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I feel like you guys are addicted to letting perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, Bluesky being corporate run will probably be an issue down the line, but if it becomes mainstream then people will be used to seeing .APP.INSTANCE and feel more comfortable with the fediverse interface, which I know at least for me was a big hurdle. Like seriously, the fact that the next big thing is federated, even if in name only, is a big step forward.
Yeah I’m a huge believer in federated systems but I believe that a lot of ‘normies’ going to bluesky is a huge step in the right direction. Even though most don’t know anything about the tech behind it and migrate because twitter has become a bot infested right wing hell scape, they still are one step closer to being fully integrated to the fediverse.
Bluesky’s ActivityPub support is also leagues better than Threads because of Bridgy Fed. At least a Bluesky user and a Mastodon user can follow each other and have a back-and-forth conversation.
Yeah exactly! I’ve even used the bridge yesterday since I’m on Mastodon, and my girlfriend just migrated to bluesky after hearing about the exodus. The process is really easy and only takes a bit of time for some of the DMs to get sent, but otherwise I have no complaints!
I fully expect this to go away as soon as bluesky overtakes other platforms in users.
please don’t bridge bsky to fedi.
Why not?
Because how else would we feel superior?
because I asked nicely
Well you can nicely ask your instance admin to block Bridgy Fed
Expecting perfection is a huge problem in all aspects of life. People just want instant perfection and aren’t willing to work towards it. Then there’s just apathy and that leads to stagnation or worse regression.
Ohhh that’s your profile pic, I was really confused how you got verified haha
Oh no I’m definitely verified.
Half a loaf is better than no loaf
Bluesky is such a huge improvement over twitter and so many people are just ignoring that. Yes, the app is centralized, but you can still host your own data if you choose. Plus, the customizable feeds, algorithms, and moderation lists are all great.
the irony of a bsky supporter complaining about being judged because it’s not perfect.
I genuinely have no idea what you’re implying lol
I think he accidentally called you perfect.
That’s the only interpretation I’m getting from it
Imo sorry, but you are literally the reason why the fediverse has a bad name. Stop gatekeeping stuff or asking others to do so and just defederate if you don’t like it.
Mastodon is gatekept to hell and back, the technicalities of federation are exposed to the user for some reason (you already lose half your potential user base right there), infighting between instances means that you won’t see the entire discourse of a post depending on which instance you’re at…
And besides all that, bsky is not as “corpo” as mastodon fanboys make it out to be. They’re on track to open up to privately hosted instances as well, and you can already run most of their backend stuff yourself.
As much as I like the ‘decentralized’ stuff, the technical part of federation should NEVER be exposed to the end user if you want the platform to be mainstream. I still don’t understand why a lot of federated projects think it’s a good idea to expose that to the end user.
Whenever Lemmy or Masto gets a flood of new users, a portion of them never make it past the instance selection and totally bail.
The user experience was designed by people who literally respond to user feedback by telling users to commit new code to the project.
It’s clearly designed by engineers who assume other users will be just like them.
This of the core of the problem. Github energy.
Fine for a hobby. Not good enough for a public-facing product.
Now take all of these replies. THIS is what they don’t understand. All of these replies tell exactly how I feel about this.
The project was started as an architectural thought experiment, not with the goals and limitations of the end user.
If bluesky ever becomes actually federated, won’t it have the same problem?
Probably not. Currently it seems on track that you’re always first on their main instance. If you’re technically inclined you could then start hosting a federated part yourself (or joining one), but this does not change that the actual entry experience is exactly the same as on Twitter, hence why transition is so insanely smooth and painless.
The way sign up currently is, probably not. It would still default to bsky.social and your average person isn’t going to think about it.
But then it’s not federated. It’s all on one giant monolith of a server. Perhaps the traffic is shared between machines, but that’s not the same thing as federated.
Below is how account portability work between servers, it is easy to migrate between servers.
Account portability
We assume that a Personal Data Server may fail at any time, either by going offline in its entirety, or by ceasing service for specific users. The goal of the AT Protocol is to ensure that a user can migrate their account to a new PDS without the server’s involvement.
User data is stored in signed data repositories and verified by DIDs. Signed data repositories are like Git repos but for database records, and DIDs are essentially registries of user certificates, similar in some ways to the TLS certificate system. They are expected to be secure, reliable, and independent of the user’s PDS.
Each DID document publishes two public keys: a signing key and a recovery key.
Signing key: Asserts changes to the DID Document and to the user’s data repository.
