Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week(theverge.com)
theverge.com
Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/11/24293920/bluesky-700000-new-users-week-x-threads
184 comments
I used Twitter mainly to follow fellow devs, industry leaders and InfoSec people. But after Elon made changes my timeline started to fill with politics and culture wars and it ended up missing me less informed and more angry.
Maybe that is the future for BlueSky as well, but at the moment I am enjoying it and more people I followed on Twitter are making the move.
Maybe that is the future for BlueSky as well, but at the moment I am enjoying it and more people I followed on Twitter are making the move.
Agreed, it's a really fun community. I hope it lasts
The only thing keeping me around as someone who never comments or tweets, is that there are some great local accounts (to me) like weather, police, news, concerts, etc... Any chance these move over? I'm not looking for some great community, I just enjoy timely posts I guess.
Its weird how all these useful local info accounts end up being dependent on platforms that promote noise makers and attention cravers.
Feels like there is a need for a message broker platform, where these local accounts can sign up and push messages out to whomever wants them via socials, SMS, RSS, whatevs. Buffer meets Svix for social/messaging PubSub or something similar vs Yet Another Platform.
It’s not like local weather guy is likely to get anyone on just his website or such these days.
So the current dynamic is - platforms use noise makers to draw in crowds, then signal producers like the weather guy go where the crowds are.
Does Bluesky change this dynamic?
Does Bluesky change this dynamic?
One way people here could help with that is to improve posting tools.
I have a couple of informational bots. It's a lot easy for me when I can just download a cli tool and run that to post than if I have to signup to a platform as a developer and then write custom code to login via OAuth.
Actually if I have to write code to talk to OAuth I probably won't bother.
Currently using bsky to post to BlueSky and paying for IFTTT because I have to make time to sit down and get twurl working.
I have a couple of informational bots. It's a lot easy for me when I can just download a cli tool and run that to post than if I have to signup to a platform as a developer and then write custom code to login via OAuth.
Actually if I have to write code to talk to OAuth I probably won't bother.
Currently using bsky to post to BlueSky and paying for IFTTT because I have to make time to sit down and get twurl working.
Please share once you find out! In $EUROPEAN_CAPITAL here it seems local govt. runs on twitter and facebook. Since I got banned from twitter for following those during covid (with no posts or likes made) I kinda wish there was a rss feed or mailing list for information posted by official institutions.
bsky would do.
bsky would do.
It's also one of the least diverse communities I've seen. Almost everyone is white and western, twitter is extremely diverse in comparison.
Unfortunately, Bluesky being the "popular" alternative just means it's going to turn to shit faster.
I have an account there because so many people seem to be moving from Twitter to Bluesky instead of Mastodon, for understandable reasons, but I expect Bluesky to be be awash in bots, AI and Nazis within a year. That's just the way things go now.
I have an account there because so many people seem to be moving from Twitter to Bluesky instead of Mastodon, for understandable reasons, but I expect Bluesky to be be awash in bots, AI and Nazis within a year. That's just the way things go now.
I dont think it will because the moderation tools available to people are better and actually work..
If i block someone they are gone from my timeline, their replies are gone from my posts even to other people..
If someone re-post me and i don't like the context i can go there and "disconnect" my post from their re-post..
Also Bluesky has public block lists anyone can create and sign-up for, those accounts would be noticed very fast and included in some block list if they start getting any traction..
So while it is not impossible for those accounts to exist, it is much harder for then to get traction..
And if they get traction it is much easier to hide then from our and our followers view..
If i block someone they are gone from my timeline, their replies are gone from my posts even to other people..
If someone re-post me and i don't like the context i can go there and "disconnect" my post from their re-post..
Also Bluesky has public block lists anyone can create and sign-up for, those accounts would be noticed very fast and included in some block list if they start getting any traction..
So while it is not impossible for those accounts to exist, it is much harder for then to get traction..
And if they get traction it is much easier to hide then from our and our followers view..
One consequence of naughty ol’ Mr Car’s ascension to the Bird Throne was that mass-blocking lists, which were always a bit of a hack but somewhat worked, became unusable. Bluesky has blocklists as a first-class function; it will be awash with Nazis, but you won’t have to look at them unless you want to. AI slop may be trickier, but that’s really a challenge the whole web is facing at the moment.
> Feels less combative than Twitter.
Echo chambers are, by default, less combative.
As Twitter becomes more hiveminded, you can expect it to become less combative, as well.
Echo chambers are, by default, less combative.
As Twitter becomes more hiveminded, you can expect it to become less combative, as well.
What evidence do you have that bluesky is already an echo chamber? Serious question as I haven’t used it yet.
Could it also be that people who left Twitter are simply less politically minded, and by definition will be less combative if they get to focus on their interests instead of their differences?
I left Twitter in 2017 because I was only there to get one liner jokes from professional comedians and follow some record label releases. I’m not joining any platform where memes and other low quality opinions are the primary modes of communication
Could it also be that people who left Twitter are simply less politically minded, and by definition will be less combative if they get to focus on their interests instead of their differences?
I left Twitter in 2017 because I was only there to get one liner jokes from professional comedians and follow some record label releases. I’m not joining any platform where memes and other low quality opinions are the primary modes of communication
It seems the combativeness of Twitter has increased with it becoming more hivemindy, not the other way around. The people leaving twitter are generally less combative than those staying / joining, so I imagine it will devolve further into a pit of rabid fighting dogs.
Similarly, I expect Trump and Elon will have a falling out rather quickly. Two megalomaniacal narcissists don't generally play nicely for very long. When that happens, Elon won't be able to help himself from whacking the bees nest he's created, by criticizing Trump. I expect the combativeness of twitter to skyrocket soon afterwards.
Similarly, I expect Trump and Elon will have a falling out rather quickly. Two megalomaniacal narcissists don't generally play nicely for very long. When that happens, Elon won't be able to help himself from whacking the bees nest he's created, by criticizing Trump. I expect the combativeness of twitter to skyrocket soon afterwards.
Following you, and hope to finally spend more time on the butterfly app instead of the bird app since it seems enough people are moving over there. I managed to primarily use Mastadon for a few months at one point but got sucked back into TWT.
Whenever people mention 'bird app', I think it's is ebird. Now, 'butterfly app' makes me think of iNaturalist. :-)
http://ebird.org/
https://www.inaturalist.org/
http://ebird.org/
https://www.inaturalist.org/
I just scrolled 5mn on the landing page of bluesky, unlogged, and it looks like r/politics (mostly anti-Trump, anti-Musk posts).
Hardly appealing for someone like me who goes on twitter less because there's too much politics
Hardly appealing for someone like me who goes on twitter less because there's too much politics
You have to curate your discover feed, like joining any new platform with a recommendation engine. The nice thing is there are many custom feeds for various topics beyond the singular main feeds (discover, following, friends) and you can write your own and use it from their app.
