and
| navigate them all the time - in fact there are genres of
| literature out there (comedy of manners) that exploit social
| misunderstandings
| dartos wrote:
| "Political" and "decentralized" Are not mutually exclusive.
|
| In fact, any platform that uses decentralization as a selling
| point is inherently political, as the only ones that care
| about decentralization are the ones who care about politics.
|
| Everyone else is just trying to see what the famous person
| said last week or what their friend did on vacation.
|
| Corpo social media does solve for that.
| swed420 wrote:
| > "Political" and "decentralized" Are not mutually
| exclusive.
|
| > any platform that uses decentralization as a selling
| point is inherently political
|
| This hasn't said anything of value, since everything is
| political.
|
| Limiting your interaction with the world to sanitized
| corporate/Hollywood social media is political. Using no
| social media at all is political. And so on.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Decentralization is political because even from a sniff
| test it is very very concerned about evading existing
| centers of power.
|
| Common Lisp is not political. Technical people might say
| it is political, but non-technical people outside would
| just chuckle at the conversation -- nerds fighting among
| themselves in an unseen corner with no power, thinking
| that there's "politics" there and perhaps everywhere too.
| dartos wrote:
| > This hasn't said anything of value, since everything is
| political.
|
| I really disagree with this statement. Many things are
| political, but not everything. (Unless you're abstracting
| the word political to the point of it meaning any human
| relationship. At which point the word isn't useful)
|
| Some choices are just convenience.
|
| Most people with an iPhone don't choose to text on
| messenger because of a political opinion, it's just
| because it's the default app on their phone.
|
| I use discord frequently because all of my friends are on
| there, not because I particularly care for their
| politics.
|
| My choice to not use social media sites like fb and
| Twitter was fueled by mental health concerns and the time
| I'd sink into them, not because they lean left or right.
|
| > Limiting your interaction with the world to sanitized
| corporate/Hollywood social media is political.
|
| Not necessarily. Most people don't know they're limiting
| their interaction.
|
| They just want updates about things they care about. That
| need not be about politics.
|
| Just because a choice may have political ramifications
| doesn't mean that it was a choice made for political
| reasons.
| swed420 wrote:
| > Some choices are just convenience. > Most people don't
| know they're limiting their interaction.
|
| Sure, but they often carry political implications (even
| if the choice/chooser was unconscious of them)
|
| > Most people with an iPhone don't choose to text on
| messenger because of a political opinion, it's just
| because it's the default app on their phone.
|
| That's not the best example to make your point
| considering many people see iPhones (and its "exclusive"
| text bubble color) as an economic and social class
| signifier.
|
| The insane planned obsolescence model of the iPhone
| necessitating constant replacement has environmental
| consequences, etc. Once again, the end user being unaware
| of all of this does not prevent it from still being very
| real.
|
| > Just because a choice may have political ramifications
| doesn't mean that it was a choice made for political
| reasons.
|
| Never said otherwise. A reminder of what I replied to:
|
| > In fact, any platform that uses decentralization as a
| selling point is inherently political, as the only ones
| that care about decentralization are the ones who care
| about politics.
|
| My original point was that merely "avoiding political
| things" by using platform Y instead of Z does not exempt
| one from being political. The act of choosing to opt out
| of politics in this way or any other is literally
| political and has real consequences.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This seems like a category error. Topics that have
| political aspects, e.g. environmentalism, also have non-
| political aspects.
|
| Also, it just seems like an excuse for mob mentality.
| It's "if you're not for us you're against us" with extra
| steps.
| swed420 wrote:
| Being politically conscious instead of proudly checking
| out to the Soma drip feed of sanitized media is not mob
| mentality. Though, the minority holders of the majority
| of capital would very much like people to parrot such
| nonsense.
| vidarh wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but I'd say specifically _the
| Fediverse_ is the only real place for a truly decentralised
| option.
|
| It doesn't need to be Mastodon. You don't need to be on
| Mastodon to interact with the Fediverse or be part of it, and
| that is the key strength. Mastodon can be corrupted and the
| Fediverse is still there.