Recovery key: Asserts changes to the DID Document; may override the signing key within a 72-hour window.
The signing key is entrusted to the PDS so that it can manage the user’s data, but the recovery key is saved by the user, e.g. as a paper key. This makes it possible for the user to update their account to a new PDS without the original host’s help.
A backup of the user’s data will be persistently synced to their client as a backup (contingent on the disk space available). Should a PDS disappear without notice, the user should be able to migrate to a new provider by updating their DID Document and uploading the backup
What other server is there?
Dude, do you even email?
I think a lot of the attitude I saw on mastodon about this like a year ago was one of suspicion that they wanted an open network but didn’t use the fediverse standard
I assume the main reason is that ActivityPub is a mess and quite overcomplicated for bsky’s needs. Being permanently tied to it seems like a big risk. There’s no reason why they couldn’t make a compatibility layer later and hook into it.
Which AFAIK isn’t a standard, so… 🤷
ActivityPub is a W3C standard, though.
Oh I dis not know that! Interesting! Thanks for the correction.
“Write a bit about yourself to join this server and if we decide you’re too boring and normal we’ll reject your application and say you’re a spammer afterwards”
Hmm I wonder why normies aren’t flocking to these fediverse platforms, what could be stopping them, couldn’t be the shitty onboarding process could it? Nah asking people to apply is the best onboarding process ever (obvious big ass /s)
I tried to join Beehaw simply because a reddit community I was actively part in went there.
I got told that’s not a valid reason to join, and that further applications from me would be ignored. I mean… okay? Sure… guess I’m no longer part of that community.
Beehaw sucks, they embraced the exclusive club mentality harder than anyone else.
Does beehaw no longer federate? Otherwise you can reach that community from lemmy.world and be a part of it you know.
No, they don’t federate any more at all I think.
Many Lemmy instances are requiring their users to apply for an account.
And that makes it better how?
It doesn’t that was the point of my comment, it is sarcastic, because asking normies to write about themselves then manually determine their worth before they join will exclude the vast majority of them. Applications are how you run exclusive clubs, not a social media platform. Which is the biggest reason the Fediverse sucks for regular people.
I don’t want to join a club, I want to join a regular platform. That’s why I joined discuss.online and not any of the other exclusive club instances.
Yeah. I somehow caught that. I wasn’t responding to you.
It lowers the barrier of entry which may deter some people who just want to check out the space first.
Granted, it also makes it more accessible to scammers, so give and take really.
Yeah it’s actually a much bigger problem here than it is on Mastodon. Probably will end up slowing adoption of Lemmy in the future. Especially considering Lemmy is one of those platforms that really needs normie content and normie interaction to keep going, something it’s really struggling at currently.
You don’t have to do that when you sign up for mstdn.social, and it’s also not a requirement for mastodon.social And there are more instances where you don’t have to apply like that.
But when it’s asked that you apply to the server, it’s usually to ease the load of moderation, to see if you would fit the vibe of that instance. And/or to protect the more vulnerable people on that particular instance.
You don’t have to do that when you sign up for mstdn.social, and it’s also not a requirement for mastodon.social And there are more instances where you don’t have to apply like that.
Yes, and we need much more like that if we want this platform to be sucessful as a whole. Normies want to join social medias, not clubs.
But when it’s asked that you apply to the server, it’s usually to ease the load of moderation, to see if you would fit the vibe of that instance. And/or to protect the more vulnerable people on that particular instance.
We all know or should know that running a platform like a club where people need to apply and have their worth manually determined is a toxic and unwelcoming environment that does not promote any kind of growth, and the fact that it is common and encouraged is not helpful to the fediverse long term. It just pushes normies away. Because a social media doesn’t ask people to apply, a club does. Most people don’t want to join small exclusive clubs.
Yes, and we need much more like that if we want this platform to be sucessful as a whole. Normies want to join social medias, not clubs.
Why? There’s plenty of general servers aimed at normies that don’t require you to write an essay about yourself.
Let those specialty servers be specialty servers. Some only want artists, some only want neurodivergent people, some only want trans people on their platform. That’s their right! They get to decide who comes on their platform and who doesn’t. It’s not up to you to decide that for them. You need to understand that the people hosting these servers are not gazillionaires that do this out of the kindness of their hearts, they want to foster a certain atmosphere and a certain community on their server, and they do their best to keep disruptive people out. And one way of doing that is by limiting who gets on.
So instead of desperately trying to join blahaj_artists.social, why not join normies.social like mastodon.social or mstdn.social, or mastodon.coffee or any of the other ‘normie’ mastodon servers.
