There are a lot of companies and ideas competing for space on the post-Twitter internet, and Jay makes a convincing argument that decentralization — the idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wish — is the future. It’s a powerful concept that’s been kicking around for a long time, but now it feels closer to reality than ever before. You’ve heard us talk about it a lot on Decoder: the core idea is that no single company — or individual billionaire — can amass too much power and control over our social networks and the conversations that happen on them.
There are quite some reasons that leave me very cautious about Bluesky, one being for sure the fact there's one commercial entity currently backing this service / protocol, especially one that has risen from the same ecosystem that caused a lot of the trouble we do experience with current social media platforms. But, I've then and now been at odds with ActivityPub as a protocol, which gets worse the more I dig into it, and from that perspective, it seems the AT crowd gets a lot of things right, considered a lot of things that don't just seem obvious at least in the 2010s but actually surprising to see them missing from ActivityPub, a spec that has been established at roughly the same time: Full account portability (the idea of comparing personal data, conversations, comments, posts, ... to a github repository which "of course" you want to easily be able to take, backup, move around, ... seems both stunning and painfully trivial), support of custom domains for users (which Tumblr has already been supporting for years now), distributed curation and moderation (because most obviously community structures will be different to server or domain structures and not necessarily live on one instance exclusively) - in a way I really do hope they "show don't tell" by submitting that protocol to some standardization body anytime soon. Maybe this, too, could provide a good option for the "open" fediverse to counter the problems that might arise the very moment platforms like Meta / Threads fully embrace ActivityPub. (I also found it rather interesting to listen to what she had to say about why Meta might be more into ActivityPub than AT - being "server-centric" rather than "user-centric" - but that might just be a loose end of things.)
I logged into my Bluesky account this morning to see what was going on with the platform (and to post a blog link). Most of the people who I follow haven’t posted in months, others have deleted their accounts completely.
#BridgyFed ist eine Brücke, mit der echtes Interagieren zwischen #Fediverse-Accounts und #Bluesky-Accounts möglich wird. Allerdings nur zwischen Accounts, die da aktiv mitmachen. Wie's geht?
Das Fediverse-Profil, dem ihr als Fediverse-User folgen müsst, damit Bluesky-User euch hier folgen und mit euch interagieren können: @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy
Das ist ein #Bot. Nachdem man ihm folgt, folgt er zurück und richtet ein Bluesky-Handle namens @DeinFediverseHandle.Deine.Instanz.ap.brid.gy ein. Dieses Handle ist dann bei Bluesky auffindbar, und Bluesky-User können ihm folgen. Damit folgen sie dann euch hier und können eure Beiträge auch liken, boosten und kommentieren.
Umgekehrt müssen Bluesky-User folgendem Bluesky-Profil folgen, damit ihr ihnen von hier aus folgen und mit ihnen interagieren könnt: @ap.brid.gy
Auch das ist ein Bot. Auch er folgt dort auf Bluesky zurück. Und er richtet ein Fediverse-Handle namens @BlueskyUserHandle.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ein. Das ist dann hier auffindbar, und man kann ihm folgen. Auch so herum kann man dann hier Beiträge von dort liken, boosten, kommentieren.
This is from posting pretty much solely on #MECFS , #LongCovid and related conditions and to a lesser extent chronic illness in general, which shows it is possible to build up followings on them, in case people either gave up on them or never tried.
I'm not exactly sure how it's happened, but it's pretty cool I can see Bluesky accounts talking on here.
It seems a shared interest in the misfortunes of the Nazi Bar has bridged the technical divide somewhere. #Twitter#Mastodon#Bluesky
Exploring Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, I walk a lot even though it is very hot and the humidity is exhausting.
Especially the old streets are pure eye-candy when it comes to architecture and details. Nowadays I only take photos with my phone, I sold the Nikon. Sometimes I miss my DSLR.
