It’s approximately one year since the peak of the enshittification of Twitter and the big Mastodon influx. Let’s ask again: What is your main microblogging platform? Boosts welcome.
Here's an interesting fact. I've been on #Bluesky since August 2023. I have 300 posts over there, almost all of which are related to science. I only have 29/30 followers there. By contrast, I've been on #Mastodon for only a few days, have posted 37 times, and already have 47 followers. Either I'm terrible at #science communication, or Bluesky is a dead undiscoverable platform. Or maybe both. Could be an algorithmic issue, or it could be that Bsky has the worst search engine (plus no hashtags).
Social media is social. On X it is pretty hard to be social when you have to pay for it (literally and figuratively).
On Mastodon everything you do is social. Likes have no meaning other than for good spirits, so people have a conversation mindset. Boosts have a large meaning, they are the only algorithm, so people are boosting with low bar.
On Bsky/Threads everything is mostly built on likes. People rarely re-share anything too ordinary, posts have to be EXCEPTIONAL to get shares or comments.
This is why I believe in open protocols over commercial war machines.
The paper figure is a lot cuter, but by linearizing it and presenting it as two parallel tracks they have obscured the most salient feature of the network: the big relay in the middle. Beyond "centralization bad," that pins down most of the undesirable and dangerous features of the protocol, and makes it seem like theres a lot more choice than there is.
Since the design purposefully hides the architecture: you dont know where your feed generators are drawing from, or those used by your friends. So you cant know what the effect of choosing a different relay would be, aka the main relay is always indispensable. Importantly the relays subscribe to you, you dont push to the relay, and since you arent really supposed to operate your own data store, you can be dropped from the network without knowing - the relay serves as an unaccountable point of moderation.
#FediBlock snarfed.org and brid.gy for bridging fediverse folks to Bluesky against their will (and in likely contravention of GDPR in the EU) with typical Silicon Valley techbro sense of entitlement:
“[O]pt in results in far fewer users, and users are critical for a bridge to be useful.”¹
Starting today, Bluesky will not require invite codes anymore and anyone can join the network. Later this month, the team will roll out an "experimental early version of federation", allowing other people to run their own 'Personal Data Server' (PDS).
From a preliminary ~12h sample of #bluesky / #atprotocol , a small number of accounts receive most interactions. This is an obvious byproduct of the way the default algorithmic feed prioritizes posts.
5% of accounts received 72% of likes, 1% of accounts received 41%
The top 5% of accounts make 48% of posts
37% of accounts receive no interaction
The median account received 1 like.
Just a quick, incomplete look, but ya looks like an engagement farm
So, it seems like not everyone has noticed that #Bluesky is the only social media competitor that Musk never banned & still allows to advertise itself to Twitter users.
So, we jumped from #Twitter to #Mastodon, after a man with a sink showed us how fragile centralized platforms really are. And now there's #Bluesky wanting to convince us that their AT Protocol is even more robust than #ActivityPub. But is it really superior and would it have been better to build the #fediverse on top of this protocol, instead?
> 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.
I've been on #Mastodon for only a few days and I already feel less anxiety/stress over here than on twitter/X. I love the fact that both Mastodon and #Bluesky are overall leftist/left-wing. I'm so glad the future of social media is decentralized (e.g. #ActivityPub, ATProto, Nostr, etc.).
Twitter was never a healthy place with all its silly algorithms and encouragement of confrontations. I don't know which platform US society mostly resembles, but I hope it eventually resembles Mastodon, etc.
How many times does this man have to tell you that he's building #Bluesky AT Protocol to help his bro Musk & their joint investment, #Twitter?
Where #Dorsey is one of the biggest stakeholders, at $1 billion.
Bluesky refuses to reveal who owns the company & its IT. But Bluesky the app is a complete clone of Twitter yet it's the only one Musk has never attacked.
@jack - Nov 6, 2022 Replying to @BestLiveAudio@BillyM2k and @bluesky Moving fast. Not competitive to Twitter. Supportive. @jeffjarvis - Jun 11, 2022 .@jack: How does @bluesky related to Web5? @davewiner - Jun 11, 2022 heh yeah, you got him. i thought of that too, went to their website, it's exactly as it was in april. i bet it'll be exactly the same in 2029. @jack bluesky team is doing a lot of work. Have to go deeper into their discord though to see for now... 8:08 AM - Jun 11,2022 @jeffjarvis - Jun 11, 2022 .@jack: How does @bluesky related to Web5? @jack Bluesky could be built on top of web5, specifically helps solve the identity pieces. Twitter Inc could also use as foundation. And give people a whole lot more power. 8:02 AM - Jun 11,2022
There is a solution to this. Stop centralizing the internet.
If you want to take back control of the internet, we need to go back to blogging, using internet forums, and transition to the Fediverse with software that powers it like Mastodon, Calckey, Pixelfed, etc.
We need to stop making places like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, etc the center of the internet. At any time, they can pull the rug as seen with Twitter numerous times and Reddit charging outrageous fees for their API.
Using the Fediverse isn't that hard. Sure, onboarding could be better, but once one starts using it, they will get used to it. Also, #bluesky is never the solution.
I truly wish #Mastodon did not bomb it with BIPOC during the Twitter migration. #bluesky is becoming a crap show. I can't even invite people here b/c of what they have experienced or heard about others experiencing.
In which I offer an overview of where Mastodon stands now in 2023/08; what’s good/bad, keeping an eye on the alternatives, etc. Not terribly technical (social-media technology is boring, it’s the “social” parts that are interesting).
Bluesky has announced that today they have started with federation, allowing anyone to host their own data on the #bluesky network.
In a blog post they announced that anyone can now host their own PDS, framing it as a way to control your own data, and also explaining how it differs from Mastodon.
Bluesky describes it as an 'early access of federation for self-hosters'.
Alex Norris made this entry of Webcomic Name that perfectly describes Fedi right now.
Fedi grew out of groups forced out of places like Twitter and Facebook. It is a space built specifically to protect everyone here from the systems that did it.
When we talk about #P92, #Facebook, #Meta, #Bluesky, and newcomers who immediately want changes to make them more like other spaces, this is exactly that in 3 panels.