In one media article after another we read about how Threads and Bluesky are "decentralized social media platforms." Guess what, you are not "decentralized" if you only have one "centralized" server.
Can we please stop giving #Bluesky and #Threads#Meta credit for being #decentalized platforms when all they have done is announce the intention to actually someday be decentralized. Both are currently entirely #centralized corporate platforms.
@mastodonmigration One promised ActivityPub integration but is acting like it’s rocket science to implement, the other is using the modern equivalent of Betamax… I wish journalists would talk to people who know what is actually happening and not marketing departments.
@mastodonmigration I tried Threads, before I found Mastodon. That one is unusable! No way. I didn't even know of Bluesky, but I like Mastodon pretty much! I'm deleting my twitters, and bringing my accounts here.
No, you can't license my cat picture to Elon, Jack and Mark.
When you post on #Bluesky, #Twitter or #Meta you agree to grant them a very broad perpetual license to the content, including the right to sublicense. On Mastodon, most instances do not take a license. Any bridge that takes content from Mastodon and, without permission, puts that content on one of these platforms is violating that user's #copyright to the content. You can not #license content which you do not own.
@mjr Appreciate your clarification. Thank you. Generally was referring to owning the content outright or a license that includes the right to sub-license.
Interesting to note that these corporate social media sites generally include the right to sub-license in their terms of service, so these bridge builders are not only planning on giving away a license to the content they do not own (or have a right to sub-license), but they are granting a right to sub-license this content. It's not OK.
@benmounseywood Yes, been trying to explain this this to the people furiously working on @activitypubblueskybridge , but seems they just shrug and go back to their "won't this be cool" engineering discussions.
Just because you can drive a truck through the storefront and invite everyone to take anything they want, does not make it legal to do so.
Ich persönlich empfinde es als mysteriös, dass es bei Bluesky so lange dauert, bis es "fertig" ist. Für mich bleibt das offene Fediverse, das viel größer als nur Mastodon ist, die einzige öffentliche Kommunikation Lösung. Das erst bereit sein für angemeldete FrühuserInnen ist plumpes Marketing, da anscheinend nur Priviligierte Zugang erhalten.
@kubikpixel Ich trau dem Bluesky auch nicht so Recht. Es gibt keine klare Roadmap, die Mischung zwischen OpenSource proprietär ist wild, die Monetarisierung unklar.
Für solche Punkte hat man dort gerade keine Zeit zu diskutieren. Man versucht sich gerade wiederzufinden, nach der Flucht aus Twitter.
Das mit den Invites kann ich für eine gewisse Zeit verstehen. Inzwischen geht das schon so lange, dass ich es auch für plumpes Marketing halte. Mal schauen, wann ich Invites zum verteilen bekomme.
Ok, es gibt einen Punkt, es ist immer noch sehr weiß, aber selbst das hat sich in den letzten Monaten geändert.
Und zum Rest kann ich sagen, ich selbst bin von ex- Twitter lange vor Musk geflüchtet, weil mich die Art und Weise der Kommunikation dort , die ganzen Faschotrolle und dass ich Null Einfluss hatte, was schützende Techniken angeht, angekotzt hat. Ich denke, das geht auch vielen anderen so. Das war damals ein Hauptgrund. Da ist es selbstverständlich, dass ich abgenervt bin, wenn Neuankommende dieses Verhalten hier fortsetzen. Das ist es wohl
Und was die Bedienfreundlichkeit angeht, also Pixel weiß, dass ich IT-mäßig ne ziemliche Null bin. Zu verstehen, dass es nicht gut sein kann, wenn alle Daten zentral gesammelt werden, dann in einem Server weit weg in USA landen und dann auch noch bei Bedarf für Geheimdienste einsehbar sind bzw. bei Aufforderung an Cops weitergegeben werden und ich damit bezahle, dazu brauche ich nicht It- Expert*in zu sein, sondern dazu gehört einfach politische Haltung. Gerade in diesen Zeiten.
> BlueSky’s decentralization is a similar kind as with cryptocurrencies: sure, you can run your own node, but that does not give you basically any meaningful agency in the system.
> “Neutrality” and “speech” and “voice” and “protection from bans” is mentioned right there, front and center, in BlueSky’s overview and FAQ. At the same time moderation and anti-harassment features are, at best, an afterthought.
@rysiek "'Id go further and say that the idea of a single policy that could be implemented in a clear, discrete, consistent way across hundreds of millions of people using a given social network is preposterous."
I don't entirely agree in the sense that just like real life we can generally globally agree that rape and murder are bad, but yes, your point otherwise stands well.
A key Fedi advantage is granularity of experience anyway.