|
| That could include Bluesky over time - you can follow my
| Mastodon from Bluesky via a bridge [1] - any desirable parts
| of their protocol, will be copied or emulated or bolted on
| the side for other Fediverse projects.
|
| [1] https://brid.gy/
| Gigachad wrote:
| Have you used Bluesky? I've been on it since it was invite
| only and I don't see any politics on my feed. It's basically
| just posts from friends, friends of friends, and artists for
| me.
|
| Bluesky seems the least pushy with rage bait content of all
| the social media's.
| bdangubic wrote:
| curiosity-joined a month ago, 90% of discover feed is
| politics
| Gigachad wrote:
| Hm, maybe for a fresh account today. I just checked and
| my discover feed is pretty much just art and photography.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Maybe Bluesky needs to ask a few questions the first time
| a new user looks at the discover feed to prime it for
| them.
|
| Personally I'd prefer if there was no default algorithmic
| feed but I know that just doesn't work. People will
| create an account, see nothing in their feed, and leave
| because the site seems dead or because they can't even
| fathom how to get started finding people to follow or
| custom feeds to add.
| bdangubic wrote:
| they do - they ask... the "problem" is that it is too
| broad... I picked "science" and there were myriad of post
| with pictures of various galaxies... pretty but after you
| see 27 of them...
|
| with the new accounts it is also asking to like 10 posts
| and follow 7 accounts so that it can try to figure shit
| out. it can be trained for sure but when I first joined
| to try it out it was just politics - mostly left-leaning
| praising Dr Fauci (very confusing) and stuff like that. I
| don't use social media - no X, Facebook, Insta, TikTok...
| all were tried but eventually discarded ... bluesky will
| suffer the same faith :)
| grumbel wrote:
| Mastodon isn't true decentralization to begin with, it's just
| federation like email, where every user is attached to a
| server and the server operator holds all the power, while the
| user holds none. I find that approach a waste of time, as
| it's just replicating past mistakes verbatim.
|
| On top of that, the whole Fediverse is extremely political.
| Email providers don't care much what you write or with whom
| you communicate outside of spam, so it works quite well.
| Meanwhile Fediverse is blocking people and servers left and
| right, it's completely unusable unless you follow the group-
| think on whatever server you are on.
|
| Real decentralization is what Nostr is doing, where serves
| are just dumb relays, user-ids are public-key pairs and all
| the intelligence is in the client. BlueSky's AT-protocol
| should be capable of similar stuff, though in practice is
| still very much focused around the main BlueSky server.
| simonw wrote:
| "every user is attached to a server and the server operator
| holds all the power, while the user holds none"
|
| So run your own server.
| shwouchk wrote:
| How many people are running their own mail outside of
| large orgs or privacy/security niche? How many of those
| have had trouble sending mail to eg gmail?
| staunton wrote:
| It's easier to run your own Mastodon server than your own
| mail server (for the exact reason you cite).
| griomnib wrote:
| I found it a _lot_ easier to set up my BlueSky instance
| than Mastodon.
|
| Mastodon to me feels like it was built with the explicit
| goal to keep out anybody non-technical, and for technical
| people, only the type that wants to corner you at a party
| and discuss the deep philosophical and moral choices of
| your Linux desktop environment.
| biggestlou wrote:
| That sounds like a recipe for a social media platform
| that never has enough people on it to be even remotely
| interesting.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Do you run your own email server?
| phyzome wrote:
| Bluesky is centralized. Mastodon is decentralized. Neither
| is distributed.
| igravious wrote:
| I dream of a "classic web" as well.