I like it a lot too, and my feed is pretty good. Unfortunately adoption is really slow and few of the really famous people I'd like to follow seem to care about it.
The network effects of Twitter/X are just incredibly powerful. Even many people who ostensibly dislike the fact that it has become a right wing propaganda tool seem reluctant to actually leave.
The network effects of Twitter/X are just incredibly powerful. Even many people who ostensibly dislike the fact that it has become a right wing propaganda tool seem reluctant to actually leave.
The network effects are powerful, but anecdotally I've noticed fewer and fewer people I follow actually posting anything to Twitter.
I think there'll be a tipping point where nobody of value is posting enough for anybody else to bother checking in, death spiralling its usefulness. It's already 80% bots, grifters, and engagement farmers.
I think there'll be a tipping point where nobody of value is posting enough for anybody else to bother checking in, death spiralling its usefulness. It's already 80% bots, grifters, and engagement farmers.
Bluesky is pretty decent so far. I get about as many responses to my art as I do with twitter, despite having 1/5th the followers on the new platform.
The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky. It's endless people saying "Hello, bluesky! I'm new here!" or "Hello, new bluesky users! Follow me!" Feels like there's less focus on content and more on the individuals themselves. It's further exemplified with weird stuff like "Bulgarian game devs with webbed toes between the ages of 33 and 47 Starter Pack". These starter packs get spammed nonstop and it makes it feel very cliquey, with lots of them being groups that had some degree of twitter "influence" trying to bring it over to Bluesky as-is and without others butting in.
Another thing that's strange to me is that lots of bluesky users post selfies almost nonstop and half of users have selfies as their profile photos. Which, I mean, that's their right. But I feel like with twitter, nobody cared what you looked like or what your background was.
I post on both, but I mainly browse twitter despite having no fondness for the dude running it. I never interact with political slop on twitter so its algorithm only suggests me incredible art. I never interact with selfies but bluesky keeps throwing them at me. Like, no, I really do not care about your cute new lipstick or whatever. I don't care about political hot takes. I just want to see art. And like 50% of it is art. But the other 50% is an endless feed of "look at me! As in literally, look at my face!" that I just cannot get rid of.
Maybe someday the novelty of it being the "new" thing will fade and the selfie obsessed people will go away while content will rise up, like it did with twitter. I hope so.
The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky. It's endless people saying "Hello, bluesky! I'm new here!" or "Hello, new bluesky users! Follow me!" Feels like there's less focus on content and more on the individuals themselves. It's further exemplified with weird stuff like "Bulgarian game devs with webbed toes between the ages of 33 and 47 Starter Pack". These starter packs get spammed nonstop and it makes it feel very cliquey, with lots of them being groups that had some degree of twitter "influence" trying to bring it over to Bluesky as-is and without others butting in.
Another thing that's strange to me is that lots of bluesky users post selfies almost nonstop and half of users have selfies as their profile photos. Which, I mean, that's their right. But I feel like with twitter, nobody cared what you looked like or what your background was.
I post on both, but I mainly browse twitter despite having no fondness for the dude running it. I never interact with political slop on twitter so its algorithm only suggests me incredible art. I never interact with selfies but bluesky keeps throwing them at me. Like, no, I really do not care about your cute new lipstick or whatever. I don't care about political hot takes. I just want to see art. And like 50% of it is art. But the other 50% is an endless feed of "look at me! As in literally, look at my face!" that I just cannot get rid of.
Maybe someday the novelty of it being the "new" thing will fade and the selfie obsessed people will go away while content will rise up, like it did with twitter. I hope so.
> Another thing that's strange to me is that lots of bluesky users post selfies almost nonstop and half of users have selfies as their profile photos.
Honestly that sounds like it could be bots. Although maybe it is just people making new accounts.
Honestly that sounds like it could be bots. Although maybe it is just people making new accounts.
Perhaps they make it easy to upload a selfie in their onboarding.
Here is a graph where someone actually measured the engagement across the two platforms, and it backs your suspicion that engagement level per follower is much higher on BlueSky than on Twitter:
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3laphnufp222...
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3laphnufp222...
All of that more or less describes the early days of Twitter, before it became Xitter.
> Bluesky is pretty decent so far.
It is in pre-enshittification phase.
> The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky.
You have to search for things, follow a few people, and give the "Discover" facility something to work with I think. Also use the Feeds tab - search may bring up some feeds which are also super helpful.
It is in pre-enshittification phase.
> The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky.
You have to search for things, follow a few people, and give the "Discover" facility something to work with I think. Also use the Feeds tab - search may bring up some feeds which are also super helpful.
I've tried the other tabs and feeds. I follow a decent number of people, too.
When I delve into art or gamedev feeds and whatnot, I'm still hit in the face with selfies and people talking way too much about their personal life. I feel like I really need to dig for content, whereas with twitter, the top 10 things I see upon every refresh is some great art.
I know lots of artists have left it permanently for bluesky, and I try to follow them whenever they leave, but there's still a massive imbalance in the quality of content that the algorithm feeds and it's heavily in favor of twitter.
When I delve into art or gamedev feeds and whatnot, I'm still hit in the face with selfies and people talking way too much about their personal life. I feel like I really need to dig for content, whereas with twitter, the top 10 things I see upon every refresh is some great art.
I know lots of artists have left it permanently for bluesky, and I try to follow them whenever they leave, but there's still a massive imbalance in the quality of content that the algorithm feeds and it's heavily in favor of twitter.
> It is in pre-enshittification phase.
Totally agreed on this part, and, this lead me to a weird thought: maybe we're witnessing human adaptation of "[the users] are the product" phenomenon. Twitter the product was sold to a rich kid way over valuation and in form it can't be used commercially, like a consumer branded prepackaged food that are too blatant to serve at a restaurant.
IOW, it was sold at profit, with no opportunities left on the table. And a new instance of the product is being manufactured.
What I'm trying to say is, I think there is a chance that that's just how enshittification, social media, freemium-minus-mium model, etc works from this point on, as if it's junk food made of DAU.
Totally agreed on this part, and, this lead me to a weird thought: maybe we're witnessing human adaptation of "[the users] are the product" phenomenon. Twitter the product was sold to a rich kid way over valuation and in form it can't be used commercially, like a consumer branded prepackaged food that are too blatant to serve at a restaurant.
IOW, it was sold at profit, with no opportunities left on the table. And a new instance of the product is being manufactured.
What I'm trying to say is, I think there is a chance that that's just how enshittification, social media, freemium-minus-mium model, etc works from this point on, as if it's junk food made of DAU.
My hypothesis is still that the problem isn't Twitter per se, but that Twitter-like failure modes are built in to that structure. A communications platform that has certain qualities will tend to become Twitter-like: Many-to-many, short messages, reposting, etc. These are mechanics that will just create certain kinds of behaviors. So, that would predict Bluesky having many of the same problems as Twitter sooner or later.