Go here, select “Sign up process: instant” and choose any of the servers on that page, and you’ll get in, without having to write an essay about yourself.
The vast majority of users are on general instances without demands like that. If you don’t want to join an exclusive club, just pick a sever that is not intended to be an exclusive club (I.e. nearly any of the big ones).
The top 3 servers on Lemmy are private clubs as of now, they may not have been before but they certainly are now. There are barely any for normies to join. I only found discuss.online because I was lucky enough to, and lets face it this is the only real option because the other one has a swear in the name and most people won’t want to join an immature server like that.
You can’t just pick a server, your options are severely limited, if discuss.online goes away or converts to a club too, there won’t be any options. You can’t “just pick a sever” that only works if you have choices. This is the last one, after that no more choices.
The conversation here is about mastodon
Good point, On Mastodon there are a handful more options but it’s generally not much better over there. Point is the Fediverse is suffering from becoming a collection of exclusive clubs rather than a social media platform.
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How did you decide which email provider you were going to go with? Did you set up your own server? Or perhaps gain access to an address through a community? Or did you go with a normies server like Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail?
Honestly? I needed a Gmail account anyways, so I might as well use that. Same hammer-analogy, not going to buy a new one while mine is working.
I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about your objection of “the requirement to select anything in the first place” with regards to a Mastodon server.
With that in mind, if email were to be released today, it’d be deemed “too hard for people to understand” because you have to choose what email provider you’re going to use. Are you going with AOL, or are you going to roll up your own? With some you even have to hand over money before you get access. Just too difficult!
Deemed by who? People who don’t want to adopt new things? It’s not too hard they just don’t want to do it and will make any excuse not to.
Yes and no. It was already rejection at the selection stage back then, but you luckily never had to. You got one from your ISP, or your university, and you just used that. Sure, some techies had their own mail server or so but it’s just mail, just use what you got was enough for the vast vast majority of people.
You’ve got mail!
I just created this account. I went to Lemmy.world to make a new one and it said I need to fill out an application. I laughed. Get out of here with that nonsense.
It is bullshit and it will hurt Lemmy and the fediverse greatly in the long term since they’ve effectively crippled the onboarding process and turned their instance into a club.
It also acts as a filter to keep threat actors and spammers out. Open sign ups are actually a bad thing for the overall health of the network. Yes it also keeps out the lowest common denominator normies but those aren’t exactly the ones who contribute to the network as a whole anyway
This isn’t capitalism, there isn’t a need for growth for growth’s sake. There does need to be a more simplified way to onboard users but not at the cost of the health of the network.
Open sign ups are actually a bad thing for the overall health of the network. Yes it also keeps out the lowest common denominator normies but those aren’t exactly the ones who contribute to the network as a whole anyway
This is an elitist mentality that harms the health of the network on its own by limiting the amount of people who interact on the platform and post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, turning the Fediverse into a club is a horrible way to create a platform where people interact with each other like a social media, because the nature of clubs is that they are small and exclusive.
This isn’t capitalism, there isn’t a need for growth for growth’s sake.
Please don’t mischaracterize the demand for having people interacting on the platform and with as something capitalist, or big tech only for making money, it’s disingenuous because people want to have their posts seen by other people, why else would they even post them publicly? Having more people makes a platform more lively, and having more people voting makes content shift and flow.
Let’s face it, small exclusive clubs are one of the biggest reasons Fediverse hasn’t taken off. And it makes sense since if you don’t let normies in and treat it like a club the place will be dead as fuck and have very few people interacting. Only reason its active now is because many instances used to be open and gained userbases.
There does need to be a more simplified way to onboard users but not at the cost of the health of the network.
No, we don’t need something new and convoluted, that’ll just push out the normies who want to be here or make them not want to. We need to take the page out of big tech’s book, let people and spammers signup freely, and ban the spammers automatically. No one wants to do this, they want to invent new solutions that are unfriendly, or just kick out normies and then complain that this place is sooooo dead. Stick to what works, it wouldn’t have been done that way on the OG centralized social media if it didn’t work.
Also don’t conflate assholes/trolls with spammers, that’s disingenuous as fuck both because you are over-inflating the spam problem to make your elitist solution seem more appealing and also because the solution does not work for both types of people. You’re not going to stop all or even most assholes or trolls by asking them questions, they can lie dumbass have you forgotten that or do you think Instance admins are divine beings who can’t be lied to, if Reddit admins aren’t Lemmy admins sure as fuck aren’t. Some of the biggest assholes I’ve met on Lemmy are on instances with applications, it DOES NOT WORK AGAINST THEM.