|
| Principles:
|
| (a) non minification and no binary code - this is so that the
| platform is user and dev centred and not corpo and advertiser
| centred
|
| (b) static only mode as default, as in a site will be
| considered broken if it needs dynamic scripts to work, or at
| least it won't be considered a "classic" site - this is for (1)
| accessability and (2) command line (non-GUI) browser access and
| (3) easier automation - push as much common _dynamic_ stuff
| into CSS as possible
|
| (c) cookies are in plain text and by default can only store
| essential information, cookies must be versioned and have a
| corresponding description file on the site's server - no
| information can be stored on the user's computer that is opaque
| to the user
|
| (d) instant messaging is to be a standard of the "classic" web
| - it must be federated and decentralised, just like the web is
| - it is not a separate information space, it is part of the
| same information space as the "classic" web
|
| that's off the top of my head - i view the web and instant
| messaging (or microblogging or whatever you want to call it) as
| fundamentally broken and user hostile
| prisenco wrote:
| Those are all great and I'd love to see them too.
|
| But along the lines of general user experience, the central
| feature I have in mind is the time-based feed. No engagement
| algorithms, no suggestions, just things happening as they
| happen. Anything that goes viral does so organically with no
| push from the system.
|
| The irony of all social media is they all start with an ad-
| free time-based feed to make people fall in love with the
| app, then once they reach a critical mass they switch to an
| engagement algorithm to addict them and pump up views for
| advertisers.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| I think it's only feasible to go with this "classic web"
| approach by having it be a paid service.
| prisenco wrote:
| Yes as mentioned above, a very low cost subscription
| would be ideal. Taking investment and using the 2010 era
| growth model would doom the user experience as we've
| seen.
|
| A paid service, even at a comically low price, would be a
| hard sell at first but that could change as people see
| the value.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > non minification and no binary code
|
| I believe you want human comprehensibility, but going with
| "no minification, no binary" may throw out a baby with the
| bathwater. Everything about computers is binary code
| underneath, even this message (and even UTF-8 is not exactly
| a trivial spec - it's just that we have tools that make it
| super accessible). I suspect you rather want lack of
| deliberate obfuscation for the sake of obscurity.
|
| I think binary formats are fine, as long as there are tools
| to work with them. Same with minified code if the source maps
| are right there - we already spend a ton of computing
| resources for our convenience, no reason to send more bytes
| over the wire if they're not needed, just make sure they're
| fully accessible to whoever wants to look under the hood.
| CartyBoston wrote:
| Twitter sucks because it's commercial. Threads sucks because it's
| commercial. Bluesky will suck because it's commercial.
|
| If only there was a pattern we could detect.
|
| Learn about the Fediverse (not just "Mastodon"), it's the only
| solution worthy of you.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wonder if a tree blogs in an obscure, infrequently traveled
| forest will anyone read it?
| caseyy wrote:
| > If only there was a pattern we could detect
|
| https://briefs.video/videos/i-am-leaving/
| jacoblambda wrote:
| IDK how this applies to Bluesky. The underlying infrastructure
| is only loosely tethered to Bluesky the company. If you want to
| pull all your shit and run it separate from the bluesky stuff
| you can and there's really nothing they can do to try and stop
| you or ban you.
|
| They can limit your reach on their stuff but if you don't want
| to use their stuff it doesn't actually matter and you can
| continue to exist completely independent of them if you want.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| HackerNews is commercial. Beware of sampling bias.
| loeg wrote:
| Threads sucks because it's empty. Bluesky appears to be an
| extremely online leftist enclave (which might be valuable to
| extemely online lefists, but is less appealing to the rest of
| us). Twitter... remains the king? It has its issues but lack of
| poasters and a broad spectrum of opinions aren't among them.
| These services aren't bad because they're commercial
| enterprises.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The broad set of perspectives is "H-1B visas are great
| because it lets us exploit workers" vs "H-1B visas are
| terrible because I'm a racist." Read trending tweets and
| you'll see no different.
|
| Some diversity they got there.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Threads is full of major brands spamming corporate slop.
| Since it's still in the honeymoon phase it doesn't have ads,
| but you can tell that once it's big and mature enough they're
| gonna follow the Instagram strategy of filling it to the brim
| with ads.
| soneca wrote:
| I understand a blog on your own domain is your land in regard to
| microblogging platforms. But what would be my land in regard to
| community software, like Telegram or Discord?
|
| Is there any software like this that I can host on my domain?
