[HN Gopher] Bluesky: Updated Terms and Policies
___________________________________________________________________
Bluesky: Updated Terms and Policies
Author : mschuster91
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-08-14 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bsky.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (bsky.social)
| isodev wrote:
| I wish Bluesky would finally announce how they plan to monetise
| it all. It feels like things are stuck in-between trying to be
| "open to the community", gather developer momentum around
| ATProto, the promise of decentralisation and independence... and
| the unknowns of their roadmap ahead?
|
| It's all very nicely written but the risk of committing oneself
| (as a user, as a developer, as a social/marketing person, etc)
| only to get surprised by what/how they generate profit from is
| just unsettling.
| mr90210 wrote:
| It's possible that they are uncertain about the path to
| monetisation. As far as I see, it's either subscriptions or
| selling ads.
| isodev wrote:
| Their uncertainty is magnified on the outside tbh. e.g. There
| are other things at play that can (probably will) cost a lot
| of money. The protocol (ATProto) they're developing and
| advocating as a "platform".
|
| Say I'm building a cool app around that, how do I plan how
| much is this going to cost me and can I stomach the risk of
| binding myself to this "supposedly open" platform without
| knowing how it will work in 6 months?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The best way to think about it is to assume you'll want to
| leave someday, and you'll be going to whichever is the best of
| the choices at that future time that are early enough to be
| years away from needing to monetize.
|
| Don't let yourself get attached to any one place. That's the
| lesson. Staying ahead of monetization is the move. Nothing will
| stay good forever.
| ttiurani wrote:
| > the promise of decentralisation
|
| AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering
| effort.
|
| I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC
| investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy
| and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the
| many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.
| isodev wrote:
| Same, that's why I said "the promise of". Also how do they
| plan to bill actors in this decentralised system? Is it going
| to be developers footing the bill? Some premium features only
| "the main Bluesky instance" has? It's not clear to me at all.
| jacob2161 wrote:
| Bluesky is built on atproto, which is designed to be "locked
| open" in a way that can't be rescinded. That was a core
| design constraint.
|
| VCs funded Netscape which did more than any other company to
| launch the web and they made a lot of money without having to
| destroy the ideals of the web.
| evbogue wrote:
| The PDSes (personal data servers) can be independantly
| hosted, but Bluesky itself indexes and presents the
| messages these servers contain in their social-app. Bluesky
| also maintains the directory of these servers.
| jacob2161 wrote:
| Anyone else is _also_ free to run these services (app
| views, relays) and a few people already are doing this.
|
| An atproto PDS is like a structured-data blog hosted on a
| web server. Anyone is free to index, relay, and render
| the data.
| evbogue wrote:
| Yes, and running these things is prohibitively difficult
| such as I've only witnessed two full index attempts and
| no alternative plc directories.
|
| Bluesky should make these easier so your average Linux
| admin can attempt to host the full stack, as opposed to
| only being able to host a PDS. This would eliminate the
| criticism about Bluesky's design.
| jacob2161 wrote:
| I agree there's a lot of room for improvement in making
| it easier.
|
| But certain things like full-network relays/app views
| just have inherent bandwidth/storage/compute costs
| associated with them but it's definitely something a non-
| profit (like Internet Archive) could easily afford to do.
|
| The PLC service could likely be hosted for ~$40/mo.
| bnewbold wrote:
| If you want a service which indexes every post in the
| public network, including from folks you don't follow,
| that is just going to require resources. I think
| $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin does) is
| very reasonable and approachable for organized groups
| without external funding. Many Mastodon instances cost
| more than that, and provide a must smaller scope of
| indexing.
|
| If you want a small scaled down setup for just a small
| community, which still interoperates with the full
| network but doesn't have a complete network, there are
| setups like AppViewLite, which can run on, eg, an old
| laptop at home: https://github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite
|
| Personally, I don't think individualist self-hosting is a
| necessary or helpful goal for indexing the network. Most
| humans are not interested in spending the time or
| learning the skills to do this, even if it was as easy as
| setting up a self-hosted blog with RSS. I think small
| collectives (orgs, coops, communities, neighborhoods,
| companies, etc) exist and can fill this role.
|
| Regardless, this is moving the discussion, which was
| about whether it was _possible_ to decentralize each
| _component_ the network, not whether it was pragmatic for
| _individuals_ to self-host the _whole thing_.