I never thought twitter was a failure until Musk introduced $8 “pump you to the top” blue check accounts, then that’s when the bots -really- moved in because they knew they could pump propaganda for a small fee and get far more traction than they every could by setting up bot armies that were easy to detct. Bsky will be fine as long as they try to control the bots.
I guess I didn't define what I think the problems with Twitter are, and now I don't have time for a long message. But, in short, I think that format encourages echo chambers, shortens attention spans, and rewards bad behaviors like bullying, cheap shots, ungenerous reading, etc. None of those are directly related to bots (though maybe bots are a symptom of the same issues). Nor did they emerge with Musk. That Elon Musk wanted to control Twitter might even be diagnostic of a certain kind of basic problem with it—or a basic power—but I'd have to think about that a little more.
> But, in short, I think that format encourages echo chambers, shortens attention spans, and rewards bad behaviors like bullying, cheap shots, ungenerous reading, etc. None of those are directly related to bots (though maybe bots are a symptom of the same issues). Nor did they emerge with Musk.
Having avoided twitter throughout its entire existence for these reasons, I absolutely agree.
Political commentator Matt Christman has a great vlog episode about the inherent problems with platforms such as Twitter, including the societal cost of being an impediment to real progress.
MIND FORCE: FIBONACCI SNIPER | CushVlog 4.29.30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsuTh1aK7Tc
https://cushvlog-catalog.vercel.app/transcript/OsuTh1aK7Tc (transcript)
Having avoided twitter throughout its entire existence for these reasons, I absolutely agree.
Political commentator Matt Christman has a great vlog episode about the inherent problems with platforms such as Twitter, including the societal cost of being an impediment to real progress.
MIND FORCE: FIBONACCI SNIPER | CushVlog 4.29.30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsuTh1aK7Tc
https://cushvlog-catalog.vercel.app/transcript/OsuTh1aK7Tc (transcript)
Twitter was trying to boost engagement before Musk bought it, and several of the changes they have made since then supercharged it.
Bluesky isn't yet aggressively working to boost engagement. There's the discover tab, and feeds, but those are more opt in types of things. Blocks also work differently, perhaps increasing the echo chamber effect, but also tamping down on squabbling.
Bluesky isn't yet aggressively working to boost engagement. There's the discover tab, and feeds, but those are more opt in types of things. Blocks also work differently, perhaps increasing the echo chamber effect, but also tamping down on squabbling.
what you need is blogs or essays. But the audience has become too small so there are fewer writers
It's not the audience, it's the monetization. Why are so many things that ought to be a blog post now a YouTube video? Because YouTube has video ads, which pay better.
And it's not just from the perspective of the creator. Lots of people would write blog posts for free, if people would read them. But then Google dumps them out of the search results in favor of YouTube videos that take ten times as long to tell you the same info, and then the bloggers stop writing because nobody is reading.
What we need is a search engine that goes back to giving people what they're looking for instead of showing what pays the search engine company more.
And it's not just from the perspective of the creator. Lots of people would write blog posts for free, if people would read them. But then Google dumps them out of the search results in favor of YouTube videos that take ten times as long to tell you the same info, and then the bloggers stop writing because nobody is reading.
What we need is a search engine that goes back to giving people what they're looking for instead of showing what pays the search engine company more.
> And it's not just from the perspective of the creator. Lots of people would write blog posts for free, if people would read them. But then Google dumps them out of the search results in favor of YouTube videos that take ten times as long to tell you the same info, and then the bloggers stop writing because nobody is reading.
I disagree with this take. I hate learning by video unless it's for physical stuff where seeing it is useful (e.g. how to wire something), and thus I always prefer text content when searching for information (due to the higher flexibility in moving at my own pace instead of the narrator's).
I've never had issues with Google pushing videos too much in search results. You have an initial "videos" results block I just scroll past by, and that's that.
The much bigger issue is the narrowing attention span of people. Thanks to social media, like Twitter, but also Stories, Shorts, Snaps, Reels, TikTok, etc. people's attention span is going down. Many people would prefer watching 10 tiktoks instead of spending 10 minutes reading a blog post.
I disagree with this take. I hate learning by video unless it's for physical stuff where seeing it is useful (e.g. how to wire something), and thus I always prefer text content when searching for information (due to the higher flexibility in moving at my own pace instead of the narrator's).
I've never had issues with Google pushing videos too much in search results. You have an initial "videos" results block I just scroll past by, and that's that.
The much bigger issue is the narrowing attention span of people. Thanks to social media, like Twitter, but also Stories, Shorts, Snaps, Reels, TikTok, etc. people's attention span is going down. Many people would prefer watching 10 tiktoks instead of spending 10 minutes reading a blog post.
> I've never had issues with Google pushing videos too much in search results. You have an initial "videos" results block I just scroll past by, and that's that.
The issue is that some large portion of people don't do that, they watch the video because it's listed first. Which drops the readership of the later-featured blogs below the threshold where the author keeps making them.
The issue is that some large portion of people don't do that, they watch the video because it's listed first. Which drops the readership of the later-featured blogs below the threshold where the author keeps making them.
Substack, maybe?
Although platforms like Substack alleviate some of the issues mentioned above, there still remains the most important issue of all:
FOR-PROFIT CONTENT CREATION
When I reflect on how awesome the web used to be, the one common theme was the creators were doing it for free, because their passion for whatever they were creating was simply that strong and authentic.
Fast forward to today's hellscape, and we can see the main reason there's a firehose of mediocre/low quality content is because everybody is desperate to make a buck.
FOR-PROFIT CONTENT CREATION
When I reflect on how awesome the web used to be, the one common theme was the creators were doing it for free, because their passion for whatever they were creating was simply that strong and authentic.
Fast forward to today's hellscape, and we can see the main reason there's a firehose of mediocre/low quality content is because everybody is desperate to make a buck.
Twitter had such a strong home team of people trying to monitor the network health.
And they seemed committed to giving researchers and academics lots of access to understand and share how the network was working, look for disinformation & "foreign influence" campaigns.
Now there's no one at the helm and all the researchers and civic interests have been given the boot. They are being threatened by ExTwitter to the tune of 1.5c per tweet accessed if I remember correctly. These people were helping you but there's this sense that finding out what's happening is risky for business, that it could hurt, when in fact the network is just being overrun, turned into the maelstrom, and is deeply into rot and decay stages.
And they seemed committed to giving researchers and academics lots of access to understand and share how the network was working, look for disinformation & "foreign influence" campaigns.
Now there's no one at the helm and all the researchers and civic interests have been given the boot. They are being threatened by ExTwitter to the tune of 1.5c per tweet accessed if I remember correctly. These people were helping you but there's this sense that finding out what's happening is risky for business, that it could hurt, when in fact the network is just being overrun, turned into the maelstrom, and is deeply into rot and decay stages.
