this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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[–] Lydia_K 153 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Surely nothing will go wrong with THIS corporate owned walled garden.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How any times do they have to learn the same lesson?

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[–] [email protected] 137 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I know a much better place. It is called mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Just pointing out the author mentions they used mastodon for a time too, their argument is that bluesky interface, content and moderation are better for them.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That mindset is the problem. A slightly better UX at the cost of freedom is a bad deal.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

They keep building up these companies with shiti core principles then pika face when corpos do them dirty 🤡

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

UX matters.

If open source software genuinely wants to be an option for normal people, they need to fix their shit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

That's fair! Although I fear big money will always come up with some way to make a "better" UX, either simply because they can afford more/better devs, and often by compromising privacy, accessibility, etc.

embrace extend extinguish has worked in the past and it can work again

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[–] seaQueue 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I will give bluesky credit for their focus on moderation. Hopefully some of that design is cloned by the Mastodon folks sooner than later

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I will give bluesky credit for their focus on moderation.

Watch that focus disappear once the enshittification phase starts.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the microblog format, but I'm pretty sure everyone here is going to agree that Mastodon is the superior Twitter replacement.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nope. Not at all. I very much prefer BlueSky as far as Twitter replacement goes.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

yep, people that loved walled gardens like twitter will absolutely love bluesky

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't think I get what you mean when you say "Walled Garden" in this context. Can you elaborate?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

just another corporate managed behemoth. their interfaces are slick, but the federation lacking

[–] tabular 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

walled garden

(Edit, For example..) Facebook control all aspects: you can only do what they want. Mastodon can be hosted and modified by anyone, it's freedom.

A closed platform, walled garden, (...) is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content. - wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What are you talking about? BlueSky has absolutely nothing to do with Facebook. It's a different company using the open AT Protocol.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Unfortunately not. For me the main problem is discoverability. There's no recommendation algorithm except for boosts. I'm not suggesting Mastodon integrate some kind of machine learning or other advanced stuff, but number of likes from followed accounts and a threshold would be nice for a start. As it is, Mastodon is just bad for entertainment purposes. Maybe it works for other purposes, but for entertainment I'd rather have the algorithm-fuelled quote-tweet dunking on Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

There's the explore tab in the mastodon app that shows you trending hashtags, and recommends people to follow based off who you already follow. There's trending accounts that just post about trending items too. Use them as your algorithm.

[–] seaQueue 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There's definitely an opportunity for someone to run their own curation service for personalized feeds based on a user's activity on other social networks.

I tend to just check All periodically for the first couple of months and follow tags and people that suit my own interests and build my own feed from zero. But that takes effort and time, and for folks who want an option further toward the convenience end of the privacy/convenience spectrum I suspect it would be a fairly popular option.

[–] seaQueue 87 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Leaving one privately run garden for another sure seems like a choice 🤔

[–] Tylerdurdon 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's built to be decentralized though, from what I read.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Mastodon: Am I a joke to you?

[–] Tylerdurdon 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I wasn't a fan of the format. (and apparently I'm not allowed to have an opinion on format)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Isn't the format literally just Twitter?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it's quite different in the sense that you don't see any recommended content, just your follows and their boosts.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's because its not harvesting your data in order to pull more engagement for ad revenue.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I'm not OP, but yes, that's why I don't use Mastodon or Twitter/X. I really don't like the format.

I tried to give Twitter a fair shake several years ago, and I found it to be a complete waste of my time. So I don't use it, or anything like it. That's also around when I found Reddit, which I found to not be a complete waste of time, and that's why I'm on Lemmy instead of Mastodon. I like following communities, not topics or people.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I value your opinion. What do you mean by format? Couldn't you just use a different UI?

[–] Tylerdurdon 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's kind of you, but not a huge deal. When I tried it (when there was an initial migration to Mastodon), it was so decentralized that you couldn't really have much of a feed and it was tough to find much of anything.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

The secret to Mastodon is to follow hashtags, not people. (It took a while for that feature to mature, which made that difficult earlier on.)

You can follow people too, but with the population there being lower, it generally makes more sense to follow a topic and hide accounts you don't want to see.

