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How is BlueSky any different from other major social media platforms? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/outoftheloop

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So I thought that BlueSky was set up just like Lemmy in that it was fully decentralized into a sort of "terrorist cell" structure that wasn't focused on profits, but then found out that BlueSky has a CEO. Since this is a business, what makes BlueSky fundamentally different from Twitter or Instagram?

I feel like so long as a social media platform exists through monetization (in some form or another private companies need to make money), we are ultimately replacing one dictator with another.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Some of this is more just a generic overview of differences in perspective.

It was inspired by this piece by someone who is now on the board that manages it. Yes they have a CEO, but there is a bigger board collaborating on direction decisions
They have an explicit policy opposing sharing data for AI usage.
It was initially the place for a bunch of frequently targeted minorities and the leadership implemented a bunch of changes that — in combination with a attitude of “block don’t engage” because many people aren’t rational actors — significantly make the space safer for users and less susceptible to dog piling and harassment.
Moderation is handled far better that any other large social media platform in my experience.
It was created as open source and as an open protocol from the start so in the event of a takeover, it’s relatively easy to spin off a clone (see protocols link).
They allow more openness to 3rd party moderation tools in a more integrated manner.
They have been open about discussing funding planning in the future and red lines that are unacceptable to them.
There is no algorithm in your main feed. You see only what those you follow share. There is a discover feed, but if you hide that it has no impact on your future experience.

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In relation to the second point, I am assuming the policy is opposing intentional or willful sharing of data for AI usage, as there already datasets composed of BlueSky posts out in the wild[0].

[0] https://www.404media.co/bluesky-posts-machine-learning-ai-datasets-hugging-face/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Correct. They are clear in that link as well that BlueSky themselves will not do anything to harvest and/or monetize data for AI. But there’s really no way to stop bad faith actors from crawling any perceivable content for malicious purposes.