You can blame the AI stuff for that. There were so many people scraping the site to do AI training that providing a free firehose API was a request for a denial of service attack.
Not really. I visited Twitter 1.0 HQ some years ago to give them a talk on spam fighting. Actually I went for lunch, and then discovered that a QA session had been volunteered on my behalf by the friend I was visiting.
Twitter's bot fighting teams back then had basically ceased to exist. They had existed once, but at some point the management decided that the biggest abuse problem on the platform wasn't bots or even misinformation but just people being mean to each other. So everyone working in that department had switched to what was basically semi-automated tone policing. By the time I talked to them they were years behind the state of the art in detecting automation.
As for academics and researchers, Twitter 1.0 didn't have the sort of rosy relationship with them you paint here. Researchers had access to the global feed if they paid for it like many other parties did, and Musk started charging much more for that access, but the feed wasn't really useful for finding misbehavior. In fact Twitter 1.0 was pissed off with academia long before Musk arrived on the scene. Academic research into social networks, disinformation and hypothetical foreign influence campaigns is nearly 100% pseudo-scientific garbage pushed for ideological reasons. In 2020 Twitter execs went public with their frustration [1] in a blog post where they pointed out that academics were using an "an extremely limited approach" that was full of useless signals, like:
• Usernames with long strings of digits (the default username generation pattern)
• Lacking info in the bio (even Twitter employees often don't fill it out)
• Posting many times per day (lots of real users do that)
Twitter 1.0: "the threat has evolved and the narrative on what’s actually going on is increasingly behind the curve". Given that there are tens of thousands of such papers coming out of universities, all of them justified by claiming they're ahead of the curve, being constantly behind it is a damning assessment. And that was from people ideologically aligned with academia!
Booting these people off the system was certainly a good move both for Twitter/X's business and frankly, for academia itself. They certainly weren't trying to help.
[1] https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-not
Twitter's bot fighting teams back then had basically ceased to exist. They had existed once, but at some point the management decided that the biggest abuse problem on the platform wasn't bots or even misinformation but just people being mean to each other. So everyone working in that department had switched to what was basically semi-automated tone policing. By the time I talked to them they were years behind the state of the art in detecting automation.
As for academics and researchers, Twitter 1.0 didn't have the sort of rosy relationship with them you paint here. Researchers had access to the global feed if they paid for it like many other parties did, and Musk started charging much more for that access, but the feed wasn't really useful for finding misbehavior. In fact Twitter 1.0 was pissed off with academia long before Musk arrived on the scene. Academic research into social networks, disinformation and hypothetical foreign influence campaigns is nearly 100% pseudo-scientific garbage pushed for ideological reasons. In 2020 Twitter execs went public with their frustration [1] in a blog post where they pointed out that academics were using an "an extremely limited approach" that was full of useless signals, like:
• Usernames with long strings of digits (the default username generation pattern)
• Lacking info in the bio (even Twitter employees often don't fill it out)
• Posting many times per day (lots of real users do that)
Twitter 1.0: "the threat has evolved and the narrative on what’s actually going on is increasingly behind the curve". Given that there are tens of thousands of such papers coming out of universities, all of them justified by claiming they're ahead of the curve, being constantly behind it is a damning assessment. And that was from people ideologically aligned with academia!
Booting these people off the system was certainly a good move both for Twitter/X's business and frankly, for academia itself. They certainly weren't trying to help.
[1] https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-not
What makes Bluesky different is ATProto. The four core components (data hosting, app view, algo feed, moderation) are all separate, pluggable, and open for anyone to implement their own.
What that means is moving is easy, meaning competition is possible, without the need to migrate platforms and rebuild followings and the network. Beyond that, ATProto supports custom record types, so one can build all the social media application types (Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Substack, ...) on the same social media fabric (ATProto)
I'm inclined to say the custom record type is a fifth core component that now exists thanks to ATProto. Monetization hasn't been widely discussed yet, Bluesky team has something besides ads in mind, but haven't publicly disclosed.
What that means is moving is easy, meaning competition is possible, without the need to migrate platforms and rebuild followings and the network. Beyond that, ATProto supports custom record types, so one can build all the social media application types (Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Substack, ...) on the same social media fabric (ATProto)
I'm inclined to say the custom record type is a fifth core component that now exists thanks to ATProto. Monetization hasn't been widely discussed yet, Bluesky team has something besides ads in mind, but haven't publicly disclosed.
> These are mechanics that will just create certain kinds of behaviors.
Yes, but if platform API allows using customizable third-party clients it is not really a problem for me (e.g. I can just enable chronological timeline, filter out all the ads and noise).
Yes, but if platform API allows using customizable third-party clients it is not really a problem for me (e.g. I can just enable chronological timeline, filter out all the ads and noise).
Yeah, except Twitter has no moderation anymore, in fact isnhas the opposite problem where people can pay to force their crappy views on everyone with blue checks.
Twitter isn't the problem, Musk is the problem. Twitter was fine until he took over. Bluesky is Twitter - Musk.
Twitter isn't the problem, Musk is the problem. Twitter was fine until he took over. Bluesky is Twitter - Musk.
Not mean to offend you but many people have come up with the same statement. It is pretty cliche by now.
Whenever I see an article about this or that platform gaining a million users I always think of the Eternal September.
I'd like to see a platform where after a certain number of people join, a new server is automatically created and new users are redirected there, similar to how MMO servers worked.
I'd like to see a platform where after a certain number of people join, a new server is automatically created and new users are redirected there, similar to how MMO servers worked.
MMO servers splits were due to capacity (both for the server and the player's weak GPUs trying to render players in a crowded area), not due to community. Modern World of Warcraft, for example, has removed almost every server-specific barrier and has strongly benefitted from it.
I think what OP is suggesting is that this technical barrier artificial as it may have been helped foster community. I feel the same way as them!
The non-death of Twitter looks like it's keeping the Eternal September quarantined there. Leaders and early adopters are finding new spaces, the passive and undiscerning may not follow this time. If they've put up with this much crap, what would make them leave?
A few things I like about BlueSky:
1. Your username can be your domain name. I’m @bradgessler.com, which means I can build more “equity” in my domain than I can on other platforms. It’s also really great for brands or open source projects that have their own website.
2. Lots of technical folks have come over from Twitter and the signal to noise ratio is much better. There’s less weird random videos, less people screaming past each other, less porn bots.
3. When I share a link on Bluesky, it doesn’t get penalized.
4. It’s a global namespace so I don’t have to worry about what server people are on that I want to follow. I struggled with this on Mastodon.
5. The UI is as good as Twitter. There’s been a few times now where I forget what network I’m using by just looking at the app.
6. Starter packs are handy to bring folks from your communities over. I created one for Ruby devs at https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh and one for companies built on Ruby at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u
I fully expect Bluesky to become completely enshitified over time, but I think it’s going to have a pretty good run for a while. They’re doing a lot of things right and it has fun early Twitter vibes, but without the fail whale.
