I agree with this fwiw. I think there is a place for both and I’m not leaving Mastodon. But it is objectively true that Bluesky is fun and Mastodon is much less so. Earnestness has a place but lots of us are online to have fun. https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-is-fun/
@film_girl@anildash While I don't want to argue with you about your definition of fun, I would say that calling Bluesky objectively more fun is going a bit too far. When you're blind like me and Bluesky hasn't made the effort to consider how its interface makes every single thing I do unnecessarily hard by not taking accessibility into account in its initial design phase, it's hard to say that Bluesky is fun.
@ppatel@film_girl@anildash Like if I wrote posts in Braille, it would be fun for blind people who use a Braille display, generally. I could do all kinds of Braille contractions, or make little Braille graphics, or my own styles. But would that be fun for sighted people? Like we as a society need to consider if our fun is alienating other people. Like I'm trying to be nice here because like I get it, Fedi is a place where people are honestly trying to make a better social network. Do we get it right all the time? No. And we'll never get it right if Fedi is just a place to hold on to sociality until a "normal," normative network where sighted people can be sighted people with no content warnings, no Alt text, no accessibility at all, can replace all this serious stuff that Mastodon and the Fediverse have brought, kicking and screaming, into the light of even half of Twitter's engagement population. If Fedi is just a pitstop for people, fine. But we've worked hard to build what we have here, little as it is.
@devinprater@ppatel@anildash Bluesky has alt text fwiw. I’m not disagreeing with your points and I think we need to do a better job of accessibility across the web, whether something is in private beta or not, and I appreciate the context (I mistakenly thought Bluesky was more accessible than it is).
@devinprater@ppatel@anildash it does! And the app makes it clear. There is already a PR in to prompt people to use the field. And there are OCR bots already to add alt-text to pure-text image uploads. (I followed that one earlier this morning)
@devinprater@ppatel@anildash I don’t know about the rest of the issues. I imagine the React-ness of the codebase probably isn’t great but I haven’t had a chance to try it with the iOS or macOS screen readers yet. There is no support for gif or video uploads yet, so ironically, that makes it easier for moving image stuff
@film_girl@devinprater@anildash I should have made it clear in my original post about the alt text culture on Mastodon. I didn't mean to imply that the functionality to add alt text didn't exist. My apologies. Thanks for understanding.
@ppatel@film_girl@anildash Yeah this, as a blind person "fun" is exactly what bluesky isn't. I am actively dreading the idea that it becomes the dominent platform because keeping up with all that without propper markup sounds really exhausting. Hopefully that changes though!
@objectinspace@ppatel@anildash app was already updated today to improve things so I hope it will. Alt text and other accessibility toggles added throughout the app
@film_girl@ppatel@anildash I wonder how open Bluesky is to alternate front-end clients being developed over the top of their infrastructure? Twitter encouraged third-party clients early on (until they didn't, but that's another story) and this lead to a surge in popularity of apps made by the blind for the blind. This has also happened on mastodon. It would be cool to see this for Bluesky as well!
@film_girl@ppatel@anildash It fixed some stuff. And broke other stuff. I think they think accessibility is a quick fix, and it's not. And unlike the fedi, they have the resources to do it right through disability-focused UXR studies, getting someone qualified to score the app according to WCAG, hiring people with disabilities to add their perspective to the app and so on. I'm not trying to be rude, but I hope you understand why I'm not inclined to help them. Even while hoping they do improve.
@objectinspace@film_girl@ppatel@anildash I am excited to try Bluesky, but I think what makes Mastodon so amazing is its open nature. I do think Mastodon will have to evolve to survive, but then so must any platform. Twitter has done a very good job lately in destryong any trust they have built in many communities, and I think Mastodon and Bluesky must built that trust for either platform to be widely adopted by the masses. Until then, communities will join whatever platform will accept them.
@mikedoise@film_girl@ppatel@anildash I think that's right. I am most excited for the efforts to build AP-to-AT bridges, so the content can appear everywhere. Then people can just exist where they feel most comfortable, without having to miss out on each others' updates... amazing!
@objectinspace@mikedoise@ppatel@anildash agreed. I’ve seen a lot of work on that jn the last week. Even people trying to reverse-engineer iOS client code. We’ll see
@film_girl@objectinspace@mikedoise@anildash I think the product people won over the protocol people because I suspect they wanted to take advantage of Twitter's eratic nature. Lots of things are missing because of it. Let's cross fingers that they don't delay too much in laying the foundation for the fully realized protocol.
@ppatel@film_girl@objectinspace@mikedoise@anildash I suspect they're also planning around the original idea of eventually opening Twitter up to the protocol, so they're working to maintain a high degree of compatibility. Hence, launching the beta with a near identical UX.
@upstreamism@ppatel@objectinspace@mikedoise@anildash that’s a great point I hadn’t even considered. The relationship wasn’t severed until December so I bet a lot of the early work was around that idea of compatibility
@upstreamism@film_girl@ppatel@objectinspace@anildash I am definitely not in the know here. but it was my understanding that Bluesky was created to be an answer to the problems that existed and that currently exist at Twitter. Is that still the case?
