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Awhile back, there was some conversation about how a new social media platform could replace twitter if twitter users really don't like Elon Musk.
Today, I read about Bluesky social and it reminded me of that exchange. Now, the article includes a quote from Jack Dorsey that throws out a lot of applause lights, like "freedom," "choice," and "independence." Has anyone else heard about this?
Something I think is interesting is the remarks about needing an open-source model instead of a company. Whereas companies can change direction and leadership (Twitter...), an open-source standard can be implemented by all sorts of groups.
It's also possible that there will be attempts to migrate The Conversation off of twitter and onto Bluesky. I personally don't think it'll happen, but I'm also not brave enough to give any specific predictions or confidence numbers. Is anyone else?
It seems to be a federated social media concept. The idea's afaict similar to mastodon/activitypub - no one company controls everything, users can sign up using a 'server' operated by anyone and see tweets/interact with users on any other server, plus move between servers. 'Censorship' would be, the idea is, not possible, merely individuals or servers curating the kind of content they want to see. HN on bluesky HN discussion + link on the federated protocol itself (but half the comments are pointless rants about how they didnt use activitypub)
ActivityPub is barely an improvement over just hosting your own site like this one. Users still don't own their identities or content and are at the mercy of whatever instance they are married to and that will still be the case even if they adopt decentralized identities for users. Communities, posts, users, and interactions should be decoupled from individual instances while instances themselves can operate as curated views of the network and act as hubs propagating the subset of the network they are comfortable propagating. If all objects on the network are signed you can even propagate them over sneakernet. This is what atproto, scuttlebutt, farcaster, and others offer (all with their own tradeoffs).
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Well, we already have mastodon which seems to work and is open source. There's open source, then there's our open source. Yes, Bluesky makes reference to something called the "AT Protocol," and seems to have bigger ambitions than merely serving up short text posts, but those ambitions likely miss the point, or probably don't require an entirely new project instead of mastodon.
I'm of the opinion that most of the success we see in the social media space is happenstance. It seems to be very difficult to get people to adopt a new social media site or migrate to a competitor. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is, and once everyone is somewhere, how do they get to be somewhere else?
I will also say that it's weird to see seemingly identical features be developed in Facebook/YouTube/Instagram to copy Tik Tok, and each implementation feel so different. Nothing feels, or is as good as, the short videos you find on Tik Tok. I don't get it. You'd think creators would be interested in x-posting their content, and maybe they do, but I don't see it.
Worth noting that we've seen people move platforms before. In particular.
Digg to Reddit. It wasn't instantaneous, but it says something that we talk about Reddit, not Digg, in our own history.
Facebook to other platforms (Youtube/Instagram/Snapchat). This was primarily young people who left for, among other things, a place where their parents weren't going to switch to as easily. Especially with Snapchat, having a place where the default is that nothing lasts is godsend to teenagers who do things they don't want adults knowing about.
Fundamental differences do exist people platforms (Facebook/Twitter are text, Insta/Snapchat are pictures, Youtube/TikTok are video), and these can be enough to drive people between them. Not to mention that these platforms appeared at roughly the same time mobile phones became miniature computers in their own right.
Didn't Digg fuck up somehow? I was old enough to kind of remember that happening, but too young to really be participating at that time. And how could you forget to mention MySpace to (The) Facebook? Instagram definitely took a bite out of FB, which is why they were bought, but Snap and YouTube are completely unrelated IMO. Snap is so marginal and YouTube, in my mind, is really the king of Social Media.
Digg fucked up, yes, and it triggered enough of a mass response that people just shifted to Reddit.
I used Snap as an example of what can motivate people to leave. It's feature of not permanently retaining posts and allowing users to select who sees their stuff is appealing to some people.
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Mastodon: the platform that has more headlines written about it than actual users.
Part of the alt-tech 'scam' is to get a lot of media coverage, which means good google rankings and a lot of initial users, which also means lots of data such as phone numbers and emails can be collected. Then the site is plastered with ads. Eventually the promotion, which is expensive, stops and signups level off. The next stage is cutting costs and ramping up ads and spamming the email and phone list. This, along with the high google rankings, creates a steady, long-term income stream as costs are cut to zero. Many such sites will req. the email first but not tell you about needing a phone number. Guess what: they already got your email. too late.
Mastodon is not a platform, it's a software used to interface with a wider fediverse that is an open protocol that anyone can use like email. It's unfortunate that the maintainers of Mastodon choose to market their project as a platform. It would be like hotmail calling the entire email network hotmail when other email clients exist.
https://fediverse.space/
Here's an incomplete node graph of the english speaking fediverse.
It's kind of sad how few people know it exists. Everything Elon talked about to Jack already existed.
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Don't have the relevant links on hand, but I will say: not if you count Pawoo!
Engagement on Pawoo looks pretty poor, sadly. A lot of Japanese artists went back to Twitter, because I guess they figure it's easier to make new accounts every week and get friends to retweet them. They don't seem to mind ending up with names like @TypeHealthyReaderAlt_801new
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It's funny how much the Mastodon project hates Pawoo despite being their biggest and most active instance. They won't even respond to pull requests made in english. Maybe they're Japanophobic?
Or maybe they just don't want to advertise the fact the main use case for their product is something that is considered kiddieporn in their home country?
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Another comment (deleted?) linked this claim that it’s lolicon.
The article links the feed. There's about 8 posts per minute, and it's mostly not loli, but isn't that active either. It took a few min of scrolling to get down to the first loli post 30min ago, "DM me on here or session if you wanna chat and goon to some tiny s--ts together #ped #pedoooo" with roughly the image you'd expect captioned "tight child p---y". Also someone spamming their AI generated web novel
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Attempts, but they won't succeed. The Conversation happens where everyone is, that's why it's not on Gab or Parler. I very much doubt conservatives are leaving for Bluesky or Tribel.
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yawn. Door-see never passes on the opportunity for self-promotion.
"https://blueskyweb.xyz/" "This service has been suspended." not a promising sign. Also, .xyz domains are shit and used by spammers. At least get a quality domain if you have billions of dollars.
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I've heard Tribel was going for the crown as well, Right wingers couldn't really do it successfully, lets see if left wingers can. I doubt it.
The left would have the advantage that Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly on their side.
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Why? Are people who you've vaguely known online for a decade going to give you shit? I used to post on mma.tv for a solid decade+ and I had almost 100k posts and the absolute insanity I would post while drinking @2am is unparalleled even on places like 4chan. Although I haven't posted there in several years, I am in a discord with about a dozen of us old time posters and we're all at the very least quasi-friends even tho I have only met one of them - the firs ttime being is when he let me stay the night at his house, with his wife and kid, while I was getting my first tattoo. For some, a wild thing to have met for the first time, to us, a gathering of Slavic anti-commie comradery. So I state: make bold predictions and speak your truth!
Bluesky will die and we won't hear a peep out of it aside from 2 top posts in the next 6 months while it's pushed from the vagaries of the elite.
Something new will come, and it's possibly already here, but the centralization of the Internet has me fearing for the long pasture of nothingness. I think we're at a point of samesieness and I await the future with open arms.
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