Checking in on whether #bluesky / #atproto has become any more like a communication medium, and... nope. almost unchanged since i looked at it last in June. Bluesky is a spectator platform where a small number of accounts receive most of the visibility and smaller accounts are effectively invisible. The introduction of new feed algorithms (to the degree that happened, there aren't really many that I can find in wide use) did not change that. This is a non-normative analysis: in some cases, it is good to have a medium that promotes some very small number of posts and accounts, eg. to surface singular events, etc.
From a 25h sample of the firehose...
600k posts, 2.4m likes, 250k boosts, 350k follows
40% of posts receive 0 likes, 70% receive <= 1
accounts in the 99th percentile of likes received 44% of likes, accounts in the 95th percentile received 74%
40% of posts were from accounts within the top 95th percentile of accounts by likes received.
the maximum number of likes for a post by an account not in the top 95% is 32.
The first plot below shows the cumulative sum of likes received on the y axis against each account in the sample on the x axis - this includes accounts that didnt' post during the sample (but would still have posts that could be liked, so this also shows the extreme recency bias). The second plot is a hockeystick showing the number of likes (not cumulative sum) received on the y axis per post on the x axis.
For background, the default algorithm only cares about likes, boosts don't matter, which is why i am calculating things by likes here - they are the primary algorithmic signal.
These are the same calculations that I did back in June, but this time i'm leaving the firehose open to do a longer sample to be able to parse momentary virality from persistent effects.
Looking at my own default algorithmic feed, I see 50% posts about nikki haley, 25% hot takes about electoral politics, and then ~10% of high follow accounts posting whatever, ~10% (delightful) shitposts. It's hard for me to summarize my fedi feed because every post is about a wildly different thing, there are definitely clusters from someone boosting a lot of things rapidfire, but yeah very much a mix. It used to be true that most of the fedi just talked about computers or (delightful) indecipherable trans stuff, but that has definitely changed.
I do think there is something missed by not having 'my friends see similar things to me and so we have a shared information diet' but i do not think that making it so everyone sees the same thing is the answer to that.
There was another toot earlier this week that compared the various platforms for a given set of headlines & topics. My toot (linked below) summed up the data from that thread that I was replying replied to. I don't know if this might help your analysis or give you any ideas for how to plan one for Mastodon, but jic it helps somehow, here you are.
It certainly seems to affirm what my own experience is: My interactions, RTs, and likes have a far higher percentage here than on other platforms.
Havainto: Blueskyn Suomi-feedillä ja Mastodonin Suomalaiset-listallani on jotakuinkin yhtä paljon turinaa.
Toinen havainto: Bluesky-seinällä on lähes pelkkää facebookmaista kuulumista ihmisten tekemisistä eikä oikeastaan yhtään uudelleenpostauksia kun taas Mastodon-listalla mielenkiintoisia boostauksia ja keskitytään yhteiskunnallisiin aiheisiin, meemeihin ja mielenkiintoiseen sisältöön.
Seuraan Fediversumin kontenttia paljon mieluummin, Bluesky usein unohtuu. X ei ole edes päivä- tai viikkojärjestyksessä enää, se vasta unohtuukin. Ja hyvä niin.
@Joni tämä! @quiri@valoisa@rolle
Blueskyn turinat ovat tylsiä ja epäkiinnostavia, täällä taas parasta antia. Kannanotot jätän X:ään, tänne kerron henkilökohtaisempia kuulumisia, huomaan. Itse asiassa henkilökohtainen aspekti tekee jutuista täällä kiinnostavia, ja se johtuu juuri Jonin mainitsemasta syystä.
Tämä ei ole ivallinen kysymys mutta kun itse en ymmärrä niin siis miksi se "mikä on iso juttu josta kohkataan tänään" on kiinnostavaa? Onko se vähän että jää jostain paitsi jos ei siihen ole osallinen? Vai muu, mikä?
J'ai toujours du mal a comprendre la fascination pour Bluesky par rapport à Mastodon. Techniquement c'est quand même moins riche que le fediverse, philosophiquement c'est super élitiste de ne passer que par la cooptation et politiquement c'est douteux d'encore faire confiance à un gourou de la Silicon Valley.
J'aurais tendance à dire que les centrales publicitaires à but lucratif ont usurpé le terme de réseau social, qui aurait déjà dû s'appliquer aux forums, canaux IRC et autres formes de socialisation numériques d'antan, et donc aujourd'hui au fédiverse, authentique réseau social.
On peut considérer que le mauvais usage du terme est tellement ancré dans les esprits qu'on ne peut désormais plus rien faire d'autre que l'abandonner aux rapaces… mais j'ai du mal.
taannoin oli puhetta, että mastodonin yksärit ei ole yksityisiä. No joo, Blue Sky vetää pohjat: kaikki on luettavissa apin kautta https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111246798083590676 :) #Bluesky ping @rolle osaatko tulkata, että voiko toi todella olla noin? Some(je)n koodi menee yli hilseen.