| dingnuts wrote:
| > I think $200/month for a full-network index (as zepplin
| does) is very reasonable and approachable for organized
| groups without external funding.
|
| That's crazy cheap! Everybody on HN should be able to run
| one of these, just cancel your Claude Code Max
| subscription
|
| All kidding aside, that's incredibly cost effective and
| heartening to read. I expected the cost of running a
| relay to be much higher.
| bnewbold wrote:
| "A Full-Network Relay for $34/month"
| https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l
| anon7000 wrote:
| AT Proto isn't really supposed to be about individuals
| self hosting the whole thing. The system is supposed to
| be global, distributed, and shared, not isolated to one
| person self-hosting the whole stack. One person should be
| able to host a resource and connect it to the network
| (esp to host their own data). It's just a different
| design goal compared to full-stack self-hosting.
| Fundamentally speaking, you can't run Twitter at scale on
| a home laptop. But if lots of people band together their
| resources by hosting distributed microservices, they can
| self host it together. That's what AT Proto is trying to
| solve
| bnewbold wrote:
| hundreds (thousands?) of users have signed up for Bluesky
| Social, then moved their accounts to independent hosts. folks
| can use https://zeppelin.social/ as a totally free-standing
| bluesky posting experience that interoperates with the full
| network.
|
| Bluesky Social still clearly dominates the ecosystem, but
| there is no single component of the system that does not have
| a open/alternative option for exit.
|
| Do you disagree? Is there a specific centralized component
| you take issue with?
| ttiurani wrote:
| > there is no single component of the system that does not
| have a open/alternative option for exit.
|
| Users can move their follows, followers and posts to
| zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently?
|
| Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized" means,
| but in a social network easy migration between servers is
| the crucial feature that would allow the decentralized
| network to emerge.
|
| Edit. Does the network actually work over at
| zeppelin.social alone if Bluesky servers go down?
| jcgl wrote:
| > Now you can of course debate on what "decenttalized"
| means, but in a social network easy migration between
| servers is the crucial feature that would allow the
| decentralized network to emerge.
|
| I totally agree. However, a lot of people in the
| fediverse/ActivityPub world apparently (?) disagree,
| seeing as your domain is tightly coupled to your server,
| i.e. no name portability. Seems like a wild oversight to
| me, and getting massive instances like matrix.org and
| mastadon.social seems like an inevitable consequence.
|
| Lack of name portability implies greater risk when
| choosing a server. Greater risk when choosing a server
| means choosing comparatively less risky servers. Choosing
| comparatively less risky servers means choosing more
| well-known servers. Thus you have the GMail-ification of
| the fediverse.
| FiloSottile wrote:
| > Users can move their follows, followers and posts to
| zeppelin.social fron BlueSky transparently?
|
| Yes, even if Bluesky was down (as long as they have a
| backup) which is not the case for ActivityPub.
| bnewbold wrote:
| Yes, all of those social graph relationships are hinged
| off a permanent identifier (DID) and everything comes
| along when accounts migrate PDS instances. Folks can use
| zeppelin.social from any PDS instance. The DID PLC
| directory is currently hosted by Bluesky, but the
| directory can be forked, and did:web identifiers can be
| used as an alternative (and several independence-minded
| folks in the network do so).
|
| Migration between servers is so seamless that is causes
| confusion and doubt that the protocol even supports
| migration, because there is basically zero in-app
| visibility of which users are on which server.
|
| Yes, the network continues to work on zeppelin.social if
| Bluesky servers are down.
| isodev wrote:
| Even if set aside the details on dependence on bluesky
| infrastructure, the effort to host "all components" is
| quite expensive and technology-intensive with significant
| cost for storage and compute. For example, a deployment of
| "all the things" (just for you) is in the ballpark of
| 70-100EUR/month because the way things are designed to
| work. And that's not even factoring the burden of managing
| the whole range of technologies involved.
|
| Making it hard to setup or run, complex to understand or
| change are also forms of discouraging independent use.
| jacob2161 wrote:
| I believe this isn't as much of a problem as it appears to be
| at first glance because of the scale of social apps like
| Bluesky.
|
| For example, Wikipedia generates >$180M/yr just by running ads
| for itself requesting donations. Requesting donations is the
| least effective monetizing strategy and yet it still works
| because of scale.
|
| Donations would probably work but Bluesky has additional
| options. They could create a premium app for power users that
| just adds nice-to-have features (which may cost real money to
| provide and maintain), they can resell domain names, they can
| sell merch, etc.
