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Bluesky adds 700k new users in a week
- andrewinardeer 2y agoI think a more important stat is what percentage of new users in Week n has logged in again after Week n + 56 days.
- caseyy 2y agohttps://briefs.video/videos/i-am-leaving/ https://briefs.video/videos/i-am-leaving/
- fady0 2y agoThis is hilarious, thank you for the good laugh.
- bhouston 2y agoI can attest that BlueSky is really nice right now. Feels less combative than Twitter. I started to use it 25 days ago and got 400 or so follows pretty quickly. I am here: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social 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/behhbpbpmailcnfbjagknjngnfdojpko https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-follower-bridge...
- adzm 2y agoAgreed, it's a really fun community. I hope it lasts
- owlninja 2y agoThe 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.
- cen4 2y agoIts weird how all these useful local info accounts end up being dependent on platforms that promote noise makers and attention cravers.
- duxup 2y agoIt’s not like local weather guy is likely to get anyone on just his website or such these days.
- cen4 2y agoSo 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?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoFeels 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.
- antupis 2y agoMastodon would be perfect for these but there is no critical mass at least yet.
- krapp 2y agoUnfortunately, 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.
- tmottabr 2y agoI 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..
- rsynnott 2y agoOne 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.
- mardifoufs 2y agoIt's also one of the least diverse communities I've seen. Almost everyone is white and western, twitter is extremely diverse in comparison.
- KPGv2 2y agoFollowing 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.
- sohkamyung 2y agoWhenever people mention 'bird app', I think it's is ebird. Now, 'butterfly app' makes me think of iNaturalist. :-) http://ebird.org/ http://ebird.org/ https://www.inaturalist.org/ https://www.inaturalist.org/
- elfbargpt 2y agohttps://x.com/AmericanGwyn/status/1856128159130812866 https://x.com/AmericanGwyn/status/1856128159130812866
- caeril 2y ago> 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.
- kccoder 2y agoIt 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.
- mingus88 2y agoWhat 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
- theasisa 2y agoI 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.
- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]
- JeremyNT 2y agoI 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.
- johneth 2y agoThe 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.
- 6bb32646d83d 2y agoI 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
- verdverm 2y agoYou 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.
- minimaxir 2y agoUnlike 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.
- infotainment 2y agoEhhh, 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.
- threeseed 2y agoFidelity 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.
- minimaxir 2y agoWith Trump winning the election, X will either be merged into Truth Social or nationalized.
- asdf123wtf 2y agoSurprised 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.
- andreygrehov 2y ago[flagged]
- RiverCrochet 2y agoIn tomorrow's news, I did not win $2,000,000 in a lottery.
- threeseed 2y ago> How do I verify the data You can go onto the App Store charts and see that Threads is #1, and Bluesky is #2. And it's been like this for a while. So clearly something is happening.
- bhouston 2y agoBlueSky isn’t lying. It has had a series of bumps over time. There was the Brazil bump a month or two ago. And then this bump.
- minimaxir 2y ago> How do I verify the data? Trust me bro? The lede is literally "Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge." Companies intentionally lying about their data is a good way for them to get sued.
- dandellion 2y agoI remember reading that reddit created fake users to make the site appear more popular than it was. AFAIK they never got sued. I doubt they're the only platform doing that.
- minimaxir 2y agoReddit did astroturf, but they didn't report numbers based on it IIRC. A different time two decades ago, of course.
- yeahwhatever10 2y ago
- mlcrypto 2y ago[flagged]
- bhouston 2y agoI wonder if social networks continue to bifurcate? Truth Social, Gab and X on the right and Mastadon, BlueSky on the left and Threads somewhere in between focused on celebrities? This article suggests that there is a bifurcation happening: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-musk-x-republican-democrat-twitter-election/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...
- 8338550bff96 2y agoThey will remain bifurcated so long as some platforms censor political dissent while others do not.