I appreciate your take and the thought put into the reply. I don’t mean to gatekeep the fediverse to keep normies out because that isn’t my desire at all. Merely my stance is while I believe that low engagement is very undesirable, high volume of scammers/spammers are equally undesirable.
I’m also thinking of things from a moderator/instance owner point of view where trying to defend your instance from illegal activity, spam, and harmful content is greatly increased by having open sign ups. If the majority of engagement on your posts are from pussy in bio accounts then that is a put off from the end user as well.
Trolls and assholes will always get through if they are motivated enough, fediverse platforms usually gives the end user enough tools to block them.
Your perspective has a lot of valid points as well, I think that there is a compromise somewhere that is slightly more effective than a simple captcha that could also streamline onboarding and validating users. I don’t know if it’s as easy as you suggest to ban spammers automatically but I’m all ears for hearing solutions. I think the fediverse is especially equipped for cooperation that could make that kind of automoderation more successful than on legacy socials
I don’t want the fediverse to be an exclusive club, I am already annoyed about how things can be an echo chamber even worse than legacy socials here at times. My hope that bridges and utilities will come that help people follow each other from bluesky/mastodon and allow account migrations from either as well.
I’m also thinking of things from a moderator/instance owner point of view where trying to defend your instance from illegal activity, spam, and harmful content is greatly increased by having open sign ups. If the majority of engagement on your posts are from pussy in bio accounts then that is a put off from the end user as well.
I don’t particularly agree that it’s “greatly increased” by it. I’m on a server with them and I don’t see that much many more spammers. It seems like fearful hyperbole, I’m not saying there aren’t any I’ve certainly seen a few but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
Your perspective has a lot of valid points as well, I think that there is a compromise somewhere that is slightly more effective than a simple captcha that could also streamline onboarding and validating users. I don’t know if it’s as easy as you suggest to ban spammers automatically but I’m all ears for hearing solutions. I think the fediverse is especially equipped for cooperation that could make that kind of automoderation more successful than on legacy socials
Proof of Work Captchas are very effective when it comes to stopping or slowing down bots, while not impacting regular users much if at all. As for banning spammers automatically it is very easy to set up scripts that ban people for rapid posting, malicious links (bio, posts, comments, DMs), as well as words or phrases associated with spam (buy my Tshirt, check out my OF, see my pussy in my bio). For illegal content, image hashes can be used to automatically purge images and data that is known from the server, while simultaneously banning the people doing it. Rate limiting of suspicious IPs are also another way. There’s probably some more ones that can be done, as well as ways to improve these methods, point is they aren’t new, and they improve the situation for new users who can sign up easily and instantly without worry of rejection or too high expectation.
The big thing about these (except for captchas and PoW) is that they are post-signup methods that catch the people doing it in the act. It might seem like a loss for some since you don’t stop them from signing up at all but you need to remember. Spammers don’t give up, they don’t stop, they don’t care, real normie users do though. You can increase the bar and make them seem to disappear, but then you also lose the flow of real users, as most of them are filtered out or quit. Detecting and purging them automatically is the best way to combat them, captcha and PoW stop people using scripts for batch signup but banning them automatically when they start. If done right, spammers would be auto-banned after a few seconds of spamming or account setup depending which flags they trip first.
I don’t particularly agree that it’s “greatly increased” by it. I’m on a server with them and I don’t see that much many more spammers. It seems like fearful hyperbole, I’m not saying there aren’t any I’ve certainly seen a few but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
My mastodon instance rarely ever sees spam despite having open signups either. Maybe my problem is I’m worried about future problems rather than the current state of how things are. My concern comes from personal experience with legacy socials like facebook and twitter when it comes to spam that I report and the frustration of when I get the automoderation notification back and they determine it didn’t break their guidelines.
I don’t want the cesspool of spam to become a problem on the fediverse as these experiences were a major reason I decided to join it.
I appreciate your comments again. You’ve softened how I feel on the challenge of balancing open user sign ups with moderating malicious users.
At least on the Fediverse when it comes to that most platforms will take spam more seriously than monopolized media, since even if they ignore their users they’ll listen to other admins, and if they don’t they become less popular. But there needs to be an initiative to improve on what big tech as done, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Tbf it’s a good way to keep the laziest of shits out
Elitist neckbeards like you are why Mastodon and Lemmy are still boring
I DON’T RECALL GETTING A PAYCHECK TO POST
Agreed. If someone can’t be bothered to write two sentences, they really have no business being on a discussion platform. Because clearly they won’t be contributing much if anything to the conversation.