|
| Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars to be
| highly sustainable and profitable. It was built and scaled with
| fewer than 20 full time employees.
|
| The most important and most difficult part is getting to
| sufficient scale, and that's mostly a matter of just making the
| app even better than it is today.
|
| I posted a bit about this here:
| https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t
| isodev wrote:
| > Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars
|
| Are you sure their investors share this vision?
| jacob2161 wrote:
| 1. I believe they actually could generate (low) billions of
| dollars without compromising at all, if they manage to
| reach true mainstream scale (>1 billion MAUs)
|
| 2. I really don't care if the investors/shareholders are
| disappointed as long as the PBC's mission is fulfilled.
| Also their control is relatively limited.
|
| Maybe I should have written added this:
|
| Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in Bluesky Social, PBC
| (former employee)
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Aren't they at ~10M MAU and falling? At least that's the
| impression given by https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Investors might get soaked, such is the risk of capital
| investment. Everything built on AT Protocol would survive.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Everything built on AT Protocol would survive.
|
| Will it? How much of that doesn't run on investor backed
| servers today? People often say stuff like this but I
| haven't seen that work in practice.
| skybrian wrote:
| Yeah, that's more of a hope about the future. It's up to
| other people to build it.
|
| I've seen posts about some poorly-publicized, proof-of-
| concept alternative implementations that would probably
| fall over if they got real attention, but I think that
| shows that it's not a problem with the protocol itself.
|
| Good enough, as far as I'm concerned. It's just about
| posting comments on the Internet, not bank accounts. If
| something went fatally wrong, we would move again, just
| like we moved off previous social networks.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > such is the risk of capital investment
|
| Everyone says that right up until they read the news
| where the US Government bails those investors out.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It is _highly unlikely_ the US gov bails Bluesky
| investors out, and I wouldn't care if they did. $36M
| raised to date is couch cushion money.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's also possible to run an annual event that makes a
| profit. Which might be something a social network could
| figure out.
|
| The first club I belonged to as a teenager worked this way.
| In lieu of high membership dues there was volunteer time
| spent helping out at or before the event. I was surprised as
| an adult to learn that some events lose money or only break
| even.
| Onavo wrote:
| They better start putting together an avant garde Blue Sky
| art gallery then. Real estate in NYC and SF aren't cheap.
| hinkley wrote:
| Which means this is going to end badly. A non profit
| version would be better off headquartered somewhere lower
| rent.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| My guess is, they're going to have to be okay with only
| reaching break-even or slightly over. That's the point, after
| all. If you're dissatisfied with how any of these decentralized
| protocol platforms are running things, you're technically free
| to start your own, and plenty of people have.
|
| Enshittification can't consume low barriers-to-entry markets.
| mr90210 wrote:
| > In some locations, we may be required to restrict access to
| certain features or content unless you complete an age assurance
| process and demonstrate that you are an adult.
|
| Not BlueSky specific, but I am getting ready to nuke my accounts
| on social media and other websites as soon as they start
| requiring said verifications.
|
| I truly don't what to expect from this trend.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, feels like we're going to have relearn what the tech
| can do.
|
| It's _possible_ to do all of this without permission, it 's
| just hard...
| busymom0 wrote:
| If YouTube or Reddit requires me to upload ID, I am going to
| delete my account.
| jl6 wrote:
| > Not BlueSky specific, but I am getting ready to nuke my
| accounts on social media
|
| This is the way, folks.
| yread wrote:
| > demonstrate that you are an adult
|
| maybe they mean a captcha like "do the taxes for this guy"
| dathinab wrote:
| no, some places did signed laws, are about to sign laws which
| do legally require age checks
|
| e.g. this December a ban for social media for anyone <16y
| takes effect in Australia. They also removed the power from
| parents to consent that younger children are allowed to use
| social media. They require "reasonable" steps to check the
| age, and nearly did require id checks. Even through they in
| the end didn't require it but a simple captcha or similar
| clearly won't be enough.
| causalmodels wrote:
| Given how things are going, I expect to I'll need to age verify
| accounts that are almost twenty years.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| It's not the fault of BlueSky or their users, but I really
| haven't enjoyed the social media climate right now. If I want to
| have a discussion about subject X I would need to be deep inside
| echo chamber social media network Y. For some subjects that is
| BlueSky and for others it would be platforms I don't want to
| participate in.
