Bluesky an' clear: the social media app that will definitely last forever

ty truly-- i don't know/haven't learned what data and history actually seem to show about the strategy-- to bystander me it's just "wow, they're still passcoding."

reminds me of the very old days where gmail initially required an invite, and facebook was limited to certain universities, then by college email addresses for a couple years

Yep, I had to get an invite for my first Gmail account. Don't even remember who gave it to me.

Anybody else need codes?

I've also got a bunch of codes, I'll post them if anybody needs them

i made like $200 selling gmail invites on ebay back in the day

lmao

I remember Gmail codes! I think I ended up with an early adopter gmail because they gave them to people who also had... something accounts. I forget what, now. Photobucket or flickr or something.

Probably not flickr, they were in the pocket of Big Yahoo!

Anyway, I tweeted that I had 4 bsky codes a couple nights ago because everyone I'd offer one to in a dm is already over there. Hoping to cast a wider net among people I follow/follow me and I got *crickets*. tbh the migration seems largely complete based on who I've always followed on twitter. Not everyone is a regular user yet, and some never will be, but almost everyone's there already.

My tweeting and retweeting has gone way up during this ongoing genocide. There’s mostly like 5 people on there who still pay attention, and it wouldn’t matter much even if it was thousands more, but I’m compelled to do it. No offense to anyone who’s getting anything out of it but I check in to look at bluesky and it feels irrelevant right now.

fwiw, I never used Twitter and don’t want to use Bluesky, I mostly lurk in these threads because I want to see these platforms fail lmfao

I'm on Bluesky and Twitter, still get better interactions + better content on the latter.

I am very happy with Bluesky; in re Chris L’s point I’m seeing plenty of discussion and posts about Gaza there, so I guess it’s all down to who’s being followed. I take Alfred’s point about conversation feeling smoother on Twitter in comparison but, well, if you’re at a party and trying to have a chat, when the host is yelling all the time and welcoming the Nazis to the front door, why hang further?

That's it, though. Maybe I've curated my feed well, for I don't see much of any haranguing unless I'm looking for it.

Bluesky is feeling pretty Twitter 2010 to me rn which is good.

Bluesky's directed me to excellent Levant-related content, I'll say.

The big difference is I have been reading and trying to retweet numerous Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, none of whom would be on bluesky.

on bluesky if a post you replied to is deleted seems like your reply is deleted as well, kinda sucks, a cool thing about twitter is replies are first class posts in their own right

I think a lot of it is user-facing behavior? If you block someone, you don't see your replies to them anymore, either. Unblock them and it's back.

oh maybe it works the other way too when theyve blocked me

i can still find my reply in question in search but when i click on it i get this post has been deleted

it actually says

Post not found
The post may have been deleted.

https://bsky.app/profile/friendo.bsky.social/post/3kd3azj6ete2s

The Stephen King account says: "There is an impersonation warning on my account, but it’s really me. Just hasn’t been used lately." (The warning reads: The moderators believe this account is lying about their identity.)

They're gonna need some sort of verification system if they ever want public figures to join in real numbers.

yeah seems like theyre going for a pretty bare bones approach so far which is prob wise, theyve only raised $8m so far from what i can tell, staffing up stuff like verification moderation celebrity concierge service etc will be expensive and prob comes later

verification is already implemented in the way they plan to do it, https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial

Sounds like a big lift.

also it doesnt prevent anyone from impersonating you

(I guess I see how the "newsroom" thing would work, for organizations that would take the time to do that – but yeah, I don't understand why I couldn't buy a domain and say I'm "Tom Cruise" or whoever.)

Bluesky is not going to affirmatively verify anyone which is complicated and expensive. They rely on domain control for that. But they are actively flagging accounts as impersonation which is cheap. They would flag @iamtomcruise.com quickly based on current behavior.

Sounds like a big lift.

― Girl (1956) (morrisp), Wednesday, November 1, 2023 5:09 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

So was getting verified at Twitter?

Getting a blue check in 2022 involved sending Twitter photo id and making/receiving phone calls and physical mail. No celebrity is going to send photo id to a shitty startup.

Well I guess it will have to wait until they're no longer a shitty startup(?)

It'd take little effort for a domain registrar to give you a little walkthrough or one-click "set up my bluesky identity" option. And if, for example, the nytimes wanted to verify reporters they could set up a reportername.bsky.nytimes.com relatively trivially, too.

Most orgs are going to have a domain, and if someone enterprising wanted to do a verification service specifically for bluesky, you could make a "verified.user" domain or whatever company that could give tomcruise.verified.user or w/e and it'd be on them to be reputable

who is the hypothetical person who wants to be verified but has no resources?

I'm a little testy because I have been annoyed by the complete junky mess that federated identity became that left us with "log in with google, facebook, or apple" as opposed to what it could have been

seems liked itd be better to just not start a social media site

It's not about having no resources. If Stephen King didn't bother to do it (assuming that's really him), why would any other random celeb / public figure who's mildly interested in signing up, but not enough to bother with the domain thing? Maybe I'm wrong, but relying on "crowd reporting" plus some moderator oversight to identify potential impersonations feels unsustainable.

FWIW, I've seen ppl complaining about verification issues on other sites, I know that this problem isn't unique to Bluesky (or easy to deal with).

Huh that domain as verification which piggybacks on the verification that was done there is cool. Not as good as my idea which is to use use your social sec no. as your handle, i mean so much verification.

Not everyone is an American with a social sec no.

Says he, completely missing the joke, argh.

I admit I also don't really understand how the domain thing verifies anything other than the fact you own or control a domain.

It verifies you are the same entity as owner of the domain. This is only useful if people trust that the owner of nytimes.com is The New York Times.

Right, and if you don't have a storied website at a domain (or plan on building one)...?

"storied" is a bit strong. just needs to be a website that people who know who A is also believe belongs to A. A doesn't need to be famous.

(i said x but had to change it because that was confusing. fuck that guy.)

Having to build & host a website which convincingly establishes your identity is not only a very 1998 idea of being online, but it surely a greater lift for verification than whatever Twitter required for all those blue checks…

it kind of unclear exactly what theyre going for, you cant see posts unless youre logged in, thats not a twitter replacement, twitter is all about blasting posts out to everywhere put them on tv in the newspaper etc

i don't think there are many people who would have "deserved" verification in the ~2022 blue check sense (i.e. celebrities, journalists, businesses)
who do not have their own website or work for someone who does.

i get that it's not perfect, but i can't think of anything better, and twitter 2022/instagram's approach is not viable for a startup.