Great, so you want to join a club instead of a social media? Is that it? Because that’s what you’re advocating for, small private clubs which most normies don’t have enough interest to join, out of fear of being rejected or just being rejected multiple times anyway. “Wonder why it’s so empty here?” -Lemmy Users trying to figure out why their exclusive Lemmy clubs haven’t taken off.
Most people aren’t satisfied with Lemmy’s very small and stagnant growth, and I can say I’m one of them, asking people to prove their worth and rejecting them for being a normie is a horrible strategy for growth.
What percentage of people who join platforms like Twitter or Bluesky actually post anything though?
Users don’t cost much to keep around, especially if they don’t post. The data needed for the account would be authentication data, and post data, the second of which doesn’t apply to users who don’t post, and the first one being negligible compared to the amount of space available on a common hard drive. So, why not just give them a chance?
The proponents of application registration are elitists who believe that the Fediverse should be run like the most toxic and exclusive club ever known to man, like, the kind you see in movies with bouncers who will assault you for walking past the place, not even trying to get inside.
They try and argue about network health, and continue to bring up the boogeyman of spam, but the reality is that they are elitist and want a specific user group on the Fediverse while keeping everyone else out, and they want everyone else to do it too. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing and encouraging is more harmful to this place than anything else, because without normies, this place is a ghost town.
Oh and spam can be dealt with without kicking out normies, I’ve outlined that systems which automatically ban spammers and purge their spam would work mostly the same as they do on the big tech platforms that almost without exception have open registrations. So stop using the spam boogeyman, it’s an invented problem to justify your elitism and we see right through it.
So many of the people who are most invested in federation are a contradiction in terms; centralized social media is evil and it’s fucked up that it’s the norm, but also anyone who isn’t a cynical, crotchety Gen Xer with a tech degree doesn’t belong on federated social media.
Talk shit about normies all you want but they’re most of the people who repost memes and give communities life, you can’t cut them out and expect to have a thriving community. These practices of elitism and exclusion are the reason why Mastodon and the fediverse as a whole are stagnating.
If Mastodon wanted to be preferred, it should have been better. I moved to Mastodon over a year ago when the Twitter sale first happened. It was not great then and it’s gotten slightly worse since. I created a Bluesky account two days ago and it already offers exactly the experience I missed from Twitter before Elon.
Would it be better if Mastodon was good and the federated FOSS option was superior? Sure, absolutely. But, that scenario isn’t even close to the case we are presented with.
I’ve been a heavy Mastodon user for two years, and I honestly don’t see why so many people on Lemmy give it so much shit. Certainly not in favour of the likes of Bluesky.
I get WAY more engagement with my posts on there than I ever did on Twitter. And maybe I’m just at an age where I don’t give a shit about celebrity, but I couldn’t care less that all the Big Names have gone to Bluesky and Threads. It’s great not seeing the same people being shared into my TL all the time.
Can you give actual examples?
I feel the only thing that Mastodon ‘misses’ is some feed to get you addicted.
Seconded, some specific examples would be helpful.
Which is precisely what makes people actually use twitter
Might be paranoid, but I feel as if alot of the anti-mastodon sentiment is astroturfing. Might just be me and my schizo anti-corpo mind though.
the astroturfing is happening but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that makes it less real. astroturfing works or they wouldn’t do it.
I’ve got a bsky account too but I get way more engagement on my fedi accounts. I’ve been building up my follows for 15 years on the fedi so bsky never had a chance to catch up. it probably never will.
bluesky has made better choices - the starter packs and user lists are great for new users. They managed to add quote tweets but let the quoted person opt out of dog piles. It looks like they added options for custom algorithms too.
Bluesky will be enshittified but mastodon should be taking notes if they want to pick up people next wave.
The bluesky system is just way better. The local/fed feeds on masto are just wasted.
The block lists for various types of assholes are also a marvellous invention. It’s so nice to block all of MAGA at a click
I haven’t had to block a maga in a decade. my admin already took care of that.
What if we’re wrong and BlueSky just gets better? I mean, with some of the corporate trappings of old Twitter, but still user-friendly, big userbases, vibrant subcultures and banning troublemakers?
I mean even if it repeats “the Twitter mistake” that’d still be another 13-14 years to go. Who knows where short-form social media will be conceptually in that time and whether any competition in the space is even still relevant.
It will, but it still has that countdown timer over its head.