1. Your username can be your domain name. I’m @bradgessler.com, which means I can build more “equity” in my domain than I can on other platforms. It’s also really great for brands or open source projects that have their own website.
2. Lots of technical folks have come over from Twitter and the signal to noise ratio is much better. There’s less weird random videos, less people screaming past each other, less porn bots.
3. When I share a link on Bluesky, it doesn’t get penalized.
4. It’s a global namespace so I don’t have to worry about what server people are on that I want to follow. I struggled with this on Mastodon.
5. The UI is as good as Twitter. There’s been a few times now where I forget what network I’m using by just looking at the app.
6. Starter packs are handy to bring folks from your communities over. I created one for Ruby devs at https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh and one for companies built on Ruby at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u
I fully expect Bluesky to become completely enshitified over time, but I think it’s going to have a pretty good run for a while. They’re doing a lot of things right and it has fun early Twitter vibes, but without the fail whale.
I think a more important stat is what percentage of new users in Week n has logged in again after Week n + 56 days.
How does it compare to threads?
Threads has become worse over time due to a series of anti-user policy decisions (no news/politics) and a very weird Discover algorithm that strongly incentivizes clickbait (and said feed is the default on the app and cannot be changed)
Threads only fed me straight up celebrity posts, despite having absolutely zero interest in that, when I signed up back when it was new. I can't imagine how much worse it is now.
So by default it will show you popular accounts which is unsurprisingly celebrities. But you just need to not engage with them and follow the people and topics you are interested in.
Once you do the algorithm is TikTok style in its sensitivity i.e. very.
Once you do the algorithm is TikTok style in its sensitivity i.e. very.
I strongly disagree that if I, a European living in Asia, make a new social networking account it should assume that the things I'm interested in are American celebrities. Which is what happened on Threads. That's a dumb design decision that made me bounce out immediately.
A simple, privacy preserving solution: ask me! When I sign up, offer broad categories like art, tech, sports, celebrities etc. don't put everyone into one "probably likes celebrity gossip" box on signup.
But it's even worse than that. I already have an Instagram account! They know there that I like art, tech, webcomics, music. I know that's all shared with Threads even if I'd rather it wasn't. But my feed is still filled with celeb trash.
A simple, privacy preserving solution: ask me! When I sign up, offer broad categories like art, tech, sports, celebrities etc. don't put everyone into one "probably likes celebrity gossip" box on signup.
But it's even worse than that. I already have an Instagram account! They know there that I like art, tech, webcomics, music. I know that's all shared with Threads even if I'd rather it wasn't. But my feed is still filled with celeb trash.
Fresh twitter account is fed the same: NBA, celebs, funny videos. You have to “dislike”, mute and block to make your timeline show good stuff.
> no news/politics
I kinda like the IDEA there, but no idea how you separate things like “I’m concerned about my individual rights” from politics?
And usually when people say “no politics” they mean “no politics I don’t like “.
Still in sympathize with the idea, I want to hear from people about what they’re doing and so forth, not a rehash of the news.
I kinda like the IDEA there, but no idea how you separate things like “I’m concerned about my individual rights” from politics?
And usually when people say “no politics” they mean “no politics I don’t like “.
Still in sympathize with the idea, I want to hear from people about what they’re doing and so forth, not a rehash of the news.
> how you separate things like “I’m concerned about my individual rights” from politics?
It's worse than that. You end up with lesbians posting about their girlfriends or small business owners posting a meme about a regulation they have to comply with and then getting blocked for politics if their tribe is the outgroup.
What you really need is for people to not be so intolerant of the other tribe being the other tribe.
It's worse than that. You end up with lesbians posting about their girlfriends or small business owners posting a meme about a regulation they have to comply with and then getting blocked for politics if their tribe is the outgroup.
What you really need is for people to not be so intolerant of the other tribe being the other tribe.
But what do you do when intolerance is the thing you're being asked to be tolerant of?
Tolerance indeed means tolerating the intolerant as well, otherwise it's just another name for intolerance. It's clear we completely forgot that in our polarised world.
Tolerating intolerance is completely unacceptable.
How can you justify accepting and tolerating someone who’s point of view is I think you should have less rights than me.
How can you justify accepting and tolerating someone who’s point of view is I think you should have less rights than me.
This is called the Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Essentially you should be tolerant of others, unless they themselves are intolerant.
Essentially you should be tolerant of others, unless they themselves are intolerant.
ie "tolerance is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact"
> Essentially you should be tolerant of others, unless they themselves are intolerant.
No, it's called a paradox because there is no "easy" answer to it. Also, who determines the exact line between free speech and intolerance? It is impossible to do. The reason the world is polarised today is because everybody thinks they have the simple answer to a literal ethical paradox that has none. The simple answer being: "those that share my beliefs are OK, those that don't should be canceled/demonised/hidden somewhere I don't see them." Thus creating echo chambers so people get more and more radical.
Free speech is the only half acceptable answer, which means free speech for anyone, whatever their point of view, however offensive you deem them to be. Rowan Atkinson explained it more eloquently that I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc
No, it's called a paradox because there is no "easy" answer to it. Also, who determines the exact line between free speech and intolerance? It is impossible to do. The reason the world is polarised today is because everybody thinks they have the simple answer to a literal ethical paradox that has none. The simple answer being: "those that share my beliefs are OK, those that don't should be canceled/demonised/hidden somewhere I don't see them." Thus creating echo chambers so people get more and more radical.
Free speech is the only half acceptable answer, which means free speech for anyone, whatever their point of view, however offensive you deem them to be. Rowan Atkinson explained it more eloquently that I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc
I partially agree with you. There is probably a fuzzy line somewhere in between, but reasonable people on either side of it should be able to discuss their disagreements without resorting to canceling each other. However, the challenge arises when dealing with those who lie to manipulate. This isn’t about differing opinions; it’s about the integrity of the discourse. Tolerating such behavior only gives credence to falsehoods, hence "paradox".
I agree free speech must be protected, whatever it is, but it doesn’t mean we should accept manipulation and deceit. The goal should be to foster genuine dialogue, not to create echo chambers or allow harmful lies to spread unchecked.
I agree free speech must be protected, whatever it is, but it doesn’t mean we should accept manipulation and deceit. The goal should be to foster genuine dialogue, not to create echo chambers or allow harmful lies to spread unchecked.
That should be the norm everywhere but one tribe's entire identity is being intolprant of people and things that ultimately have zero effect on them or anyone.
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a) Given what happened with X during the election, Meta unquestionably made the right call with Threads. If you want news/politics then simply follow your desired journalists. But forcing it on people who don't want it is not making the world better. It's just allowing bad actors a clear vector on how to make it worse.
b) You can switch to the chronological feed which is much better. But as you say you can't make it the default.
b) You can switch to the chronological feed which is much better. But as you say you can't make it the default.