@film_girl it won't last, I guarantee it. They failed to build moderator tools first. It's artificial because of the limited invites. Pains me to see that people can't understand this..
@codinghorror oh, I fully agree it won’t last. I’m hopeful that some of the protocol ideas and federation stuff gets some legs but I’ve been around these parts long enough to know that it can switch to bad real quick. I’m just enjoying it for what it is now.
one of the fun things about "every action gets logged publically in the userfile, forever" is that it'll be possible for custom servers to track who the most muted/blocked users are, kinda like how Discourse's implementation is.
pretty wild that the moderation API took so long to arrive!
the weird thing about the AT/blsky moderation API is that it's decoupled from which server is actively hosting the user, so people on server B could in theory use server A's "hide this post" decisions instead of of server B's. not sure how i feel about that. on one hand, certain diasporas will be able to (sorta) protect themselves no matter where they are, on the other hand, i kinda feel like in practice this will lead to a lot of servers having no moderation at all and then tragedy of commonsing.
But what if people just want to have fun? The lack of moderation might end up being a small amount of nazi noise compared to a large amount of salacious signal.
@_tim______@codinghorror as always, it’ll come down to the level of 4chan energy allowed. A little 4chan energy is good, actually. That’s the basis for most internet culture of this century (that and Something Awful). The problem is if it goes over a line — and that line is not static — and you get too much 4chan/SA energy. And then it’s bad and very hard to come back from.
@jan absolutely! And I’m very open to this devolving and disappearing as most social networks do. But for now it is fun so I’m enjoying what it is for what it is now.
@film_girl help me out her. I honestly can't remember a time when anybody ever spoke of whether a micro blogging service was "fun" or not. What is that fun at Blue sky, exactly? Is it just that so many people who know each other, are seeing each other again without an algorithm keeping them apart? Or are there parlor tricks or clown shows going on that I'm never hearing about?
@shoq so I think the first thing was part of it at first, but that changed when the dynamic of who was invited changed (and then changed again once the dynamic shifted again to more traditional blue check journalist types) but there is an insanely chaotic aspect of it that is VERY reminiscent of 2008 Twitter crossed with 2010 Tumblr. I'm not saying this is fun for everyone, but it is fun for a lot of us who (even strangers) who haven’t had fun online since 2016 or earlier.
@shoq like, there was extremely demented ALF discourse last night. And there is a hellthread (a bug that dumps everyone who is in the thread into a notification hole that is difficult to escape and essentially becomes just a bizarrre huge chat room) which is just genuinely very late 2000s internet in the best ways.
@shoq Part of this too is that it is smaller. It's 60,000 people. But because it's centralized right now (that will change soon), you feel like you can see everything that is happening. The API has a firehose and someone set up https://firesky.tv/ so you can literally watch every post come in at real time, just like Twitter pre-mid 2008 or so (back when the firehose was the main page)
@film_girl Yeah, all things, as you suggest, that probably won't scale well. The firehose was never very useful, except to the early aggregators, the name so which I can't even remember now. I think they sunsetting it the same day as David Gregory's infamous "bagel tweet' : )
@film_girl IMO Bluesky is just a nicely manicured Twitter clone. That it has internet celebrities and clout chasing podcasters is a warning sign rather than a green light. It will go downhill fast as more people join, user moderation features continues to stay at nil, and ads and sponsored content start trickling in.
Mastodon is long-standing and relatively unmanicured. A bit staid I agree, but that can always change.
@glider85 I mean, I think we’ll see. I don’t think Bluesky is well manicured at all (the app is minimal, there are hellthreads and broken bits, there were people showing their asses to sitting members of Congress), it’s just got a much more chill and early Twitter/Tumblr vibe. It’s also using a decentralized protocol so we’ll see. It could certainly collapse.
@film_girl the decentralization aspect of BSK is a (minor) positive. Sadly, I just can't see a future for it where venture capital doesn't show up and start pushing for centralization of traffic under one big instance. At that point, the die will have been cast as it was for Twitterany years ago. We will see I guess
@film_girl I suppose? I just need to reduce my engagement levels generally though; partly because of addiction, and partly out of sheer magnitude. (This is why I'm not against an "algorithm" timeline or some other summary).
I do however still remember 2006-2010 when Facebook was a fun place to just shitpost all the time. It was before digital identity WAS your identity. Jokes really didn't matter because it was mostly your friends and NOT your family (especially boomers) that were on there, yet. I think that ended around the same time Facebook dropped the "… is ……" status, where you had to say you were doing something / feeling something / were at something.
It was at the top of your "wall". Remember Facebook Walls?
@film_girl The entire support for how BlueSky is more fun than Mastodon is, “…there’s a fizzy, infectious fuck-around energy, like everyone chugged a Red Bull on a Friday afternoon and the boss is out of town. Users are playfully creating their own lingo; they call posts ‘skeets.’ (Threaded posts are ‘ropes.’)”?