The future is the fediverse, some yet-to-be-invented non-corporate equivalent, or offline.
the concept of more than one website is so challenging for plebs.
use both and please don’t bridge bsky to the fedi.
Bluesky has useful tools. But (almost) all lists were made by the community of Bluesky users. Curation was made by users.
Curation was made by users.
Right, users not corporations make social networks, so the community not for profit corporations should own those social networks.
Can we not all see this as the same old pattern of predatory rent seeking behavior applied to online communities just seasoned with even more jargon and condescending handwaved half explanations?
I think Twitter is so, so awful but used, so the bar is in hell. Most things are an improvement compared to Twitter. And ppl use to praise corporations before communities (if they remember communities at all), so, in this case, Bluesky takes all credit.
Jumping from one frying pan into the next.
lucky for us, we aren’t running out of jumps.
People who genuinely think like this (as in, that users going to Bluesky is somehow bad, surprising or something only stupid people do) are the very reason systems such as Mastodon cannot work. And sadly they naturally pervade such systems, at a development, administration and user level.
I will have to agree, what I see is people on the fediverse always talking about how others should join it and complain when people have the free will to choose other options. So far, it’s been painful to find a Mastodon instance, because the whole thing doesn’t feels intuitive, it’s hard to differentiate them, and all the topics that go on the honepage are just politics and people mentioning other platforms.
It’s almost like the average person doesn’t care about the fediverse and decentralisation and only wants muskless twitter. Nooo clearly the normies are idiot sheep
Bluesky is Decentralized, people are moving to Bluesky because it is easier to use and has better UI and UX. The reason people are moving to Bluesky and not mastodon has nothing to do with Decentralized, it is because it is simply user friendly. I used both and I think currently that Bluesky is definitely better. One of the biggest issues is the app, many users use their phones and The mastadon apps are awful in comparison to bluesky.
https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-host-a-bluesky-pds
That’s exactly the thing, mastodon has all of these nerd things attached to it that most people won’t care about, whilst BlueSky doesn’t
Yeah, Bluesky has both federation and ease of use, which is why many prefer it over Mastodon. Instead of making someone search for a server to join, Bluesky gives you a default server which makes it easier for less tech savvy users.
bluesky does not have functional federation by any reasonable measure.
It is currently early access, but should be opened to everyone later. There is also a bridge that links Bluesky and Mastadon. https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation
A bridge is a tool for connecting things don’t connect, it is not federation.
The relay layer/app view forces you under the control of a centralized system at a fundamental level with bluesky, the only thing meaningful about that kind of federation is hosting costs for processing and storing post data are offloaded onto the user.
…Which when you think about it is actually pretty fucking insulting to the fediverse and what is trying to be when bluesky pretends it is aiming for true federation and decentralization.
It is possible to run your own relay, but is very expensive. Unless people decide to run their own relays, Bluesky is technically centralised. You can run your own PDS for cheap through.
This, right there. What FOSS fans fail to understand is that some apps feel like a jigsaw to use for people less experienced in technology. Some people barely have an idea about how browser cookies work, and they are expected to understand the concept of manually picking up a server to create an account on, and you would still not be connected to everyone.
People are also expected to understand the concept of manually picking a brand of toothpaste. My point is that if we can’t even expect a little consumer choice (the same consumer choice we have in the real world), then we deserve all the monopolization and centralization we get.
Also, selecting a Mastodon server isn’t like some scary technical choice. It’s like a vibe check and a signup form.
Bluesky is not decentralized if you have to use their relay to access the network from your PDS
I mean, the reason Musk is an issue is because Twitter is a privately owned, for-profit company. The issue is top-down leadership. Bluesky is absolutely doomed to the same fate.
Bluesky is a for-profit corporation backed by Venture Capital and run by Crypto assholes.
Jack Dorsey launched the initiative in 2019 as a proof-of-concept for a federated Twitter, which never happened. After dumping Twitter, he re-launched it as a standalone social media service and flagship ATProto instance, before jumping ship and letting it be run by committee. He now endorses Nostr, because BlueSky wasn’t friendly enough to Nazis.
The current BlueSky CEO, Lantian Graber, started her career running shitcoin/scamcoin exchange (SkuCoin), manufacturing ASIC mining rigs, and developing for Zcash. She masquerades as a progressive techie, even as all of her past experience leans Libertarian/Anarchocapitalist, and all of her other ventures’ websites are plastered with GenAI slop.