|
| I think the reality is that most social media platforms will
| inevitability create hyper-polarized audiences that do little
| more than generate content.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The hyper-polarization is probably preventable, in my
| estimation. The main thing a social network would need to do is
| to stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users
| (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly. That
| might mean something along the lines of a system that puts a
| hard cap on the reach any profile or topic can have, and when
| engagement exceeds the triggering threshold, reach actually
| _tapers off_ proportionate to how far the threshold is
| exceeded.
|
| In theory this would naturally elevate posts that are more
| measured and mundane while sinking posts with big emotional
| lizard brain appeal (by design or otherwise). With time this
| would establish a self-reinforcing norm that makes polarized
| and inflammatory posts look as clownish as they actually are.
| rectang wrote:
| > _stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users
| (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly_
|
| This prevents certain communities from forming and certain
| topics from being discussed. For example, you can't discuss
| LGBTQ issues with troll armies constantly swarming and
| spamming. If such communities are not given tools to exclude
| malignant disruptors by setting norms and "dominating" a
| given channel, they will have to go elsewhere (such as
| leaving X for BlueSky).
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| This system wouldn't work in place of moderation, but
| rather alongside it. The two would have an enhancing effect
| on each other:
|
| - Reach limits greatly limit troll effectiveness, since
| they can't find each other as easily
|
| - Posts that exceed the threshold naturally vs. being
| trolled past would have different "fingerprints" that could
| be used like a blacklight for troll detection for both
| assisting moderators and for model training for automatic
| suspected troll flagging
|
| The threshold should probably be dynamic and set at the
| point at which posts "breach containment" (escape from
| their intended audience), which is where problems tend to
| occur.
|
| Bluesky-like self-moderation controls would also help.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| moderation inevitably leads to exclusion- just look at
| the US state specific subreddits that are moderated by
| radicals who prohibit even the slightest deviation from
| their views which silences dissent. This one-sided
| viewpoint is then slurped up and used to train AI models
| in a kind of gross feedback loop
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Reddit's fatal flaw is that subreddit mods are
| volunteers. Sometimes this works well when you get a
| knowledgable, benevolent individual in the position, but
| more often than not you get people who want to power
| trip.
|
| Mods should be in-house, on payroll, and strictly bound
| to the network's standards.
|
| This should generally be less of an issue anyway in a
| system that actively penalizes the sorts of crudely
| expressed, un-nuanced posts that are typically social
| media's bread and butter. Not being able to appeal to
| basal emotions ("it feels right" is a poor metric) and
| being required to substantiate views more intelligently
| takes the air out of a lot of fringe sails.
| packetlost wrote:
| As always, there's a balance. Communities (and individuals)
| generally need the ability to moderate and manage access to
| both membership and interactions with the community.
| Algorithmic-driven open platforms are sorta mutually
| incompatible with that idea
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| I think a lot of social network problems would be solved if
| platforms put an orange flag next to profiles that have
| posted more than 10 times in the last 24 hours, and a red
| flag next to profiles that have posted more than 60 times in
| the last 7 days. The total number of flags ever given to an
| account on the bio would be good as well. No other automatic
| action, just a visible flag or other symbol.
|
| Being able to temporarily filter out profiles that post too
| many times (a setting you could change) would also be nice,
| but it shouldn't be automatic.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Not a bad idea. It may also be good to distinguish replies
| and reposts from unique timeline posts, with "reply guys"
| consistently being some of the most notorious individuals.
| skybrian wrote:
| Bluesky has a "quiet posters" feed that I find useful.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's somebody's side-thing, I think and not official
| Bluesky, but yes, that's become my primary feed for
| Bluesky. Following is my secondary and I almost never
| look at discover or popular with friends.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think it's more about not taking posts out of context.
| Communities need boundaries between them. Substack and other
| blogging tools are good this way.
|
| For Bluesky, the problem is that the _replies_ to someone you
| follow can be pretty bad. (Official Bluesky posts are an
| example of this.) People can filter them individually, but
| it's not the same as a blog with good moderation.
|
| I don't think I could do a whole lot if the replies to one of
| my Bluesky posts were bad?
| dhosek wrote:
| But blocking on Bluesky works better than it did on
| Twitter. If you post a crummy reply to me and I block you,
| _nobody_ sees your reply. There are a few other small
| differences between Bluesky and Twitter that really do a
| lot to cut down on the pile-on effect that's common at
| Twitter.
| skybrian wrote:
| That's good, but there are low-information posts where a
| hard block on first offense is kind of harsh.
| gamacodre wrote:
| A recent study[1] seems to indicate that polarization is a
| hard problem, along with some of the other negative effects
| of social media. Many of the commonly suggested solutions
| have minimal impact, or no effect at all. That flywheel
| effect is surprisingly robust.
