> Almost exactly six months after #Twitter got taken over by a petulant edge lord, people seem to be done with grieving the communities this disrupted and connections they lost, and are ready, eager even, to jump head-first into another toxic relationship. This time with BlueSky.
tl;dr:
#BlueSky seems designed to get secondarily centralized in the "reach" layer (as they call it)
I spent a week on #Bluesky doing a social experiment. It was an exercise in depression. #Mastodon is the best new #socialmedia, by far. On Bsky, nobody uses the search function or hashtags like #science to discover posts. You're stuck to one science feed that's a closed-membership algorithmic coffin that only boosts large long-established accounts. It felt like I was in solitary confinement. You're forced to play the "social ladder" game, which encourages twitter-style toxicity. #fediverse#tech
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
Funny how when #BlueSky got the first few thousand accounts all of tech media immediately started tripping one over another covering it and getting a collective aneurysm. :blobcatroll:
Meanwhile, #Threadiverse gets ~70k accounts over 2 weeks, and (with the fine exception of #Techdirt) not a peep. :blobcatgiggle:
#Bluesky 's latest blogpost [1] reveals that the #ATProtocol is a classic bait and switch game, facilitated by the small-world/big-world distinction. [2]
The bait is telling creators that their content is safe (from petty moderators/server shutdown) and that they are not locked into a platform because the AT protocol is federated, so they can self host with a handle under their control. The switch is that the (federated aspect of the) AT Protocol is irrelevant in the big-world.
For those who think Dorsey is any better. Being that rich causes brain damage and a lack of empathy to a degree regular people cannot comprehend it. #Twitter#x#bluesky
🇬🇧 Before you sign up to #Bluesky, you should know:
❌ anonymous read access
✅ pervasive tracking of your online behaviour including IP address
✅ external trackers
✅ personal data leakage to the USA
The #Lemmy developers host an AMA, talking about decentralisation, platform identity and a roadmap
@nodebb talks about how they are thinking about what federating forums actually means, and how their implementation of #ActivityPub will look like
Project Tapestry by @Iconfactory is a Kickstarter to build an App that gives you a single chronological feed from a variety of sources, such as #mastodon, #bluesky and #rss
Allen, TX mass murderer wore a “right wing death squad” patch
Armed w/an AR-15
A Nazi
Former US military
Radicalized on social media
#4 is why "algorithm choice" marketed by #Dorsey/#Bluesky is NOT a solution. Do you think if you don't see his posts, a radicalized right winger is less likely to murder?
His "social media accounts revealed hundreds of postings & images [&] writings with [racist] violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi materials"
Frankly, I’m tired of new social media platforms that launch with “invites only.” It’s giving a “all the cool kids are here!” vibe. Now people are begging for invites and even trying to sell them. History repeats and folk learn nothing. I’m content here on Mastodon.
BlueSky is pausing new accounts due to tech issues. Interestingly, when the main Mastodon server was overwhelmed with new accounts (which obviously can happen to anyone), users could still create new account on other servers, or start their own servers, which demonstrated the advantages of a decentralized social network. #bluesky#mastodon
I have re-read the magnificent article by @kissane, titled "Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t". On Bluesky, she asked those people who had tried/used Mastodon and bounced off, what had led them to slow down or leave.
Couldn’t find people or interests, people didn’t stay
Too confusing, too much work, too intimidating
Too serious, too boring, anti-fun
Complicated high-stakes decisions
"I don’t know if Mastodon can grapple with the complexities of mass scale. Lots of people would prefer it didn’t—staying smaller and lower-profile makes it friendly to amateur experimentation and also a lot safer for people who need to evade various kinds of persecution. But if Mastodon and other fedi projects do take on the mass scale, their developers must consider the needs of people who aren’t already converts. That starts by asking a lot of questions and then listening closely and receptively to the answers you receive."
For many parts I agree. But despite everything, Mastodon/Fediverse is still the best place to be on social media. Let's make this even better. We have the power. #Mastodon#OpenSource#Fediverse#Bluesky#BlueskySocial
Defederation has come up in multiple different contexts recently in the Fediverse. Even more so, the way other protocols are developing is setting up more significant questions about future choices regarding federation as well.
🇩🇪 Bevor du dich auf #Bluesky anmeldest, solltest du wissen:
❌ anonymer Lesezugriff
✅ Ausspionieren/Tracking deines kompletten Nutzungsverhaltens samt IP-Adresse
✅ externe Tracker
✅ Personendatenabfluss in die USA
Pardon the expression, but #Bluesky was all atwitter over @mmasnick’s
ingenious new game designed to give people a lived experience at moderating content and behavior. He could win the peace prize for this!
I had a Twitter list "standard stuff" where I listed the core accounts I definitely wanted to hear about. This fav list grew over the years and had 120 users in total. These were active users that in the golden era posted every day. These were the ones I wanted to read whenever possible.
I wanted to see what's the status today so I went through every account and here's the result. By "inactive" I mean users who haven't posted anything in two months or more.
20% have completely deleted their account (the list now has 95 users)
36% still post frequently
64% are inactive or quit using Twitter
30% are inactive without any reason given
23% of those who still post on X also have active Mastodon, Bluesky or Threads accounts
Nothing says "Science should be free of gatekeeping and special interests" like trying to move #ScienceTwitter to #BlueSky, an invite-only proprietary service run by tech billionaires 🤷
Defederation (fediversereport.com)
Defederation has come up in multiple different contexts recently in the Fediverse. Even more so, the way other protocols are developing is setting up more significant questions about future choices regarding federation as well.