Bluesky is growing faster than ever expected, and with virtually zero real federation going on. It’s going to fail catastrophically when the new user base realizes they signed up for the same shit they were trying to get away from.
It isn’t that hard to realize that a FOSS product developed by a nonprofit (eg. Mastodon) is the correct answer, not more centralized, corporate, for-profit social media…
If the reason people only want bluesky is because it’s Elon-less Twitter then they are stupid and wrong (or just ignorant). But then they can move to the next thing in 5 years when the enshittification happens.
Yup, there it is.
If the internet has a future, it’s on the Fediverse. We work around capitalism to avoid enshittification, or we let it defer our future further.
In the meantime, the Fediverse needs to get shiny and intuitive. The sign that something is cumbersome and hard to use is people saying “it’s not that bad”.
People may disagree with how BlueSky is organized and architected, but I get why they decided to do what they did. User experience.
Their architectural decisions mean that people don’t have to worry about instances confusing people, and the org structure means is easy to staff a proper dedicated experience team that can be working, planning, and testing before big expensive decisions are committed to code.
You forgot one main thing, 🤑🤑🤑🤑.
Filing as a B corp wouldn’t be my first choice if I was trying to prioritize getting rich.
That is how it usually starts. It start innocent but the moment you see potential money or the funding runs out you either become like OpenAI, Google or go obscure worst bankruptcy. It does not help that their protocol is basically how search engine works today. They control the flow of information and funded by venture capital.
Yeah probably. If you told me in 2013 that reddit would go to shit in 2023 I would not really do anything different. Knowing bluesky will go to shit wouldn’t really change anything (if I was a fan of the Twitter format) either.
Isn’t Bluesky federated?
Pseudo-federated from what people are saying. Something about the user accounts being centralised but the data being decentralised. I don’t understand but it’s something funded by the previous owner of Twitter and full of other corporate money, so I wouldn’t trust it.
there is a critical ‘relay’ component that only they control. so you can setup your own ‘node’, but only connected to their instance.
only a single instance of the relay exists and they are not releasing that code and a few other pieces. it federates only with itself.
That pretty much sounds centralised. But I guess people don’t care if they don’t have to worry about “picking a server” which is “too complicated” 🤷
i think the new paradigm of the distributed fediverse is going to take a long time to propagate to the masses. its going to be lots of platforms advertising their corner of the 'verse and the features they permit… but we really need to get the idea of the ‘fediverse’ into their heads that its content accessible by any of those platforms.
the thing ive noticed is no one cares about ‘sites’ anymore… the kids all want ‘apps’ which is drivin me bonkers. spent decades building mobile-friendly, dynamic viewports only for them to get ignored cuz kids dont want to type in a URL/domain.
My impression is that it hasn’t been users that have pushed everything into apps, it’s been publishers. This is all a part of a general trend where software has become much less about what it can do for the user, and much more about what data it can extract from a user for the publisher. Websites generally have a lot more protections against such data scraping, meanwhile you can put who knows what code into an app.
If you look at how RSS fell from use, there were two major issues. On the user side, users had to go out to find content as there wasn’t an inherent way to search for content within the system. On the creator side, creators had to deal with advertising themselves to users and they had to handle the monetization by themselves.
Social media created the algorithm to find content and developed some revenue sharing with creators.
If federated media takes off, it will probably look like Threads or Truth Social, where control of a front end monetizes development of the platform.
OT, but most of my students in their 20s can barely use keyboards. It really stresses them out and they get mad about it. Papers are either copy-paste then AI filtered a few times, or speech-to-text with a quick grammerly scan. Drives me bonkers too. Just to say, I’m sorry your work isn’t appreciated.
“The Digital Native generation are technological geniuses because they can usually intuit which icon to click. Let us praise them and give them as much screentime as we can.” - All the news pieces and academic articles from 2000-2010ish
That’s exactly what people want: no brainer alternative without the fediverse’s fragmentation
you pick a server with bluesky
Jack Dorsey has nothing by to do with Bluesky and hasn’t for a while now.
I believe it’s sort of tacked on and not exactly federated at the moment. Also it’s corporate run
In theory, yes. In practice, it’s a bit different. At the very least for now.
well, until they release all the code, and allow full federation its not a federating platform. end of story.
In theory, yes / kind of.
In practice, no, not really.
It uses a different protocol (AT protocol) than the Fediverse ActivityPub protocol, which is what lemmy and mastadon and pixelfed are all built on, so it is not natively interoperable with ActivityPub based Fediverse.
To do that you have to use bridging software of some kind.
