this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Bluesky is literally just old Twitter but better. Why do people insist on hurting themselves with Threads?
Edit: for those more technically inclined, it looks like there are now instructions on how to host your own Bluesky instance. It sounds like you may need a developer account before you can federate with the official instance though.
Yeah the only problem with bluesky is that it still has such strict limits on who can join, and even who can see the content. Can't exactly make it your online home for announcements and such if most people can't see them there even if they wanted to.
You know what makes the Nobel Prize so valuable? Not everyone gets one.
Blue sky is following the early Facebook playbook of artificial exclusivity. When the feeling of FOMO is widespread enough, they’ll gradually open the door wider.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply that blue sky is good like the Nobel prize is good. I just mean they’re using artificial scarcity to drum up demand.
I'm not quite sure social media accounts and the Nobel Prize make a good comparison. I get what you're saying about the exclusivity idea, but in my mind "exclusive" social media can't really be that much of a draw if there's a million alternatives and it doesn't bring anything new to the table (it's not decentralized or federated if you need approval from a central authority).
It’s a club with people lining up outside then.
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member"
Now those are some wise fuckin words.
Marx was full of wisdom
bsky-social-4stbe-z2k4b (comment if you grabbed this, so that others don't try)
Fyi, don't post codes like that in public. Bots grab them. No site is safe.
Anyone still need one? I have 2
Edit: gone
I am interested in one, if you still have one
Sent you the code
Sent you the code
How many do you have? I've been waiting on the wait-list for like months now lmao
I get one every 2 weeks, usually give them to strangers like in this case
I tried, but it seems it's already gone
And no one commented that they did. Nice.
Thanks!
I'll never understand why people are so excited for something that is proprietary and invite-only...
Oh yeah, they're idiots. I suspect bluesky is paying for a lot of viral marketing.
Nah, it's because it's less of a headache than Mastodon (everyone I've talked to likes the idea, but hates the implementation because they find it hard to navigate) and it's not a mess like Threads or Twitter. What people want is 2015 Twitter because they're not nerds. They want it to just work.
As for the invite-only thing, I found it odd at first, but I kinda understand why people like it now. It makes it harder for assholes to join and if they do manage to get an invite, they'll have to get another one after their account gets banned for bigotry or being a shithead.
The problem is its centralized nature. As a business, it's going to do what businesses do and get people hooked, then slowly enshittify their products/services until a competitor takes over.
It's hard because people are confused about multiple instances. Bluesky is a solo instance, to date, so they avoid that issue. But it will come.
More folks need to learn about firefish. It federates with Mastodon and has a much nicer UX and UI.
There are many instances, but the main one is firefish.social
I've also heard good things about Calckey.
Firefish is what Calckey became when rebranded recently. 😁
https://wedistribute.org/2023/07/calckey-is-now-firefish/
Aha! That makes sense then.
Bluesky might be better Twitter, but if people doesn't hear about it, or does not want to try it out, they'll stay on Twitter. Or if they can't stand Musk they go to Threads. Simply because those platforms are the biggest there.
Bluesky is spreading like wildfire in academia at least.
And much like wildfire, it's going to be a fucking disaster. I don't understand why people who are paid to be critical thinkers would jump to another platform owned by a centralised actor. It'll be the same shit all over again.
Because centralization is safe and the majority of users really don’t care about using services owned by major corps.
The fediverse is extremely uninviting if you’re a non-technical user. Not impossible, but it’s not a great experience. Centralized social media removes a lot of choices users need to make, which counterintuitively is what tends to make a better UX for the average user. It comes at the expense of the power user, but the power users aren’t the target audience most of the time.
Yeah, it's an unfortunate reality that the ecosystem just isn't very mature yet. Like technically it's got all the power to run a social media site, but all the onboarding processes and little conveniences that would make it a pleasant move aren't there.
One thing activitypub is missing right now is a built-in way to discover the network, discover instances and understand the shape of the network in terms of federation status. Right now there are outside tools you can discover and peer in from the outside, but they're clunky, break intermittently, and they're not easy to find.
Activitypub only does one half of its job right now: making posts happen. Because it is built on federation it needs to also intrinsically allow users to discover and learn about that process of federation. That's not something any other social media platform has ever had to do, so it's understandable that it was missed, but I think it's key to both differentiating itself from those other networks and becoming more legible.
With centralisation, the posts, networks, onboarding, discovery, all of it is handled by one actor, so they can do all of that however they want.
I honestly think a lot is solved with the new onboarding experience in Mastodon, even though it's controversial in the fediverse.
If the twitter exodus to Mastodon happened today I suspect the main problem, except the servers having to deal with millions of people trying to sign up all at once, would be the lack of quote posts. Which is at least on the roadmap.
Maybe BECAUSE I HAVEN'T RECEIVED THE DAMN CODE!
Although with their proprietary solution, there's a significant chance that Bluesky is going to be Twitter 2.0 if it ever gains traction. I'm rooting for fediverse to take off because my social media activity has shrunk to a couple of group chats with close friends and family plus occasional comments on Mastodon and Lemmy.
Idk bro, sounds kind of emotionally healthy.
Bluesky.social is open source (MIT) and supports federation, though I don't know to what degree it compares to federation as implemented across what we normally think of as the fediverse. I know it's a different protocol, but not more than that.
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture
https://github.com/bluesky-social
I'd love the fediverse as we know it to become dominant, but I think it's going to be a slow burn if it happens at all.
You know what would be hilarious? Eventually blue sky buys the leftovers of twitter and renames itself twitter. Although by that time it may not be a prudent move. So maybe not.
Even funnier would be to buy x.com in the liquidation sale.
I can see it now
"The site formerly known as 'X formerly known as Twitter'"
I've been under the impression that part of the reason for bluesky's invite system is to help keep out bad actors. It makes it easier to ban someone and keep them from coming back. Buying Twitter would just open the floodgates.
Just buy twitter the brand but keep none of the user lists or tech stack, just the name. Honestly though I've been sick of twitter for years at this point and I would rather it be reduced to a footnote in history, an emblem of the bad times when a handful of billionaire assholes controlled all of our information ecosystems.
Because the majority of people don’t even know what bluesky is, and those who do can’t get an invite
They're a lot more common than you think; you get an invite to give out every 10 days. It's just that you gotta ask around for them. If you're looking for an invite, try asking a furry. I think most of the furry community who wants to be on Bluesky is already there at this point, so there are probably a number of furries who have tons of unused invites.
This explains why I was seeing so many Furries at first. Dialed in the Feeds and don't see them anymore but I was confused at first
Yup. The furry community is very tight-knit. If you pick any two humans at random, there will be six degrees of separation between them on average. I'd be willing to bet there's a maximum of six degrees of separation between furries, with the average probably being 2~3 degrees. If you pick people with related interests, the maximum probably drops to 3~4 degrees, with the average being around 1~2. The result is that Bluesky spread like wildfire through the community.
I think the invite system slows people joining vs Threads easy sign up. I agree that it is straight up old Twitter and enjoying myself on it. I just started getting invites , they go fast but definitely give them out. Seems like every time I see a post about it I don't have a code to give out. Definitely need to just keep one on deck for the Lemmy comment section.