Caveat: I don't spend a lot of time on microblogging platforms, Mastodon or otherwise. The above knowledge might be stale, but used present tense to not give the impression the platform is dead.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

It's centralized. They allow federation using their own protocol.

But all you need to know is that it's a capitalist, for-profit undertaking.

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[–] HootinNHollerin 67 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Now ditch that for mastodon

[–] upside431 51 points 1 month ago

Mastodon is much better for that

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago

There is another alternative to twitter

Its pretty unknown, especially on lemmy, so i dont think many people heard of it, its on something called "the fediverse" and is called "mastodon"

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

The one drawback to Bluesky’s block feature is that a user’s block lists aren’t private. Through third party apps, you can find lists of everyone anyone’s blocked. That probably won’t bother most people, but it’s a potential issue for those who worry that public block lists could be used perniciously by persistent stalkers or harassers.

The only missing function is the ability to lock your account or go private as you can on Twitter, which would let you hide your account from non-followers while still posting to folks who already follow you.

But Bluesky has gotten considerable criticism at key points over the last year and a half for failures in handling anti-Black racism in particular. Rudy Fraser wrote extensively about some of these issues along with a deep dive into his goals and challenges as the creator of the now legendary Blacksky feed in a great post a year ago.

Every time someone recommends me Bluesky, I learn something else about it that makes me never want to make an account. Any one of these three quotes should be a dealbreaker on their own

[–] scarabic 16 points 1 month ago

His profile is sign-in blocked.

“Public square” indeed.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

My experience with BlueSky has been that it is better than Twitter because it is smaller and doesn't cater to the far-right.

BUT...

It can become extremely toxic very fast because they implemented the same poorly executed features Twitter did that fucked things up. In fact, it's way worse than that...

The two features they copied from Twitter that hurt them the most are site-wide search and quote posts. Site-wide search enables people to "namesearch" or to monitor keywords for issues they want to fight about. Quote posts are a well understood "dunk mechanism", that largely encourages dogpiling.

As for being free of a central algorithm, that seems good, until you see that there are tons of community algorithms you can subscribe to instead. Now there are algorithms for things like "anti-Zionist posts" and "pro-Israel posts", which not only let people find their preferred echo-chamber, but also provide trolls access to exactly the groups of people they want to argue with or harass.

These algorithms can be built to detect certain hashtags and phrases, or they can just be big lists of accounts like a Twitter group. There's no telling when you might show up in one of these algorithms or why.

As a result, if you say anything less than agreeable about any issue, there's a chance you're going to hear from a bunch of accounts you've never met before, regardless of what side of an issue you are on, or how extreme your view actually is.

I don't recommend it. It's a pro-profit company that seeks to be a wholesale replacement for Twitter. AT Proto federation is a complete joke, it'll never expand if it doesn't have a flagship open source server. They'll give up on it just like Twitter did and just be another centralized, toxic, microblogging community.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

The fucking lack of site wide search is why I hate these federated services. Such a glaringly missing feature.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I’d rather have a smaller but somewhat predictable group of peers I grow to somewhat respect and trust than being confronted by thousands of random strangers that are there for mere “engagemen” but not for helping each other out or saying nice things.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Thanks, this was helpful! Sounds like I’ll pass on Bluesky!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I tried Threads and it was horrible. Honestly not using Mastodon that much. But maybe that format is just not my thing.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 6 points 1 month ago

See the thing is........you have to microblog like a crazed hobo yelling things into the void. It doesn't need to make sense. It's better if it DOESN'T make sense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Yup, I've tried Twitter and hated it. I remember when Mastodon launched, and it was described as "federated Facebook" IIRC, and now people are claiming that it's more like "federated Twitter." I hate both Facebook and Twitter, so I use neither.

So honestly, I don't really care about Twitter/X vs BlueSky vs Mastodon, because I don't want to use any of them. Reddit/Lemmy is a much more interesting format to me TBH.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Bluesky is also about as dead as tumblr

I barely see anyone interacting with anything, or anyone for that matter

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

How about, no

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Another idea: ditch Twitter and learn to play the ukulele instead

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