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I saw that, but the approach taken is questionable (do LLMs
| represent realistic behavior for scenarios they've not been
| trained for?) and it also doesn't seem like anything like
| my suggestions here were tested. It's better than nothing,
| but far from conclusive in my opinion.
| epistasis wrote:
| There's a lot of hot tub parties out there. Some have people
| you want I really want to interact with, some do not. Some have
| good house rules making it feel comfortable, some do not.
|
| The best part of BlueSky in my opinion is that it's really easy
| to control what you want to see, without the site-owner's
| algorithm choosing for you. No matter who else is at the hot
| tub party, I don't have to worry much about them peeing in my
| particular hot tub. I hear Mastodon is somewhat similar, but
| it's been a while.
|
| The balance between discovery and curation and control is nigh-
| on perfect for me in BlueSky. If I want to focus just on my
| corner of the science world, it's super easy for me to build a
| network of people just in that corner and not get spammed with,
| say, racially-tinged fight videos that are meant for engagement
| bait, as has happened on other social networks.
|
| If you want hyper-polarized communities, some of those can be
| found on BlueSky too! But at least on BlueSky I'm able to
| choose what I want rather than having the preferences of the
| site owner control my information environment.
| dkiebd wrote:
| This completely depends on the moderation policies of the
| website. So, yes, the platforms are at fault.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The hyper-polarization is already in the real world, so I don't
| think social media can avoid that.
| kodt wrote:
| I left X because of how bad it got but BlueSky is also quite
| often useless in terms of good discussion. Recently any
| substack article posted is just filled with comments about how
| using substack supports Nazi ideology, no other discussion to
| be had. When it comes to anything related to AI the comments
| are all about stealing from artists. It is as if people just
| wait for the right buzzword to appear and post their canned
| response. Interesting posts that don't cause any controversy
| just don't have much engagement.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| My qualms with Bluesky has less to do with ideological
| leanings (it's true that there are ethics implications that a
| lot of people like to sweep under the rug and that should be
| pointed out) and more with how depressing it is to use, with
| an overwhelming sentiment of doom.
|
| I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend
| everything is just peachy (it's not) but the doomerism is so
| strong and pervasive that I think it breeds complacency that
| when met with the sugar high of social media engagement
| reacts to form armchair activism (which breeds yet more
| complacency). All that time and energy may be better spent
| building each other up and encouraging action through an
| optimistic outlook.
| tomku wrote:
| The same trend is noticeable here on HN. Many threads are
| full of top-level posts that are just someone pattern-
| matching on a word they don't like in the headline and using
| it as an excuse to vent about whatever their pet issue is.
| Usually posts like that are magnets for zero-effort "me too"s
| and similar. Sometimes interesting discussions happen deeper
| in the threads, but it's disappointingly rare. It's really
| sad watching the entire internet turn into this, and I can't
| help but feel like places like Twitter/X and Bluesky are the
| source.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I think that Twitter (and by extension, Bluesky) is designed in
| such a way that it promotes hostility and division. You can't
| really have a good discussion when the format makes people
| limit their posting to super short messages; it means people
| just dump hot takes on each other and wind up shouting past
| each other. So in that sense I certainly would call it the
| platforms' fault. Twitter (and Bluesky/Mastodon) are toxic to
| our society and we would be far better off if they were never
| created.
| thoughtFrame wrote:
| For all that it sounds unlikely, it'd be nice if the
| blogosphere, with blog replies and pingbacks, could come back
| for this sort of discussion. No monetization, though, so
| substack and co. are out.
| Eupolemos wrote:
| What, in your opinion, is wrong with a bit of monetization?
|
| I know it can produce some posts of less value, but it also
| pulls the blogger back in and allows professionals in certain
| areas to not feel they give put high quality out there for
| absolutely nothing.
|
| I just mean, I can see the pros, but not really serious cons,
| so I'm wondering what your take is?