I'm not sure what you're alluding to regarding what happened on X during the election. If anything 2024 was smoother (very surprisingly) than what happened in 2020 even when Twitter had a Trust and Safety team, mostly because the election was not contested this time.
Right wing accounts were heavily pushed in the later stages of the election.
I manage a number of business X accounts which are publish only and all switched to showing right-wing politicians, pundits and extensive amounts of Elon Musk. I created a new account to check and same thing. Even though when I selected interests I specifically chose non-political topics.
For me it was very clear then that whether it's Musk or Zuckerberg no one should have the ability to push political content.
I manage a number of business X accounts which are publish only and all switched to showing right-wing politicians, pundits and extensive amounts of Elon Musk. I created a new account to check and same thing. Even though when I selected interests I specifically chose non-political topics.
For me it was very clear then that whether it's Musk or Zuckerberg no one should have the ability to push political content.
It is true that Elon pushed right-wing accounts algorithmically (and is one of the reasons for the exodus to Bluesky), but "no politics ever" as a neutral content moderation stance to counter that factor makes it impossible for a social network to show what's happening now in the world and will make people go elsewhere for the information gap.
No political content ever is a community growth stance and business strategy.
It is the right call, by frikking far.
There are a 3-4 horsemen of the apocalypse for online communities. The first two are most definitely politics and religion.
If these two topics are allowed on your forum, you are pretty much done. Flame wars, harassment, brigades etc. are going to be the highest you can expect.
This is going to force you into high amounts of comment removals and bans. The velocity of action, and anger of your users will mean that you can no longer communicate the rationale for your bans, or maintain transparency.
On top of this, you will start to attract groups who will want to use your community for astroturfing, or for targeting. So now you have to deal with the worst kind of adversarial behavior.
Getting rid of politics, is just simply better for the product.
I will also argue that there should be such product experiments conducted in the economy. We already have a multitude of platforms where we can discuss politics.
It is the right call, by frikking far.
There are a 3-4 horsemen of the apocalypse for online communities. The first two are most definitely politics and religion.
If these two topics are allowed on your forum, you are pretty much done. Flame wars, harassment, brigades etc. are going to be the highest you can expect.
This is going to force you into high amounts of comment removals and bans. The velocity of action, and anger of your users will mean that you can no longer communicate the rationale for your bans, or maintain transparency.
On top of this, you will start to attract groups who will want to use your community for astroturfing, or for targeting. So now you have to deal with the worst kind of adversarial behavior.
Getting rid of politics, is just simply better for the product.
I will also argue that there should be such product experiments conducted in the economy. We already have a multitude of platforms where we can discuss politics.
> Getting rid of politics, is just simply better for the product.
What you need to do is distinguish between politics and partisanship. Political discussion is not only fine but important, as long as it's civil. Partisan signaling, on the other hand, is poison, because it's flamebait and does not lead to reasoned discussion.
What you need to do is distinguish between politics and partisanship. Political discussion is not only fine but important, as long as it's civil. Partisan signaling, on the other hand, is poison, because it's flamebait and does not lead to reasoned discussion.
I'd argue that the apparent toxic nature of online politics is due to the design of the platforms hosting it (including the susceptibility of those platforms to manipulation by foreign govts and billionaires). There are a few different discussion platforms (e.g., vTaiwan) which are explicitly designed to help users converge on shared solutions rather than polarize them--we could simply encourage people to use those instead.
> If you want news/politics
The problem is that the right has largely moved politics into a cultural space. When you can't talk about being trans or being gay is that really politics? Self-identity isn't a political position, but it has been forced to be one, as those people are under constant attack.
In addition, they're the "out group", so they will actually be targeted. Certainly, nobody cares if you post your girlfriend, but if you post your boyfriend now it has become political.
Such rules aren't equal.
It's become a meme, but there's some truth to it. There're two genders, man and political. There're two sexual orientations, straight and political. There're two races, white and political.
The problem is that the right has largely moved politics into a cultural space. When you can't talk about being trans or being gay is that really politics? Self-identity isn't a political position, but it has been forced to be one, as those people are under constant attack.
In addition, they're the "out group", so they will actually be targeted. Certainly, nobody cares if you post your girlfriend, but if you post your boyfriend now it has become political.
Such rules aren't equal.
It's become a meme, but there's some truth to it. There're two genders, man and political. There're two sexual orientations, straight and political. There're two races, white and political.
> Self-identity isn't a political position
It is when policy is changed to prioritize self-identity over material reality.
The outcomes of such policy are often harmful, for example: https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...
It is when policy is changed to prioritize self-identity over material reality.
The outcomes of such policy are often harmful, for example: https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...
"Material Reality" is not so, that's simply your opinion, and a rather anti-science one. We've known about the divide of gender and sex for a while, and our notions of gender are almost entirely socially constructed. That's why some people are able to live their life, convincingly and without suspicion, as the other gender.
And, to be clear, the vast majority of rape is performed by heterosexual men who are not trans. Trans people are an incredibly small amount of the population. They're merely a scapegoat, because they're "weird" or "gross" or "perverted". It's nothing new, it's the same things people said about homosexuals.
There's no forcefield around women's restrooms, for instance. One does not need to take 5 years of hormone therapy and surgery to walk into the women's restroom and sexually assault someone. Men already do that, right now, and in MUCH greater numbers.
Also, as a sidenote, these TERFy articles and such should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Typically, when attacking minorities the strategy is to take aim at vulnerable populations, usually women and children. When homosexuality was breaking the mainstream, the main concern was pedophilia, because that's how you harm minorities. Naturally, any aim at transgender people will do it from the lense of "protecting women". Never mind that trans women are already at high-risk of sexual assault.
None of this means I think people AMAB should be allowed in women's prisons. But you have to understand, for people who are transgender women, if they go to men's prisons, they WILL be raped. Without a doubt and with no exceptions.
The problem isn't as simple as conservative pundits would like you to believe. Women don't want burly, masculine trans men in their restrooms either, for example, which would be the end result of a lot of conservative policy.
And, to be clear, the vast majority of rape is performed by heterosexual men who are not trans. Trans people are an incredibly small amount of the population. They're merely a scapegoat, because they're "weird" or "gross" or "perverted". It's nothing new, it's the same things people said about homosexuals.
There's no forcefield around women's restrooms, for instance. One does not need to take 5 years of hormone therapy and surgery to walk into the women's restroom and sexually assault someone. Men already do that, right now, and in MUCH greater numbers.
Also, as a sidenote, these TERFy articles and such should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Typically, when attacking minorities the strategy is to take aim at vulnerable populations, usually women and children. When homosexuality was breaking the mainstream, the main concern was pedophilia, because that's how you harm minorities. Naturally, any aim at transgender people will do it from the lense of "protecting women". Never mind that trans women are already at high-risk of sexual assault.