Also, as others have pointed out… even if you do make the approximate equivalent of your own instance, a PDS… all of these still go through ‘Relays’, which BlueSky controls.
So… it is technically federated in the sense that it allows for anyone to make their own instance/PDS… but ultimately it is actually totally centralized.
Instead of a web or weave of many to many connections of independent admins/maintainers, the structure much more resembles a top down hierarchy that is ultimately all controlled by a profit driven corporation.
If the Relays go down, everything goes down.
If BlueSky decides they don’t appreciate your instance, they have unitary power to delist or block it, from everyone.
As compared with the Fediverse, where many different instances and communities can all pick and choose for themselves which other instances and communities they do and do not federate with, and where an outage particular to one community/instance only bricks that particular community/instance.
It calls itself federated, but it’s false advertising.
Nope. It’s unambiguously not federated. It maybe could be, if you take their words at face value
I think there might be some adapters bridging the distance… But the short answer is no, the long answer is not really
After initially hesitating, I decided to join Bluesky after having previously tried Mastodon and permanently leaving Twitter. While I was initially reluctant because Jack Dorsey had sold Twitter to Elon Musk, I still created a Bluesky account. I later came across Jason Koebler’s article on 404 Media, which validated my choice. His arguments aligned with my own reasons for preferring Bluesky over Mastodon. Link to the article: The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet.
404 is just mad because we mocked them relentlessly for not using content warnings on their goatse posts.
Mastodon may or may not be good (I don’t use it), but the fact that it segments off users into different groups means it will never be a twitter replacement. The fact that twitter is essentially “public” and all sorts of people from different areas interact was basically the whole point of it.
Bluesky seems pretty nice so far and it has real momentum. Mastodon seems more along the lines of what Google+ turned into.
Mastodon doesn’t silo its users, that’s what federation is for. Everything you post on the public timeline is essentially public for everyone that’s on a federated instance that hasn’t gotten blocked.
I’m just dreading the inevitable monetization. These spaces are fun in their alpha state. But it’s just a matter of time before there’s a “Let AI help you spam Shrimp Jesus to your friends” button and a “Pay $5 to override the Block function” feature.
Why must you malign shrimp Jesus so
what do you mean?
sure, but what are you talking about? your post could apply to anything
Can you explain what you mean?
I would argue siloing is easier on bluesky - block list manager drama can definitely have a similar effect to user admin drama. The thing mastodon does poorly is discovery. The fed and local feeds are nonsense on Masto. Imo it should be replaced with local admin/user curated topical feeds and top cross server topical feeds.
Mastodon requires far more effort to create a new feed than bluesky, and that’s the major problem.
Mastodon is social media where no one comments or likes anything.
It’s like a modern art masterpiece.
You’re hanging out with the wrong people.
maybe when I first started 15 years ago it was like this.
now I have a community that will follow me on whatever bullshit instance I create because I got a clever domain name.
Had to look up bluesky. Posts are called skeets 🤣
Mutuafuckaaaaa
That’s news to me 😂
Pronounced “shiits”
I just looove how ppl believe that switching from one VC-funded centralised corpo platform to another VC-funded (slitghly less) centralised corpo platform is a good thing /s
Just because it’s (partially) OSS doesn’t make it good. The corp still holds all the power and might sell out, but at least they got free volunteers to program for them so the C-level could get more money!
(Now don’t tell me that Bluesky is “federated”. They still hold all the power over site rules and moderation. The only little concession you get is that you are allowed to host your own data)
Apparently virtue signaling about pseudofederation is enough for libs to “get hope for the future of the internet” while they happily lick the boot of yet another centralized “trust me bro this isn’t going to enshittify itself, not this time” corp
The only little concession you get is that you are allowed to host your own data)
Nah, that’s not even a concession. You just pay for a portion of their server costs at no gain in influence.
Problem with Masto though is that the technological leadership is really bonkers, hardly anything meaningful happened over the past 2 years with lots of serious issues not getting fixed
I just loooove how pppl believe that whether something has VC-funding or is federated has any effect at all on how people pick software and systems to use.
I mean, users don’t even not care, because “caring vs not caring” assumes that the metric they can care about or not mentally exists in their context for judging a decision. Which it does not. Which is a very important part so many software designers of user-facing software forget, to users a short-form posting instance is a tool. A hammer. You use the one you got. Once it becomes defunct, you get a new one. You pick one that all your friends use, because hey, must be great if everyone uses it. Does it have some downsides? Maybe, but frankly it’s a hammer who cares?!
Nice profile picture!
uuu thx