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| That's the one question I had over and over when Twitter was
| slowly dying. Do we really need another Twitter?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > If I want to have a discussion about subject X I would need
| to be deep inside echo chamber social media network Y.
|
| To me, this is the crux of your problem. Social media is like
| a, well, _social_ space like a bar. Not everyone shares the
| same opinions, but most of the patrons can at least agree
| enough to not fight each other, which is sort of an echo
| chamber since yelling something against the grain would get
| your ask kicked in a bar.
|
| Forums are the place to have a discussion about subject X,
| since everyone is there to have that discussion. Of course, if
| you get off topic or snippy the conversation may devolve, but
| if you stay on topic you can have a nice conversation about
| subject X.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Everyone calls X a "dumpster fire" etc, but when I go on there I
| see see great tech conversations. Database people having fun and
| chatting about projects. Lots of hackers. A much larger network
| than bluesky.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. It's like when you see headlines
| claiming "people" are outraged by a jeans advertisement. Are
| they really? Who? How many? Really I think it's just something
| to argue about for entertainment's sake.
|
| Outside of bullying, which I do think is a real risk for kids,
| I don't feel like the time I spend on social media is unhealthy
| at all. Granted I'm mostly YouTube, zero percent IG or
| Facebook. I'm really grateful for what Google bought/built.
|
| Excuse me now as I need to go watch a short that explains the
| difference between Australian and British accents. Very
| important, goodbye!
| jrflowers wrote:
| > I don't feel like the time I spend on social media is
| unhealthy at all. Granted I'm mostly YouTube, zero percent IG
| or Facebook.
|
| This is a good point. Social media isn't unhealthy if you
| don't use it
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| > Excuse me now as I need to go watch a short that explains
| the difference between Australian and British accents. Very
| important, goodbye!
|
| I also am a big fan of YouTube for exactly this reason, but
| you need to be careful.
|
| There's all kinds of great educational content on there.
|
| But, for anything "political" or controversial, YouTube can
| get toxic very quickly. I believe this is going to be true
| for most social media as long as engagement is the KPI. It
| directly incentivizes echo chambers, ragebait, and all kinds
| of terrible discourse.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I couldn't agree more. It's like when you see headlines
| claiming "people" are outraged by a jeans advertisement.
|
| Well, it turns out that some people are actually outraged by
| a jeans ads... the problem is that these social networks tend
| to amplify these sort of divise issues for engagement
| purposes.
|
| My problem with Twitter/X was that, for instance I was
| following somebody in 2010's who talked about Javascript and
| Node, only to end up with that person constantly ranting
| about partisan issues that had nothing to do with it
| (especially after Trump election), but at the time, Twitter
| provided no way to limit feeds to center of interests. That
| made me quit the platform and I imagine it's getting way wore
| now...
| extraisland wrote:
| > I couldn't agree more. It's like when you see headlines
| claiming "people" are outraged by a jeans advertisement. Are
| they really? Who? How many? Really I think it's just
| something to argue about for entertainment's sake.
|
| It is a common tactic to create a new controversy to take
| attention away from a much more important topic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
|
| The whole Sydney Sweeney Jeans Advert "controversy" felt like
| it was AstroTurf-ed.
|
| Less than a few weeks ago. Trump was getting a huge amount of
| pressure about the lack of transparency with the Jeffrey
| Epstein investigation. All of that seems to have been
| forgotten now (or that is at least is my impression).
| can16358p wrote:
| I use Instagram mostly for educational and artistic content.
|
| It's generally a positive experience for me. It's not the
| network but what people follow there.
| weinzierl wrote:
| For me it's the complete opposite. I stayed because I thought
| it's a storm that will pass. I even had hope Elon gets bored
| with it and writes off the loss. Nothing of this has happened
| and probably ever will.
|
| Most of the interesting people in my circles have left and the
| ones that stayed are so disconnected that there is no real
| community any more.
|
| The end this on a higher note. Would you be willing to share
| some people to follow that make being on X worthwhile for you.
| threecheese wrote:
| Really it's the "LLM community", I'd say ML but I follow
| plenty of data sciencey folks on Bsky. Lots of LLM folks
| migrated off Twitter, but it just didn't take. Network
| effects imo.
| Iridiumkoivu wrote:
| This very much my experience as well with current Twitter/X. I
| think I can at least express myself without having to ponder if
| the service itself will ban me for saying that "the king has no
| clothes on".
|
| I finally see on my timeline art and music I like. Not to
| mention the interesting technology-related discussions.