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Matrix/Discourse? But like all self hosted solution, it's
| harder to use than a managed product. I think they're both
| excellent though, and pretty common in some circles.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| But will anyone come?
|
| Plenty of the people I follow, Jeff Geerling for example
| (hi!) have their own sites/kingdoms but I don't make the
| rounds of their personal sites every morning.
| soneca wrote:
| Someone will come, and, for me at least, it is ok if it's
| fewer people than what would come on mass reach platform
| soneca wrote:
| Actually, it doesn't have to be self-hosted for me.
|
| A managed product, hosted by a company, that I can point to
| my domain would work (just like some blog or website makers
| solutions).
|
| Discourse has managed option though, so thanks for pointing
| it out.
| 998244353 wrote:
| My team uses Matrix and I must say I'm not satisfied. There
| are messages that I get a notification for every time I open
| the app, and "mark as read" buttons that do nothing,
| especially if you use threads. This is something that has
| supposedly been fixed many times, but it's one of these
| persistent issues that keep coming back.
|
| Also, as far as I can tell, there is no _real_ diversity in
| clients even though Matrix is in principle an open protocol.
| Everything is either Element or a fork of it, or at least is
| built on matrix-react-sdk, which makes them all effectively
| the same.
| entrepy123 wrote:
| Correct notifications are essential for a messaging
| app/service.
|
| If people hit those bugs, I hope some of them have the time
| to speak up in the Matrix channel for that app/platform or
| find/create/bump the Github issue for it. While Matrix
| needs continued love, its ecosystem seems like a great
| protocol & app to keep supporting with feedback.
|
| Messaging apps are hard to get all perfect (even some major
| ones, not naming names), and what Matrix accomplishes is
| pretty impressive; I hope Matrix & Element will continue to
| mature. (For hope, the first iPhone was pretty limited and
| easy to dis, but look at it now.)
| Arathorn wrote:
| Something isn't right here; thread notif problems should
| have been solved a year or so ago.
|
| And most apps are not element forks - eg FluffyChat, Nheko,
| Cinny are all great fully featured apps and separate
| codebases. The only Element fork i can think of is
| SchildiChat. Meanwhile matrix-react-sdk doesn't even exist
| any more.
|
| Are you on a stale build for some reason?
| 998244353 wrote:
| > FluffyChat, Nheko, Cinny are all great fully featured
| apps and separate codebases
|
| Ok, I was mistaken about everything being an Element
| fork.
|
| To move the goalposts slightly though --- do any of these
| apps properly support threads (i.e. messages in threads
| show up in and only in separate views)?
| nicce wrote:
| I am having many "Waiting for this message", usually from
| the same users, and I never get them... I have no idea why
| this happens to me.
| entrepy123 wrote:
| Hosted Matrix can be a good sweet spot:
| https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/
| crimsoneer wrote:
| This seems like a rather poor excuse to not try and integrate
| with the Fediverse/mastodon. Yes, managing your own space is more
| complicated than using a manager solution, but like, isn't that
| always going to be the case?
| gtirloni wrote:
| Yes, especially when the author says they care about control.
| dsr_ wrote:
| >"you're telling me there's a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a
| @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they're two different people?!"
|
| Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@ibm.com are different
| email-people, too. This is not a hard concept.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Yet, people _are_ confused by it. I think this is at least
| partly because there 's even less to differentiate the
| different mastodon domains than there was to differentiate
| gmail and yahoo. And, of course, there are a lot of people
| growing up now who don't really use email, so the analogy can't
| be taken for granted.
| igravious wrote:
| they may be confused by it _yet_ it is not a hard concept
| conradfr wrote:
| Therefore it's a bad concept.
| ohhxohzohx wrote:
| are all hard to understand concepts bad concepts?
|
| are hard concepts from math and science bad concepts?
| should we discard calculus?
|
| is potty training a toddler a bad concept? they initially
| struggle with it and some find it hard
|
| is a healthy diet a bad concept? people without prior
| knowledge of what's healthy and what isn't are likely to
| struggle
| stavros wrote:
| People being confused by a concept is _the definition_ of
| it being hard.