@outi@mojala@cos@rolle tässä on ihmisillä varmaan myös sellainen ajatusmalli, että vaikka on suht yleistä tietoa, että kaupallisissa someissa firma pääsee näkemään yv:t niin halutessaan, ei oleteta firman koskaan haluavan tehdä niin. Tavallisen netinkäyttäjän on paljon helpompi kuvitella, että suomalaisen pikkuinstanssin admin käy huvikseen tsekkailemassa toisten viestejä. Eli tajutaan kyllä olosuhteiden olevan pohjimmiltaan sama, mutta kun mittakaava on eri, pelko on henkilökohtaisempi.
(Pahoittelun mahdollisesti hajanaisesta tekstistä, josta puuttuu punainen lanka - ja vähän muutakin.)
Jos haluaa pitää jonkun yksityiskeskustelun yksityisenä, niiin todennäköisesti minkään somealustan "yksityiset viestit" ei ole niin yksityisiä, kuin moni kuvittelee.
Niitä varten pitää olla ihan oma "kanavansa", jossa salaus (mm. päästä-päähän, etc.) on oleellinen osa softan toimintaa.
Se taas vaatii käytön opettelua ja hyvin opittua tietoturvallista "palvelun" käyttämistä, joka on tunnetusti hankalaa monelle.
Oma lukunsa on sitten se, että miten hyvin noi salaus-puolen asiat on toteutettu vai onko toteutuksessa puutteita
If Jack Dorsey & Elon Musk (who are friends) just wanted to run a MAGA site full of fascists, they could have just bought Parler & saved themselves approx 43.999 billion dollars.
What they wanted was to cripple the sad remnants of investigative journalism, and the political left, which successfully used Twitter for political organizing, activism & messaging throughout the Trump regime.
Why would anyone who cares about either of these things go to Jack's #Bluesky project.
Amid rumors he'd been forced out as Twitter CEO (for the 2nd time), Dorsey reached out to Musk & together they planned his takeover, which Dorsey backed to the tune of $1 billion in shares.
A Jack Dorsey owned protocol or platform will never, ever be a safe space for Democratic or progressive organizing, or even a safe gathering space for any marginalized community (which includes women).
It's actually a big deal to throw away this moment - an opening of possibility to meaningfully disrupt the cycle of Enshittification & to build a vastly more democratic social media space.
I could be wrong, and the structure could change, but still I do not know how you whiff the lesson of the last 20 years of the internet badly enough to design a social protocol that encourages, and in fact rewards anyone with a big enough server scraping all the data and targeting you with posts
@irenes @pettter
so see: https://atproto.com/guides/faq
the discussion of "why not AP" is exceedingly shallow, even incorrect. it is true existing implementations of AP make account portability hard, but in the AP spec an actor is identified by a URI, and can include references to other identities via JSON-LD which could be actually much more expressive re: portability. Actors are Objects, and Objects have an Update method. You very much could use your own URI as an identity, even if dereferencing is harder than making a DNS entry. Just because masto doesn't do it this way doesn't mean the spec forbids it. having your own data repo would be harder, but again possible in the protocol - eg. you could replace all the database queries in mastodon to start by connecting to some remote db.
they didn't like JSON-LD because it was weird! so rather than building tooling for it and being interoperable with the huge amount of other shit that uses it, they made their own spec language. same thing with XRPC.
so yes I think the Irenes are right about this, a big case of NIH and not liking something (which is fine!), not wanting to do the work to make it interoperable (unspecified fineness!) and not learning from it (less fine!). I'm going through this process right now, it's taken actually several years to read a ton of protocols, a ton of history, including stuff I do not like to try and learn what works and what doesn't from it. It's a different way of working, but I don't have the same kind of social and technical capital they have to throw something together half considered and if it doesn't work, "oh well."
It seems that #Bluesky is getting some traction, so it's good to summarize the facts:
it's centralized (99% of users on one instance),
it has insufficient moderation,
it's not easily publicly browsable,
it has terrible terms of service (you grant them broad rights to all your content).
The only thing that makes it different from X in principle is that it's not run by a mad man (yet)... Ah, I forgot it's Jack Dorsey's project, nevermind.
@sesivany
It was funny when Jack thought he still had some say after he handed controls to Musk and Musk quickly put the #Twitter plane in a nose dive position. Ah...priceless.
Because that's what it feels like. To be constantly right, but cursed to never be believed.
Perhaps because our truth is: "You will have to put in a little bit more effort" and the vast majority just check out and start walking towards the next greatest mouse trap.
So, been on #BlueSky for a while, and I can't say I'm impressed.
It really just feels like pre-musk twitter.
The web UI is buggier than mastodon, I've seen some weird behaviour.
It is super American, one of the nicest things of the fediverse is that it's not half as US dominated as twitter used to be, which makes it more pleasant for me. BS really feels like you stumbled in a democratic party convention.
It's still owned by SV money, and that just leaves a bad taste.