None of this means I think people AMAB should be allowed in women's prisons. But you have to understand, for people who are transgender women, if they go to men's prisons, they WILL be raped. Without a doubt and with no exceptions.
The problem isn't as simple as conservative pundits would like you to believe. Women don't want burly, masculine trans men in their restrooms either, for example, which would be the end result of a lot of conservative policy.
Also no porn, since Twitter is the only mainstream platform that allows porn, a real competitor would have to allow porn as well.
There's lots of porn on Bluesky but it tends to be, uh, niche.
I'm talking about Thread, Bluesky does indeed allows porn, that's why many artists are moving from Twitter to Bluesky.
Does federation work? Or Threads just doesn't federate anything into itself?
Its getting there. They just need to allow replying back into the fediverse. But making it all opt in kinda has limited how many people use it. Perhaps that was intentional due to infrastructure needed and potentially overwhelming the fediverse. Or its just their way to say "we tried!"
The problem with Threads is, in my opinion, lack of funny people. it won’t be able to attract those users because what they usually post is questionable at best. And without it, it will always feel too sterile.
From what I can see, bsky mostly consists of rebels. And since users flock where everyone else is, it will be an uphill battle for them to get Twitter’s userbase.
From what I can see, bsky mostly consists of rebels. And since users flock where everyone else is, it will be an uphill battle for them to get Twitter’s userbase.
There are two types of social media sites: the niche one nobody uses, and the ones @dril posts on.
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My complaint about Bluesky is that it is too much like twitter.
Admittedly I ran into less straight forward combativeness and that’s nice.
But still the content was just as inane and hot take heavy.
Granted I accept that “pretty much another twitter” is what the users want.
Admittedly I ran into less straight forward combativeness and that’s nice.
But still the content was just as inane and hot take heavy.
Granted I accept that “pretty much another twitter” is what the users want.
I've seen this played out many times and won't fall into the "next big social media site" trap anymore. If anything, I've noticed people are moving away from public social media and towards more private sites (only sharing photos and stuff with family members and close friends). The days of "let's put it out there for the entire world to see" are over.
Apps that work like Discord and Telegram are the social media of the future.
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It's beyond words how much Elon Musk has wrecked Twitter. But, I am not ready join another echo chamber that mirrors the same flaws from the other side of the spectrum. My initial impression of BlueSky is just that.
Twitter's greatest flaw—no, I won’t call it "X"—is its obsession with engagement to promote tweets. This creates the worst feed you can think of:
- People ask the dumbest questions, just to bait responses.
- Someone makes a reasonable point, and along comes the dumbest reply. Why? So others can pile on, calling them out, driving up engagement.
- External links are buried. Good articles? Forget it. They’ve vanished from my feed.
- The most toxic people are constantly pushed to my feed. And it's a losing battle to block them all. Keeping my feed politics-free is borderline impossible.
- The fact that you can buy a subscription and ensure that your tweets get highlighted more is absurd. It has made it really easy to get the worst accounts in your feed.
It’s exhausting. I am just there because I think it is still a good marketing channel. But I am not sure anymore if the pros outweigh the cons.
Twitter's greatest flaw—no, I won’t call it "X"—is its obsession with engagement to promote tweets. This creates the worst feed you can think of:
- People ask the dumbest questions, just to bait responses.
- Someone makes a reasonable point, and along comes the dumbest reply. Why? So others can pile on, calling them out, driving up engagement.
- External links are buried. Good articles? Forget it. They’ve vanished from my feed.
- The most toxic people are constantly pushed to my feed. And it's a losing battle to block them all. Keeping my feed politics-free is borderline impossible.
- The fact that you can buy a subscription and ensure that your tweets get highlighted more is absurd. It has made it really easy to get the worst accounts in your feed.
It’s exhausting. I am just there because I think it is still a good marketing channel. But I am not sure anymore if the pros outweigh the cons.
The great thing about bluesky is that there are no “algorithms” by default. You see posts from people you follow in the order they were posted. There’s no feed pushing toxic posts in your face, and since there’s no monetary incentive for engagement, you don’t see the egregious bait that’s ubiquitous on Twitter.
As for it being an echo chamber, that’s a function of who chooses to join. Again, there are no algorithms, so no viewpoints are favored by the site (unlike on some other sites, ahem). And the protocol ensures you can’t really be banned.
As for it being an echo chamber, that’s a function of who chooses to join. Again, there are no algorithms, so no viewpoints are favored by the site (unlike on some other sites, ahem). And the protocol ensures you can’t really be banned.
I do not understand how people have this problem. Follow interesting people and look at the following tab. Unfollow or mute uninteresting or annoying people.
I find it great because there is a ton of interesting people. It is not a website for discussions, it is for one off messages.
I find it great because there is a ton of interesting people. It is not a website for discussions, it is for one off messages.
I installed some guy's userscript to remove the For You tab all together and dump me straight into Following. It's way better, but it's still out of order, so you can't see what's new, only a random selection of what's popular from the last few days, which is irritating. My workaround is to create a list named Timeline, and add all my follows to it and pin it up top, and poof, sequential timeline again, with none of the crap. Then just some css to hide inline ads and constant upgrade nags, and it's like 2014 again.
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Can I import my old data from Twitter to Bluesky?
Yes you can, with this web extension https://github.com/kawamataryo/sky-follower-bridge
Ok, so I can port the lists of user I follow. But all my old Twitter posts will be inaccessible to me if I close my Twitter account, right?
With so many disgruntled "democrat" supporters moving from X to BS the question is what will keep BS from ending up like the same echo chamber Twitter was before it was forcibly opened up to the deplorables, garbage, irredeemables and other *-phobes and *-ists. Does the platform have a way to keep the window of allowed discourse open to all or will this simply end up recreating Twitter, warts and all?
Unlike previous attempts for groups of people trying to leave Twitter/X post-Elon acquisition for a competitor social network but failed due to the difficulty of getting all their friends to also switch, this time it might actually stick.
Even before the election results on Tuesday, the vibes on X have been steadily been getting worse from my perspective, and the fact that Musk will get more power and influence from a Trump win may have been its Digg 2.0 moment.
I have replaced my Twitter contact information in my HN profile with my Bluesky contact info, and will be doing the same on my personal website soon.
Even before the election results on Tuesday, the vibes on X have been steadily been getting worse from my perspective, and the fact that Musk will get more power and influence from a Trump win may have been its Digg 2.0 moment.
I have replaced my Twitter contact information in my HN profile with my Bluesky contact info, and will be doing the same on my personal website soon.
As someone who was on Reddit when we got the influx of Digg users, it's wild that "Digg moment" is now an anachronistic culture reference like "Betamax" or "jumping the shark" was for me when I was younger.
I'm sure there's a huge cohort of people active here have never heard of Digg except that it was a thing that fumbled and made Reddit bigger.
I'm sure there's a huge cohort of people active here have never heard of Digg except that it was a thing that fumbled and made Reddit bigger.