@abosio I mean, there’s a bug called the hellthread that happens when too many people are added to a thread and it takes over your notifications and it’s never-ending (the devs keep trying to fix it and it keeps coming back) and the CEO keeps getting pulled back into it too. And yes, I’m sorry, it is very fun. It’s also very immature but it is very fun.
@film_girl “And while Mastodon emerged as an early front-runner for Replacement Twitter, its brief surge in popularity didn’t last and it will likely remain a niche product.” Oh thank God.
I read these takes on Mastodon and honestly wonder what social network they tried, because what they describe is not the site I’ve been on since 2018.
@film_girl in 2019 (kznk/bofa period), masto was a much goofier place. not sure what happened to those folks, perhaps they just left rather than relocate after the collapse of those servers, but bluesky kind of has that vibe now. hope they can keep it going
@film_girl I think Bs is “fun” if you’re a big follower count type at the moment, but it legit is not that fun for regular people yet. without a chrono timeline or hashtags there is actually no way for us to be seen until more of our friends are allowed to join blue sky. I think there is an influencer hall of mirrors happening right now as the twitterati enjoy rebuilding their followings sans trolls, and people enjoy access to folks like AOC and Jake tapper. But the “fun” is def not universal 🤷♀️
@film_girl “But it is objectively true that Bluesky is fun and Mastodon is much less so.” I honestly can’t believe someone as smart as you are actually wrote that.
While you may be having plenty of fun on Bluesky, I have plenty of fun on Mastodon.
It always comes down to who you interact with. Or do you mean the actual process of using Bluesky, regardless of the people, is more fun than Mastodon?
@KingShawn yeah, I do think the process is more fun. The third-party apps are a lot better but it’s still not as sticky and instant as Bsky. It’s tough to describe. I do think that personal preferences aside, the vibe definitely is different on the two places. And one definitely leans into chaos and one to order. And that’s OK. For many years, Tumblr was way more fun than Twitter. Everything has always been more fun than Facebook.
@KingShawn you are correct! But I do think the design and the it’s hard to explain, the speed of Bluesky makes it feel more ephemeral. Ironically I think the lack of features can sometimes help vibe set.
@KingShawn right now, the team has been really transparent as they build things out (Jack gave them money but isn’t involved. Nostr is his new favorite — I don’t think taking money to build open protocols is inherently bad), now, will the be able to do it? 🤷🏻♀️ It’s so small right now (50k users) that my real concern is how it grows and sustains itself. I like the AT Protocol a lot. I’m very aware it could all collapse tomorrow
@KingShawn I do think, objectively, building a decentralized protocol but making it possible for people to use it as if it is centralized out of the box is the only way you’ll ever get true user momentum for the colloquial fediverse, regardless of protocol or service being used. My prediction has long been that for Mastodon to really take off with the masses, it would need a big easy to use centralized instance. That wouldn’t shutdown or impede the other parts, but that’s what you need imho
@KingShawn my biggest criticism of Mastodon is that even tho the dev team does great work — and largely unpaid work at that — it really does have a seeming-lack of product direction. Contrast that with WordPress, which has always had strong product direction and leadership, or even the Linux kernel (Linux distros are a whole other can of worms). At least right now, Bluesky appears to have stronger product direction. Again, I’m not dismissing engineering talent or anyone’s work, this is just mho
@KingShawn always love talking to you and I appreciate the push to express myself more instead of just making a flippant comment (which I’m so glad you called me out on!)
@KingShawn@film_girl I have to kinda agree with Shawn here, and I think it’s interesting that many of the folks writing about how fun blue sky is are folks who had an instant following there, ie influencers. it kinda feels like the popular kids talking at lunch about how fun their parties are! I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, the hype just feels a little echo chamber-y to me, even the shitposting feels a bit exclusive/hierarchical in blue sky right now
@seachanger@KingShawn I mean, the tenor changed completely over the course of a few days there and it was more fun before the blue checks joined a few days ago, tbh. The fun started when the shitposters joined. It could still fall apart for sure. And I have 10x the followers here, for example, than there (and 10x on Twitter than here). It’s all relative. The vibe is definitely much more chaotic. But that’s why I’m glad both exist. But Bsky has a much better OOTB experience.
@film_girl@KingShawn right so you actually are a twitter influencer who found enough initial follows to begin a reasonable dopamine flow in Bluesky. many folks in there are scrapping around with not much engagement and the what’s hot algo only amplifies that divide. so the echo chamber effect occurs when the folks high on dopamine are the ones reporting about how great it is, if that makes sense
@film_girl Still haven’t gotten an invite 😂. I hope eventually there’ll be a bridge between the two. Not sure I agree with the need for yet another protocol. I hope eventually it’ll be interoperable with ActivityPub/Mastodon.
@film_girl
I think Reddit is still the most fun. It's easy to find a community, and easy to understand the premise of each post. Non-segmented sites don't give you that context; once they get big enough they start to lose cohesiveness without an algorithm.
I mean... okay? Completely subjective, but fine. I have plenty of fun on Mastodon. Mainly, I'd just like more services to federate with ActivityPub - then this community grows bigger. I can't personally say that I want to be on a service with reporters, power-users, no blocking, and unobstructed "bare butts."
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