| grumbel wrote:
| It's not a hard concept, but it is a stupid one. Phone
| numbers for example you can take with you when you switch
| providers. Email has the provider hardcoded into your email
| address, thus every new provider means you have a new
| email.
|
| The Web still lacks a first-class concept of a user
| identify that you can take with you across servers.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| But if you own your own domain and use it for your own
| mail, you do take your identity with you? Isn't this what
| AT protocol is promising with Bluesky's identity system?
| BodyCulture wrote:
| What is the evidence for people being confused about that?
| Did any scientist some research about this, are there any
| facts or studies about this issue? Or does just someone think
| it is an issue?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Stages of enlightenment:
|
| 1. That didn't work as I expected.
|
| 2. I am confused!
|
| 3. Oh, that's how it works! I learned something.
|
| Humans go through this every day, in domains technological
| and not.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| You can say it's "not a hard concept" as much as you'd like, it
| doesn't change the reality that it is confusing and hard to
| understand for end users used to Twitter (which is everyone)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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 of the population actually
| using email every day.
|
| Plus, federation makes validating accounts real hard. Looking
| for a semi-popular Twitter user on Mastodon will bring forth
| 800 Twitter-to-Mastodon-bridges with plausible-looking domains,
| only for the real user to end up using something like
| "hachyderm" as their domain name. I don't know any good
| solutions to this problem, but that doesn't make the problem go
| away.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yep. I've had that conversation more than once. They get
| very suspicious! And probably triggers internal meetings
| with cyber.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| _Don't build castles in other peoples kingdoms_
|
| That is why I devote my energy to enriching my home file server
| with custom software that I can access anywhere via domain name
| mapped to a IPv6 address. It is my kingdom and its not going
| away. I can demo on there full stack applications that would be
| challenging to demo otherwise. If I had a blog on there I could
| say what I want. I could host a personal email address on there.
| I am exploring how to limit access by physical device identity so
| that it remains private even on the public internet.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I'm not trying to be rude but are you serious or being
| sarcastic? Because on here it could go either way. There are
| definitely people who would build everything themselves just
| because they can. And there are people who would mock someone
| for doing so.
|
| If you're being serious, how much time does it take and how
| much custom software do you actually have?
| chickenfeed wrote:
| Self-hosting sounds good but the security concerns are just a
| bind. Plus you need stability. Like having a home. Our
| electric grid falls over at least once a week where we live.
| Yes I could use batteries, but no, I can't be bothered.
| speff wrote:
| Batteries are a pretty set-and-forget solution though. Out
| of all the maintenance/thought I put towards my server, the
| UPS takes the least amount of attention. Though it really
| is only good for outages <2 or 3 hours. If it's longer in
| your area, then it's a bigger concern
| incompatible wrote:
| Or you die, if you are interested in long-term availability
| of your work. It's nice to have it hosted somewhere where
| others will look after it.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| I wrote a Node application that serves as a real time
| dashboard of my docker containers, web servers, port
| availability, provides a command terminal in the browser, and
| a system logger. I should also write a symlink manager and a
| process manager for it. The web servers are executed from
| this application and allow any kind of traffic redirection
| via streamed pipes. Then in the docker containers I can run
| things like pihole, jellyfin, and various other things that I
| can choose to expose outside the lan via traffic redirection
| rules on the web servers. Running multiple web servers on the
| same box allows access via port numbers and different
| management rules per server.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It's quite interesting how much Musk's taking over Twitter
| damaged a lot of small businesses, where the person's personal
| brand on Twitter actually generated a decent amount of their
| business. What was even more interesting was seeing those semi-
| large accounts 20-100k followers move over to Bluesky post the
| same material on both but get more engagement on Bluesky with
| 1/10th of the audience.
| afro88 wrote:
| Very interesting. Do you have any links with actual data /
| detail?
| asadotzler wrote:
| Not op but I'm on Bluesky and have seen several of these
| decent sized accounts, including people at large newsrooms
| say they get far more engagement at BlueSky than Twitter.
| Bigger fish, smaller pond, I suspect, but also more engaged
| users perhaps.