Ehhh, at this point people have been predicting the downfall of X/Twitter for so long such predictions feel a bit meaningless.
Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.
Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.
it was never going to die overnight though. It's had a steady decline since the takeover.
Musk is claiming that it recently reached record usage highs, as measured by "user seconds". It's a bit unclear whether he is counting X as a different platform to Twitter though, and "user seconds" is pushed upwards by video content that takes longer to consume. But usage hasn't obviously declined since the takeover either.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307
I always assume the worst possible interpretation of any numbers falling out of Elon's mouth.
Hint: when people start using a weird metric that no-one has ever hard of before, they are generally doing so because real metrics are, ah, less favourable.
For the ultimate example, see WeWork’s old ‘community adjusted EBITDA’, which was pretty much just revenue.
For the ultimate example, see WeWork’s old ‘community adjusted EBITDA’, which was pretty much just revenue.
I don't think it's that weird assuming it's defined in the obvious way. Such a metric is obviously harder to game than MAU or similar as it's less affected by occasional users who don't really use the site but click through links from time to time. It also seems more aligned with what advertisers care about (how many seconds are spent looking at ads).
Fidelity who invested in X have said it's worth 20% since Musk took over.
So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.
So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.
Musk overpaid for Twitter. That doesn't mean it's dying any faster than incumbent social media platforms do in general.
Someday Twitter will be AOL, but so will TikTok and Facebook and all the rest of them, because nothing lasts forever.
People who think it's going to die immediately are just hoping that it will, but that's generally not how it works. They die when something else replaces them, and even once the thing arrives the replacement takes quite a long time.
Someday Twitter will be AOL, but so will TikTok and Facebook and all the rest of them, because nothing lasts forever.
People who think it's going to die immediately are just hoping that it will, but that's generally not how it works. They die when something else replaces them, and even once the thing arrives the replacement takes quite a long time.
Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years.
And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years.
There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years.
There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
> Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years.
Hence overpaid.
They've also lost advertisers, which is obviously bad for Fidelity but not all that relevant to the people using it. And it's not clear to what extent that has any staying power because companies get a one-time story written about them when they do the initial announcement and soon they're back to wanting to run ads everywhere they can because running ads that reach a different user base gets them otherwise-unavailable sales.
> And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years.
Threads is Facebook. It has users because Facebook is pushing it with both financial resources and the network effect of an incumbent social network, and even then it has fewer users than Facebook itself and its users are disproportionately converts from Facebook/Instagram rather than Twitter because that's where it's being pushed.
Bluesky has like 7M users. It's the sort of thing that could replace Twitter, in ten or twenty years.
> There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms.
It has hundreds of millions of active users.
> It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
Musk changed some things and a small percentage of people left, many of them performatively because they later came back. Network effects are strong.
Hence overpaid.
They've also lost advertisers, which is obviously bad for Fidelity but not all that relevant to the people using it. And it's not clear to what extent that has any staying power because companies get a one-time story written about them when they do the initial announcement and soon they're back to wanting to run ads everywhere they can because running ads that reach a different user base gets them otherwise-unavailable sales.
> And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years.
Threads is Facebook. It has users because Facebook is pushing it with both financial resources and the network effect of an incumbent social network, and even then it has fewer users than Facebook itself and its users are disproportionately converts from Facebook/Instagram rather than Twitter because that's where it's being pushed.
Bluesky has like 7M users. It's the sort of thing that could replace Twitter, in ten or twenty years.
> There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms.
It has hundreds of millions of active users.
> It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
Musk changed some things and a small percentage of people left, many of them performatively because they later came back. Network effects are strong.
With Trump winning the election, X will either be merged into Truth Social or nationalized.
Surprised to see few grappling with this reality. Twitter is like state affiliated social media now. What real barriers can remain between anyone's twitter data and a hostile state regime that's promised to abuse it's power to target it's opposition? It's actually horrifying.
And to the extent that Elon believes Twitter was useful in attaining his current position, it doesn't really matter if it's profitable on the balance sheets or not - it's a loss leader.
And to the extent that Elon believes Twitter was useful in attaining his current position, it doesn't really matter if it's profitable on the balance sheets or not - it's a loss leader.
andreygrehov(6)
mlcrypto(4)
I deleted my Twitter account a few days ago. I am so disappointed in what became of Musk as he teamed up with Trump and I don't want to support him any more. Of course it does not make a dent in his life, but for mine it does. The time I save I can do more useful things with. I aim to consume less and produce more. or consume more long-form media, like books, or actual newspapers. It will be better for my mood I think, to decouple myself from current events unless they are really significant. So what is the relationship of this to Bluesky? That I am not keen on trying it. I will attempt this change of focus seriously. I will not just change ships, I will stay in my new destination.
That's a wholesome change, I feel. I also disconnect from social and news from time to time. The quickly refreshing content on the internet is very tempting, but it's more toxic than not, beginning with its very nature of being quickly refreshed. The churn is too high to engage in quality, and so if quality is desired, focus on the real and immediate environment is what pays off more, even if much less engaging.
Everybody forgets that Twitter created Trump.
They remember fondly when left-crazy ruled Twitter. They forget that the opposite and more-enduring right-reaction formed as part of the same dynamic.
If Twitter had never existed, Donald Trump would still just be playing a rich guy on The Apprentice, and licensing his name to developers of hotels and colognes. Elon Musk would just be pushing electric cars and rockets and solar panels.
Which is why this effort to rebuild Twitter as BlueSky is not good news.
I know it seems that we all need to develop a fever again to dislodge Trump. I don't think we do. Incumbents have gotten wrecked all over the place. The world is not getting better. Four years from now, Team Trump will be the incumbents, and the voters will express their dissatisfaction again. This will happen without efforts to make society start boiling over again. Those will just cause more blowback. We don't need another Twitter.
They remember fondly when left-crazy ruled Twitter. They forget that the opposite and more-enduring right-reaction formed as part of the same dynamic.
If Twitter had never existed, Donald Trump would still just be playing a rich guy on The Apprentice, and licensing his name to developers of hotels and colognes. Elon Musk would just be pushing electric cars and rockets and solar panels.
Which is why this effort to rebuild Twitter as BlueSky is not good news.
I know it seems that we all need to develop a fever again to dislodge Trump. I don't think we do. Incumbents have gotten wrecked all over the place. The world is not getting better. Four years from now, Team Trump will be the incumbents, and the voters will express their dissatisfaction again. This will happen without efforts to make society start boiling over again. Those will just cause more blowback. We don't need another Twitter.
This is hilarious, thank you for the good laugh.
I tried to service, but it felt buggy, and I just didn't feel there was a need to switch full-time. I'm using social media a lot less, i'm trying to navigate blue sky makes me want to use it even less.
I am here: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social
I used this tool to find accounts that match on both platforms:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-follower-bridge...