I don't post on here much any more, or monitor it much, so probably better to find me on Bluesky if you need me.
De gustibus etc. No platform is perfect. But I feel more comfortable there, and less like I'm likely to get screamed at for using Latin without a CW or something.
People are not aware and not curious enough to find out. If they would care at all.
What they get, however, is what they want: Twitter 2.0, with no complicated "pick your instance" questions, no " sorry you picked an instance which has blocked instances where your friends are"...
People don't care about FOSS, capitalism or (visible) decentralization.
whenever people comment about bs here, i'm always like, why would you ever ever give jack your time, effort, and data again, ever, i mean, fuck me runnin, what does the guy gotta do that he hasn't already done to prove he's no one you want to be associated with or support ever again, lol, just insanity
@bgrinter@offset___cyan@Popehat that's actually kind of reassuring. A lot of Twitter's problems can be laid at jack conveniently overriding TOS for people with huge followings that regularly posted hateful trash, encouraged violence or kicked off harassment brigades. That and simply being weirdly disconnected from the regular user's experience.
They also did a pretty crap job at catching spam under jack, not that his successors did any better though 😞
@mmasnick@Popehat I've been mostly using this lately to post photos, which is mostly fine, but it also seems to attract some of the weirdest gatekeeping and scolding.
@mattblaze@mmasnick@Popehat One nice thing about Bluesky is that many more people have a presence under their real name. I guess that helps to reduce the urge to yell too. But I must say the platform still feels like very much a beta product to me.
@anderspuck@mmasnick@Popehat Yeah, that's why I've not been more active there. Some aspects of it are comfortable, but it's still too small, and it's not clear if the good things can survive scale. The paradox of social media, I guess.
@mattblaze@anderspuck@mmasnick@Popehat Maybe it’s the instance. I’ve found twit.social to be relaxed and welcoming. It’s mostly tech geeks following the twit.tv network.
It's a real bummer to witness. There are many of us who want to avoid being part of one of those corpo-socials again b/c it will all go down exactly the same way, but I can't stand that pissy people are pushing amazing contributors to leave Mastodon.
@_Birdie_@mattblaze@bouncing@mmasnick@Popehat I understand the problems that scale give. I don’t have that many followers on Mastodon, but I do have 100k+ on YouTube. I think it’s a general problem when you get to those kinds of numbers that a certain number of them will be jerks.
@vincent mainly the atmosphere, the people are (mostly) better than in other places. A lot fewer Nazis and transphobes.
More enjoyable, for the first time in a while social network was fun for me.
Custom algorithmic feeds (timelines dedicated to specific topics) are an awesome feature.
@vincent@ygalanter@Popehat@mmasnick@mattblaze Dunno about the advantages, but I thought people would have learned about social media platforms controlled by unaccountable billionaires by now…
@krans@vincent@ygalanter@Popehat@mmasnick Scolding people who are unhappy here for seeking alternatives that work better for them isn't likely to make them happier here.
@ygalanter@krans@vincent also, one thing I appreciate about the bsky team is that they are explicit that they view the future company as an adversary and are building with that in mind. That's important. They're not only not controlled by a billionaire, they're building so that they can't be controlled by a billionaire.
@bplein@ygalanter@krans@vincent they're building the protocol. the current implementation is just a reference application. so they're putting in place poison pills through federation that if they get bad, people can leave, but continue to use the AT Protocol without relying on Bluesky the company.
@mmasnick@ygalanter@krans@vincent I’ll believe it (open federation) when it happens. The investors will want their money back 10-100 fold.
You say they are building the protocol to be billionaire proof. I don’t think it’s possible. In any event, they aren’t building the CORPORATION to be billionaire proof, and the corporation controls the protocol.
@bplein It's probably about when anybody can easily run their own instances. Right now current instances are test-drive ran by Bluesky team. It's federated nevertheless.
@nightscotsman@vincent@ygalanter@Popehat@mattblaze also, custom feeds are a revelation and really useful. Mastodon was entirely against any kind of algorithms, whereas Bluesky let's anyone create their own and share it with others.