- 8338550bff96 2y agoLow and behold, no response. Only downvote. Because there doesn't exist a legitimate argument against is, so all that is left is to be mad
- namaria 2y ago'Lo'. It's 'Lo and behold'.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- GaggiX 2y agoYou cannot put "bastion of truth" and "X" in the same sentence.
- KPGv2 2y agoIndeed. The owner himself spreads disinformation on Twitter.
- Nimitz14 2y agoHow does it compare to threads?
- minimaxir 2y agoThreads 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)
- GaggiX 2y agoAlso no porn, since Twitter is the only mainstream platform that allows porn, a real competitor would have to allow porn as well.
- stackghost 2y agoThere's lots of porn on Bluesky but it tends to be, uh, niche.
- GaggiX 2y agoI'm talking about Thread, Bluesky does indeed allows porn, that's why many artists are moving from Twitter to Bluesky.
- throwaway290 2y agoDoes federation work? Or Threads just doesn't federate anything into itself?
- dawnerd 2y agoIts 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!"
- shubhamjain 2y agoIt'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.
- rapsey 2y agoI 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.
- skygazer 2y agoI 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.
- medler 2y agoThe 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.
- dandellion 2y agoWhenever 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.
- minimaxir 2y agoMMO 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.
- Everdred2dx 2y agoI 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!
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoThe 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?
- behnamoh 2y agoI'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.
- RiverCrochet 2y agoApps that work like Discord and Telegram are the social media of the future.
- duxup 2y agoMy 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.
- forgotoldacc 2y agoBluesky 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.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago> 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.
- forgotoldacc 2y agoI'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.
- jsbsjwbw 2y ago[flagged]
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- karaterobot 2y agoMy 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.
- EasyMark 2y agoI 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.
- karaterobot 2y agoI 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.
- android521 2y agowhat you need is blogs or essays. But the audience has become too small so there are fewer writers
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoIt'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.
- mongol 2y agoI 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.
- npteljes 2y agoThat'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.
- Simulacra 2y agoI 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.
- FooBarBizBazz 2y agoEverybody 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.
- bradgessler 2y agoA 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 https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh and one for companies built on Ruby at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u 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.
- the_third_wave 2y agoWith 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?
- amai 2y agoCan I import my old data from Twitter to Bluesky?
- matteogauthier 2y agoYes you can, with this web extension https://github.com/kawamataryo/sky-follower-bridge https://github.com/kawamataryo/sky-follower-bridge
- amai 2y agoOk, 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?
- bufferoverflow 2y ago[flagged]
- kccoder 2y ago"Almost" doing a lot of heavy lifting. Elon is censoring plenty of things, not just things you care about: https://qz.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-transparency-brazil-turkey-tesla-1851656960 https://qz.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-transparency-brazil-turke... https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/elon-musks-push-free-speech-shows-clear-bias-towards-interests/713803/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/elon-musks-push-free-s... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-musk-hypocrite-free-speech https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m... There are many more examples. I think you may be confusing "heavily-censored" with an entity following laws and their own internal ethics (taking down revenge porn, ...), and trying to cultivate some measure of decency. The current owner has turned twitter into a different kind of echo-chamber; one running rampant with grotesque language, crude behavior, and childish name calling. Those traits are mirrored in the owner and the individual he helped get elected.
- NoGravitas 2y agoNow it's an even worse echo chamber, but it is now one you happen to feel comfortable with.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoHow is it an echo chamber, when everyone is allowed to post? It's the opposite. BS is the echo-chamber by design.
- echo_mako 2y agoThere are echo chambers on twitter, reddit, here, at your local coffee shop depending on the subject. Echo chambers develop anytime a majority of people hold a similar belief on a subject and lose objectiveness. Just because "everyone" CAN post doesn't mean they are (spoiler: they aren't). If you achieve that majority and loss of objectiveness you're very likely in an echo chamber.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]