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

cmon man

I don’t think the invites are really the problem either, although they probably contributed to a certain “culture” taking root early and remaining dominant

Various people from Twitter whom I would’ve wanted to follow did make accounts there, and just don’t use them (many of them have stayed on Twitter, which is a separate issue that isn’t bluesky’s fault)

it’s good! I like it! All I’m saying is I don’t think invites are the reason it’s seems to have stabilized as a culture. I’m sure they help with moderation but I don’t think they’re keeping out good faith users who want to be there at this point.

i'd guess that quite a few people, upon leaving twitter for a few weeks without a comparable alternative, found that they enjoyed not using it anymore. everyone is always saying "ugh, i want to quit social media", but it's addictive (and often quite useful for all sorts of reasons) so they keep using it. quitting twitter without having an alternative is akin to being absolutely addicted to donkey kong country and then the SNES catches on fire and it's all over. it makes all the sense in the world to get another SNES and move on to diddy kong's quest, no one would blame you. but also it makes a lot of sense (for some people) to replace the device with more irl activities, like going to the library and finally checking out that oversized 3D illusion book

i will never check out the oversized 3D illusion book

Quitting Twitter was such a boon to my state of mind, no joke… I still use “nitter” to check back in on one guy there, but honestly even that makes me feel not great

I do enjoy social media though, and have been using more stress-free alternatives

invites prob havent stopped bluesky from being huge tho theres no way to know that, but they could at some point, and for sure many people see the invite wall just bounce off and move on with their lives, generally onboarding is a big place where apps lose people, and then you add the need to hunt something down and ask around its not hard to see how this is a big barrier to getting new users, most apps these days are going in the other direction allowing for unverified quasi accounts that are easy as possible to start with then bug you to complete the sign up process once youre hooked, they do this because people give up at every step, just the need to click a single button will shed people, this of course is very obvious and i resent having to type it out

the bluesky people for sure know this so they must really like the invite system, at least for now

I've been trying to use bluesky to replace twitter as my app for news posts, still feels clunky but it's ok. I have a lot more fun on Threads, but mostly follow musicians there.

threads is an excellent counter example if you have an instagram account you already had a threads account no need to sign up at all, and they turned that, along with free advertising, into the fastest growing app ever, and all your favorite brands are there lol

to be clear im not saying that bluesky is wrong in using invites, im curious to see how it turns out, but it makes it much harder than normal to get on the app, maybe thats good tho......

from their faq https://blueskyweb.xyz/faq

How many people are on the app? What is the plan for invites?
We brought a few hundred beta testers onto the app in February, and by the end of April, we reached over 50k users. We plan to grow the invite system at our discretion in a way that preserves our focus on protocol development and creates a network where healthy conversations can happen.

We also want the network to grow organically, so we periodically distribute invites to existing Bluesky users. Additionally, we monitor the social graph, and if certain users are inviting other trustworthy participants, we give them more invites.

Why use invite codes?
Social networks can be abused by spammers and bad actors who might want to manipulate the public conversation. It’s much easier to limit sign-ups and let them spread through an existing social graph than to try to retroactively clean up rampant network abuse.

Long-term, we view this invite code system as a piece of the open source tooling we’re building to help server admins (people running services) to help curate and moderate their communities.

feel like the moby-dick bot has had better quotes on bluesky than it used to on twitter?

A lot of folks activated Threads accounts and never used them, or posted once or twice and then went back to Twitter… but there’s enough of a critical mass that it works for me, and it’s the only one of the apps where I’ve been able to stomach the For You feed (in fact I find it kind of addictive).

The algorithm is very hair-trigger, but it works well in keeping stuff I don’t want to see out of the feed. Generous use of muting also helps (which you can do directly from the post, ahem…).

same here, I only do following on twitter and bluesky, but I do 100% for you on threads because you can shape it in a way that you aren't seeing constant bullshit

I really like the feature that enables you to show only posts by people you follow, and hide replies to them or reposts by them. It clears up my feed no end. Occasionally I'll set it to show those and have a look at it but then I think nah, I can't be doing with this stuff.

1. A bluesky post goes viral
2. 10,000 people see it and think "I have something I want to say to that"
3. Almost all those things are bad
4. They click the link
5. They can't post
6. The system works

If someone shares a bluesky link then I click it, and it just opens the app and doesn't go to the post. Are they working for anyone else?

step 6 baby

works for me

Everyone I know and would want to follow is ON Bsky they just... dont post there. Or on twitter anymore. Or FB. Its like everyone's given up on socmed completely. I have too so I cant blame them rooly.

no more invite-only

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/bluesky-is-now-open-for-anyone-to-join

lol

…profit

i have not really used the tools described in the uh comic https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-06-2024-join-bluesky

yeah I don't use those custom feeds either, but I might if there is a big influx of users soon

i have tried some of the feeds but did not enjoy them, but stacking moderation? ok

moderation is prob the most difficult problem for social media sites, seems like blue sky is trying to self service it, good luck to them

Computer Science > Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
[Submitted on 5 Feb 2024]
Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media

Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 3 million registered users in the following year. In this paper we introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, which is inspired by the web itself, but modernized to include streams of real-time updates and cryptographic authentication. We explain how the technical design of Bluesky is informed by our goals: to enable decentralization by having multiple interoperable providers for every part of the system; to make it easy for users to switch providers; to give users agency over the content they see; and to provide a simple user experience that does not burden users with complexity arising from the system's decentralized nature. The system's openness allows anybody to contribute to content moderation and community management, and we invite the research community to use Bluesky as a dataset and testing ground for new approaches in social media moderation.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03239

now we can break the "why would I join a social network that requires an invite, seems elitist" -> "there are plenty of invites. I have some. would you like one?" -> back to the beginning loop

its funny and sad all the bluesky die hards giving new people instructions on the best way to use bluesky, promote bluesky culture, good luck all

https://i.imgur.com/sHQbrZ4.png
https://i.imgur.com/vsFzUNH.png
https://i.imgur.com/9rsqMEF.png
https://i.imgur.com/8DFO0Y0.png

"Block anyone who mildly annoys you"--that doesn't seem like the best strategy, but what do I know.

excessive blocking by a significant % of users will eventually deteriorate the overall user experience, dont think theyve really thought this one through

Going by that criterion, I would have blocked my children years ago.

why are you still asking me for dinner i blocked you, mods

I owe NOTHING to you

1 grilled cheese

I'm 100% in favor of blocking anyone who mildly annoys you

congrats

blocking is unpaid labor

blocking is sex work

only if you do it right

I'm loving the handwringing about the barbarians storming the gate if only to laugh at the incredible self regard Bluesky holds itself in

my precious twitter clone lol

wonder if theres actually even any big rush of sign ups today

the incredible self regard Bluesky holds itself in

It's positively Tumblr-esque.

im not seeing any of this stuff tbh but as a non-loser i follow interesting funny ppl

i see a bit of it rted from one account i follow but besides that yeah not much, some people making fun of it, i like to see it tho its good to know whats going on, thats why i never block

i block like Yglesias and a few music dudes i can't stand it's good for my soul

blocking is very good for people who are constantly inventing a guy to argue with (and pretending you're the guy) or reply-guy trolls. other people that are minor annoyances are just worth muting so you don't see large portions of a thread disappear in the default client

wonder if the former Tweetbot people are considering a bsky client in addition to their mastodon one. I checked out Graysky for a bit and it wasn't different enough for me to care that much