Twitter's Traffic Falling Relative to Bluesky
Twitter's Traffic Falling Relative to Bluesky
Over the last month, traffic to the site formerly known as Twitter has taken a nosedive as Bluesky continues to bring in more and more users.
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Who cares...it's just changing one shitpile for the next soon-to-be shitpile. Bluesky will inevitably go down the shitter too once its users have enough inertia to keep them there as they squeeze them dry.
Twitter isn't falling due to not being open source, or not being decentralized, or any of the other reasons I've heard people advocate for mastodon.
People are leaving twitter because it has gone fully right wing in politics. Twitter will not "fail" in the traditional sense. Twitter will fall, but not fail.
Twitter will be the right wing conspiracy platform.
Bluesky will be what twitter was 5 years ago for the left wing.
Nothing else has changed. This isn't a rebellion against corporate social media. This isn't meant to be a fediverse uprising. None of that is happening. This is nothing more than Mary, and Beth who voted for Harris wanting to use twitter how they used to, without right wing agenda being added to their twitter feed. Which is exactly what bluesky is. A twitter clone without the racists.
Dare I suggest that the reason for twitter becoming so right wing, is that it's a centralized social media website, subject to the crazed far right whims of the capitalist who bought it...
Twitter went right wing because of the model.
When itâs all about following people and very short forms of communication, it will eventually lean right.
Same way the lemmy format encourages nuance and ideas over people, so it will eventually lean left
Bluesky is at least semi-decentralized, however, though not to the same extent as something like Mastodon
I'd also argue that Twitter is also uniquely bad even among other problematic platforms
Bluesky is at least semi-decentralized
No it isn't, this is marketing and until the developers actually put their money where their mouth is and provide the genuine capacity for decentralization (not just along some narrow technical definition but actually decentralized in practice) this is pure marketing hype that you absolutely shouldn't trust until you are given indisputable proof and then you should still be skeptical because they can always pull the rug out from under you.
Bluesky is open source yes, but what they are talking about is the CLIENT side of Bluesky, the actual system is dependent upon proprietary code that is most definitely not open source.
It's actually more so the other way around. The backend (PDS and relays) is open source but I believe the AppView is not currently open source
https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
Why do bluesky advocates always concede the "appview" part is effectively centralized, mandatory to interact with as part of the community inside the silo of bluesky and is indefinitely considered a proprietary entity to bluesky themselves, to the point that the CEO of bluesky (a crypto person which should already be a red flag) has gone on record saying they haven't ruled out using "appview" to interject ads into the network as an avenue for monetization ... and then act like that doesn't undermine the basic sales pitch of bluesky in the first place?
I feel like I am being sold a boat by a salesman that just explained to me with a straight face that yes the boat technically has a huge hole in the bottom of it but that the rest of the boat is far more seaworthy than any boat ever and the builder is absolutely going to deliver by fixing the critical design flaw soon even though in this case doing so would existentially threaten the "boat" builder's business and besides the salesman knows one of the low ranking workman at the "boat" builders yard and he is very trustable.
"The way Bluesky is built largely prevents a business model solely relying on ads, because users could create alternative feeds without ads on its open protocol." - Jay Graber CEO of bluesky
This is incredibly disgenous to say, sure you could run your own entire seperate network using bluesky... why would you? You have to either choose to be in the big silo or you are banished to outside of it, a state of affairs the fediverse was specifically designed to stop from happening and yet it still struggles with overcentralization.
I am sorry, I have been on the fediverse for years and seen it struggle with the natural tendency for winners to win more and centralization to occur from bandwagoning (exhibit A: mastodon.social) and I think it is hilarious anyone who is actually paying attention thinks bluesky has a real chance of becoming and staying decentralized in any meaningful sense (especially when the investors knock on the door to pay a visit and say it is time to start delivering).
There are other app views in the works from other people, but yes in the current state it is rather centralized. That's why I started off saying it was semi-decentralized. I wasn't claiming it was super decentralized
You don't call it semi-boat if there is a gaping hole in the hull and no convincing indication the hole will be fixed or indeed any really solid evidence the hole wasn't put their on purpose to negate all the other floaty bits.
You either call it a scam or a $15 million boondoggle of a yacht that was designed so poorly that it can't even go in the water without sinking.
Everybody has been led by the hype into speaking about this boat as if it was a foregone conclusion it will float when nobody can even conclusively demonstrate the motives of the builders and financers is to create a boat that actually floats rather than just the vibe of one.
We have a perfectly seaworthy boat here and while it is ugly, obtuse and patched together it is still actually a working boat that was designed by people who would be absolutely mortified and ashamed to find out they somehow missed patching a gaping hole in the hull that allowed the cold brutal ocean of corporate money to rush in and effectively sink the ship before it could even set sail.
Monetization of the commons to the exhaustive extent modern capitalism demands is fundamentally at odds with any meaningful sense of decentralization and worse the health of the commons and the community members who compose it, it is surprisingly easy to understand if you just think about the basic incentive structure here.
Yep, and for anyone who curious why it's not actually decentralized, I highly suggest to read this thread from someone who worked on ActivityPub:
https://social.coop/@cwebber/113527462572885698
And part 2:
If nothing else I will personally find it very funny if Elon Musk spent $44,000,000,000 on something and then unintentionally destroyed it in just three years
He didn't spend 44 billion on twitter. He spent 44 billion to gain a hand in the 2024 election. He already won.
I'm still going to enjoy it if I get to watch the $44b not buy any more elections. I know he can afford to do it again, but you've got to take what joy you can get from the world, you know?
Maybe it didn't started for that goal.
The Saudis footed the bill for most of that $44bn - most is only out of pocket about $10bn of it iirc.
Fwiw he didn't actually intend to buy it, he was shitposting and got nailed by the SEC, only THEN did he try to work out what to do with it.
Unfortunately the "what" turned out to be destroying democracy and helping Trump turn the US into a feudal state
The Saudis footed the bill for most of that $44bn - most is only out of pocket about $10bn of it iirc.
I mean they definitely got their money's worth in terms of torpedoing one of the most threatening social media tools for politically destabilizing authoritarian regimes.
Anyone who wants to see everything Musk owns crash and burn?