@Popehat@ygalanter@mmasnick@mattblaze Bluesky is federated now? According to this TechCrunch article they’re saying they’ll have federation some time next year, but they’ve been promising federation since they started. I’ll believe it when I can run my own free software server, including indexer.
@Popehat@mmasnick@mattblaze you just don’t have the ideological purity required to participate in this site. Please report to the nearest reeducation site asap
@mattblaze@mmasnick@Popehat
Before this post, Popehat’s most recent post here was more than a month ago, and it elicited less than 5 replies, none of them “yelling.” 🤷♀️
@mattblaze@kyozou@mmasnick@Popehat I see (and seek out) a lot of black and white photography here and I’ve never come across those kinds of comments outside of your feed. Is this really a ‘community’ who doesn’t like #bw or is it some really weird attempt specifically to harass you??
given that it is clearly both succeeding in upsetting you and seems so strange as an organic, authentic concern it feels a bit like intentional trolling (but in a way that is not blatant or familiar enough to attract moderation?)…just a thought…
whatever it is, it’s a problem and it would be nice if it got weeded out…
@mattblaze@mmasnick@Popehat I was sincerely curious about what had happened to prompt his post, and I was surprised that there wasn't anything there (at least that I can see).
It's not for me to speculate why he's leaving, but I just don't see anything resembling what he griped about ("...likely to get screamed at for using Latin without a CW or something").
Maybe he blocked an instance or the perpetrator? I don't know. It just seems like a odd complaint after looking at his traffic for the last few months.
If he doesn't want to post here, that's his prerogative (of course), but I don't understand the need to bash Mastodon on his way out the door. His comment struck me a hyperbolic and unnecessary.
@mattblaze@mmasnick@Popehat I very much enjoy content from all of you, so this made me pretty sad. I have a Bluesky but I am not active there, because they care less about making their product accessible to people with disabilities like myself. Waiting on the AT-to-AP bridge protocol so I can consume all my content in one place! Until then, best of luck! sorry folks keep whining about nonsense, no one should have to deal with that. Sincerely hope the landscape gets its act together, soon.
Um... just noting, this post has lead to a flood of requests for Bluesky invites (way more than I expected). I just went through a bunch, but also have work to do and travel starting tomorrow, so may be a bit of time until I get to the rest...
@mmasnick I noticed you weren't posting much here and I was sorry not to read your posts. I'm trying to limit my time on social media so I don't think I'll jump into BlueSky for the time being. I will though try to check out new stories at TechDirt.
@mmasnick is Bluesky going to move from the invite only policy or allow public viewing of posts? I mean, I enjoyed the content of yourself, popehat, Kilgore Trout, and others that have since left Twitter…but I just have a hard time asking people that don’t know me to vouch with an invite.
@mmasnick Are you certain about the invite system going away in the future? I thought they were planning to stick with it as a way to help with moderation
As a follow up to this... I received over 150 requests for codes. I've had time to review about 40. I will continue to work through the rest when I have time, but it may be a while...
@mmasnick It’d almost be worth it to set up a task force just to handle all the codes you get. Like a second, unofficial Bsky waiting list, only faster.
@mmasnick I will definitely miss your posts, come post again from time to time, your powerful reasoned voice is even more valuable to society in this decentralized social network
@Voline@mmasnick@Popehat From what I've seen of BlueSky, it's mostly influencers and fanboys. If you like to chase cred, pontificate or follow celebrawanabees it's totally for you. I think that's why those that are used to that sort of thing find it slightly uncomfortable on Mastodon.
@mmasnick@Popehat In a sign that the site is about to jump the shark, I recently searched Xitter for "Bluesky invite codes" and found some rando who publicly posted a screenshot with half a dozen of them. I picked one arbitrarily, and it worked.
@Popehat A shame. I've had pretty much the opposite experience after trying things out over there for a few days. So far, I'm not so impressed there and I like it better here.
@9speederailleur I may or may not leave, but if I do, it will not be because people like you are emotionally incapable of enduring criticism of the site.
@Popehat Don't blame you. This network has had issues WAY before Twitter's buyout.
It's baffling the Mastodon FOSS-Stallmen's can't get a fucking clue and get WHY their attitude is so toxic toward shitposters/people that don't care and just want to post and user growth/retention.
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