Photo: Parroquia Santa Ana, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
Are there alternative implementations of #ATprotocol beyond #BlueSky? if so, can they talk to each other without #BlueSky being involved at all? Is it all just not as decentralized as they want us to think it is? thanks.
Good intro to using #TypeScript in the form of JSDoc tags: https://alexharri.com/blog/jsdoc-as-an-alternative-typescript-syntax - I've been using this recently in one small-ish project (#Bluesky thread reader) and I think I like it. I can run a typecheck when I want, but I don't need a build phase, don't need to install the npm package on the server, it's still just JS that a browser can open as is.
At this point, Twitter and BlueSky are virtually identical, except there's a bit more public info about users. So maybe it's worse? In any event, the whole plan all along was to create the illusion of difference and "starting over" by simply swapping a platform. Fascinating how gullible most people are.
What a pleasant surprise to have found an app (@openvibe) that aims to bring together all decentralized social networks in one! It saves you the trouble of having to post on each one separately. For now, it works with #Mastodon and #Nostr, but they plan to add #Bluesky and #Threads. Very good news! Check it out if you can. 😉
Pretty good summary of the drawbacks of having a single-user Mastodon instance that result from ActivityPub's architecture (and partially from Mastodon's implementation): https://mull.net/mastodon
It's nice to be in control of your account, but you need to know what you're getting yourself into.
@jglypt I don't really feel the need to follow more people here in general, I follow a bunch of iOS devs already that I found through Twitter connections.
If I want to look for content outside of my Following, e.g. trending news or a hashtag feed, like to see who's talking about #bluesky, I go on mastodon.social and browse it logged out. Then if I want to like or reply to a post, I need to fetch that post on my instance first - 4.2 makes this a bit easier, though it sometimes just doesn't work.
Bisher habe ich nur Beiträge inkludiert, die 'rp24' im Text enthielten. Für diesen Post habe ich alles gezählt, was in der jeweiligen Suche auftaucht. Dadurch steigen vor allem die Zahlen von #Bluesky (+230), weil der dortige rp24-Feed mehrere #rp24 Suchbegriffe enthält. Bei #XCorp kommen ein paar (+28) false positives über Matches in Usernames dazu. #Threads ist jetzt auch dabei und überholt Bluesky knapp.
My biggest #gripe with #Mastodon is reach and the ability to discover stuff outside of chronological scrolling. Lists in #BlueSky make that better. Imho the algorithms in #Threads are too intrusive.
If there were simpler ways to connect with different topics on here it would make it excellent, to me at least. I guess it might come down to why you use different social media.
J’ai jeté un œil à Bluesky (vu qu’apparemment c’est trop woke pour Jack)
Alors oui c’est super simple (centralisation oblige) et y’a des bonnes idées :
personnaliser l’ordre d’affichage des réponses (chrono ou anté chrono)
bloquer par défaut les players externes (youtube, spotify…)
masquer son compte aux gens non connectés
MAIS.
Ben c’est vide. Au moins autant qu’ici. La seule diff c’est que quand t’arrives l’algo te pousse du contenu. Alors qu’ici ta TL principale est VRAIMENT vide.
Je me dis que si c’est un des freins à l’adoption (en plus du choix de serveur) il suffirait de charger la TL locale voire la fédérée par défaut à la création d’un compte.
Ou mieux peut-être, un message qui dit “votre home est vide pour le moment, mais viendez dehors c’est animé”
Mastodon is a weird place. Most of the time it feels like it’s just a buncha folks who would rather cruise around on horse drawn buggys. It’s really no surprise why this place didnt take off the way we hoped. Then again that was Eugens whole point.
I hate going down this hole but it really does suck. Someone I know who’s a fairly staunch liberal at work today mentioned how they’re on bluesky. Folks I used to love following like @parkermolloy@owillis@Popehat@nikkimcr completely gave up on this pace and went #bluesky. I’m starting to think if I should do the same.