|
| It's not all sunshine but things are clearly better with a
| wider range of opinions being present on my timeline and more
| variety in content. I just wish I could better filter foreign
| (esp. USA & UK) political content out of my feed.
| futhey wrote:
| X is so large that it can simultaneously be a giant dumpster
| fire, the most toxic social network ever to exist, and still
| have room for honest discussion and good communities.
|
| Gives me some hope for Bluesky, etc. I don't think you need to
| be Twitter scale or have global network effects to work. Your
| community just has to choose a particular platform and show a
| preference for it. You get miniature network effects once your
| community adopts it.
|
| So if your favorite community doesn't like a particular
| platform, I don't think they're stuck there, just because it's
| the one with global scale. They just have to organize an exit.
| moron4hire wrote:
| My problem with Twitter is that it constantly forces unwanted
| content into my feed. Before I finally quit about a year ago,
| it was pushing straight-up, no-interpretation-needed, racist
| and anti-semetic posts into my feed.
|
| If there were a store that secretly sold Nazi propoganda out
| the back if you gave the owner a special handshake, you'd
| innocently have no way of knowing and you'd keep shopping at
| that store. I don't think anyone could hold it over your head
| that you were shopping at a Nazi store if it were being ran
| with such discretion.
|
| But if there were a store where the owner occasionally made a
| little wink-wink-nudge-nudge whoopsy-doodly where he
| "accidentally" left such stuff out at the checkout counter,
| just to see if you'd be interested... I'm sorry, there's no way
| I'd ever go back to that store, no matter how great it's other
| stuff was. It could be the only place that sold my favorite
| beer or whatever and it wouldn't matter. Some things are
| inexcusable.
| rexpop wrote:
| > I see see great tech conversations
|
| And so what? The app is controlled by, and profits, a psychotic
| oligarch. That should be a dealbreaker for you.
|
| Chick-fil-A also has good chicken, but no reasonable adult can
| stomach their politics--and you're buying those, too, when you
| patronize their shop.
|
| Edit: to be clear, I'm suggesting that your participation in
| this media system is selfish, myopic, and harmful.
| paulvnickerson wrote:
| It sounds like you might have problems with "black and white
| thinking"
| nkozyra wrote:
| The dumpster fire aspect is mostly that it's a thunderdome of
| engagement bait at this point.
|
| Just thousands of people posting whatever nonsense they can to
| get their $5 in adshare revenue.
|
| The way they do this - topics, language - is less bothersome to
| me than the underlying economy of it.
| hexator wrote:
| You can find good content on almost any platform. The problem
| is when the negatives become so overwhelming, in your face, and
| hard to ignore, that you feel like it's moving away from what
| you want it to be. It's not hard to find good tech
| conversations on Bluesky, they're just lower volume.
| languagehacker wrote:
| I would like for these guys to figure out how to keep bad
| drawings and cartoon porn from people I don't even follow out of
| my discover feed
| skybrian wrote:
| I assume there are better Discover feeds out there. Anyone have
| any recommendations?
| bnewbold wrote:
| This one has been popular recently: https://bsky.app/profile/
| spacecowboy17.bsky.social/feed/for-...
|
| (there are several feeds named "For You"; IIUC this started a
| couple weeks ago and is based on "likes by people you follow"
| skybrian wrote:
| Thanks, but it didn't work very well for me. It's all
| politics. I suspect some of the people follow have bad
| taste, so this is the wrong way to find stuff I'm
| interested in.
| dang wrote:
| What's the significant new information here, and is there an
| article anywhere that specifically covers it?
| NaOH wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/14/bluesky-rolls-out-massive-...
| its-summertime wrote:
| Maybe they should include any form of practical appeal process in
| their policies, so if you get banned from, lets say, leaving a
| PDS ~6 months ago, which got taken over by bots ~2 week ago, you
| could appeal the fact that you got swept up in the bans.
|
| Instead the only process is to email an address that no one gets
| any response from for months on end. (or I guess consider taking
| bluesky to court, by what this seems to say. Kinda very
| unreasonable)
| billy99k wrote:
| Bluesky is still a thing? Everyone on Facebook that were leaving
| Twitter came crawling back.
| andybak wrote:
| I can't quite parse the second sentence but in any case
| "everyone" makes the statement obviously false whatever you
| intended to claim.
| marcod wrote:
| We have the data :)
|
| https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth
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