| chickenfeed wrote:
| Bluesky has potential with the AT protocol.
|
| I think I had a flagged post on Bluesky, early on that just
| referenced something elsewhere - it was pretty harmless. And I
| remember a few X users trying the platform saying something
| vaguely controversial and getting a suspension. Or some such. I
| don't want to get into the ins and outs of censorship and free
| speech but you can get booted out the pub for saying something
| disagreeable in front of the bar hands or patrons. And I would be
| quite livid if I had invested in a platform and then got shut
| down.
|
| The AT protocol gives you the ability to produce feeds. But it's
| actually the consumption aggregation and discover-ability that
| seems to the difficult bit. I feel we need a lightweight RSS
| style reader in browser to really get past this. There are weird
| hacks on Bluesky to subscribe to feeds. But it is messy. The
| feeds are where the magic potentially happens.
|
| Twitter had become unpalatable before Musk bought it. And there
| were various crisis of confidence and herd threatening
| migrations, but people just couldn't be bothered. In its latest
| ungodly form people are still sticking around, or moving to silos
| and bubbles on other platforms, it's just a complete and utter
| mess at this point.
|
| Platforms inevitably win out with convenience. Facebook,
| Instagram, Whatsapp succeeded as people just couldn't share or
| publish photos or files easily. Combined with some magic
| discover-ability.
|
| Twitter's collapse has been painful. But weirdly it was
| incredibly influential though low in membership.
|
| My personal consumption of social feeds has been obliterated to
| nearly zero. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I published for
| myself rather than an audience and had used Twitter just because
| it was easy. I have a broken computer at the moment and my entire
| dev stack / environment is in chaos. And although I think the
| barriers to publishing and self hosting are low there are still
| inherent obstacles.
| maelito wrote:
| This is true but still, Bluesky enables things that X just
| cannot.
|
| I've spend hours building a website (1) that counts which members
| of the French parliament still actively tweet on X, and which
| actively use Bluesky.
|
| The "analyse.ts" script for X did have to go through scraping, in
| a real browser connected to a real account. It got blocked every
| 30 or so profile views...
|
| The Bluesky script was a delight, using the open no-credentials
| API (2).
|
| Of course the Bluesky company can shut down their website or
| their API. But still, what this openness permits today is a
| significant difference from what X ever permitted. Their
| abstractions will stay and could be leveraged by another company
| with a team of 10 experimented developers.
|
| 1. The website is https://politix.top. Feel free to fork it for
| your own country. 2. Here is the Bluesky script
| https://github.com/laem/politix/blob/master/analyseBluesky.t...
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > a significant difference from what X ever permitted
|
| I'm glad you specified "X" there; Twitter, of course, used to
| have a very good API. The bar has undoubtedly lowered.
| maelito wrote:
| My memory fails, despite the fact that in 2012 I used the
| Twitter API, but I don't think it was this easy and open for
| Twitter before X, was it ?
| Klonoar wrote:
| Parts of it certainly were. I built a somewhat widely
| deployed feed widget back in ~2009/2010 that worked via
| JSON-P and public access.
|
| I assume this is all ancient history now and a distant
| memory to most, but there was an era where Twitter's API
| was a ton of fun to work with.
| glimshe wrote:
| "Openness",as far as for-profit businesses are concerned, is a
| marketing strategy. Once enough users are locked in, there is
| no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.
| maelito wrote:
| > there is no reason to offer a valuable feature for free.
|
| Well that's of course OK with me : Bluesky should make their
| users pay. 10 % of users paying 1EUR/month, 1 % paying 10
| EUR/month, for instance. That's ok, we're paying a service.
|
| But the API access and federation should remain free.
| aSanchezStern wrote:
| You're assuming that every for profit business is entirely
| devoid of morality. This was not true under the Keynesian
| compromise of the 20th century, and is not true of every
| business today. Just because people are sometimes selfish
| doesn't mean they never have any principles.
| splintercell wrote:
| The feature you're describing is only supported by BlueSky "for
| now". It isn't an essential element of the design of BS.
| Zak wrote:
| > _"you're telling me there's a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a
| @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they're two different people?!"_
|
| While the author has a valid point about Bluesky having more
| momentum and some UX advantages over Mastodon, this is silly.
| Most people already know that choldgraf@gmail.com and
| choldgraf@hotmail.com might be different people.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Technical folks might. Non-technical folks fall for this kind
| of thing in phishing attempts often enough that I can see the
| confusing complaint having some merit.
| Zak wrote:
| It's a bit different when someone is being intentionally
| deceptive. None of the major social platforms or protocols
| guard effectively against someone making a deceptively
| similar username to impersonate someone.
|
| I bet the vast majority of non-technical people who use email
| would correctly answer that the two email addresses might
| belong to different people if asked. That doesn't mean
| they'll be checking closely while using email every time.
|
| Something similar is possible on Bluesky since usernames are
| domain names.
| eichin wrote:
| It looks like bluesky only _just_ figured out (in the last
| couple of weeks, I think?) that even if you authenticate
| foo.example.com they need to keep foo.bsky.social reserved,
| because otherwise they immediately get snapped up for
| impersonation. So, yeah, possible and already happening,
| but at least they 're _trying_ to mitigate the worst case
| of it.
| ritcgab wrote:
| People with similar mindsets gather on the same platform and
| ultimately create an echo chamber. If that's what you want, you
| can do the same on X/Twitter by creating your own "network". Just
| don't use the recommendation system and that's it.
|
| Abolishing a platform is merely a form of performance art.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > don't build your castle in a kingdom that somebody else
| controls
|
| > I'll encourage folks to drive those conversations to community-
| specific spaces (like Discourse, Discord, etc).
|
| Who does the author think controls Discord?
| diggan wrote:
| > Who does the author think controls Discord?
|
| I think you misunderstand what sort of control they speak
| about. I think what they're getting at is "Who is doing the
| moderation?" rather than "Who is maintaining the servers?", so
| the community aspect instead of the technical details.
|
| I think Discord let people do the moderation part pretty much
| however they want, compared to say Twitter where there is one
| moderation team that controls it all.
|
| Bit similar to Reddit I suppose, although Reddit also have
| admins/site-wide moderators that clean up across subreddits, so
| not identical.
|
| Still, seems weird to drive people from one castle to another
| castle, when instead you can drive them to your own website
| (like with Discourse). But I don't think that's what the author
| is talking about.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The experience Jesse Singal has had really seems that Bluesky has
| gathered lot of the worst, violent, insightless idiots from pre
| Musk Twitter.
|
| There are a few people who I would actually follow but so far my
| experience has just been a mixture of centrist fools past whom
| the world has gone by, and leftist extremists
| bl_valance wrote:
| This is the right attitude. The amount of people who's world
| crumbles when they get banned and heavily depend on its
| engagement and income is too high.
|
| In terms of Bluesky/Threads, etc. When a platform's intrinsic
| value is that, "it's not the other platform", it won't last or
| will only track very niche and closed-off groups. What does
| Bluesky offer that is unique/different?
|
| Federation, as the post mentioned, is something the average user
| doesn't care or is beyond their comprehension. Too much friction
| as it is implemented, the best way is to organically and
| transparently implement it, if it's even possible.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm worried about the issues in the article (They are likely an
| inevitable consequence of the funding model). For now, I'm loving
| it! I didn't have Twitter or X. I'm using it to follow various
| science and engineering feeds. It's fantastic, and the people are
| friendly; some of the highest quality discussion (but short) I've
| found online. (Not to HN's level though! )
|
| To make Discover useful, I recommend aggressively muting or
| blocking bottomfeeder political content. If someone is only
| posting tribal or identity politics, block. I bring this up, as I
| think it would resolve a subset of the complaints I've seen in
| this thread and elsewhere.
|
| I wish you could have all your feeds combined, but this appears
| not to be possible.
| snowstormsun wrote:
| I predict Bluesky will add some form of targeted advertisements
| in the future once the user base has grown to a certain size.
| Isn't that obvious? I'd assume that's also why investors are
| willing to invest.
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