Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week / A ‘majority' of the new users are from the US, indicating that people are searching for a new platform as an alternative to X.
Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week / A ‘majority' of the new users are from the US, indicating that people are searching for a new platform as an alternative to X.
There are now more than 14.5 million users total on the platform.
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Everything is better than Twitter I guess.
Is this running on a modified version of Mastodon?
BlueSky is its own thing with its own federated protocol called ATproto. They have an explanation in their docs on how it works, different features. There's a bridge between the two as well, a bit janky but effective.
It's a federated protocol, but the network itself isn't meaningfully federated, and is basically just Bluesky (the company) infrastructure. Hopefully that changes, because until then, it's still a centralised social media platform, despite the underlying technology
They have no reason to change that. They will long term want the exact same thing that twitter has, access to all user data and control of the platform.
Rumors are indicating that they want to offer some subscriptions to users(domain registration and hosting of various bluesky components).
The company is currently TINY, under 50 employees. So as long as the infra costs stay low, it won’t take much. If enough users get vanity domains, and they get some govt/enterprise accounts for hosting bsky.cnn.com and such.
So the idea is that they want to get to some ethical monetization strategy before releasing the software to aggregate content is released, and federation is enabled.
I would happily bet money that federation keeps getting kicked down the road. "Oh, we have to do X first. Also Y just came up, and you know it was a waning moon last night so...." They have no reason to enable it as long as things go their way.
So you can see mastodon posts on bluesky and bluesky posts on mastodon?
No, not unless the person whose posts you want to see opted into bridging their account.
If both parties bridge their accounts they can follow eachother, or if one person bridges their account others can follow them.
I don't think you can see boosts of stuff not on your platform though, and I don't know how interacting with a bridged account works if both of you are bridged. If only the person you're following is bridged they definitely won't see it, but I don't know if that changes if you're both bridged
How do you opt-in to that?
You opt in by following the bridgy fed account for your platform, so for Mastodon that'd be: https://bsky.brid.gy/bsky.brid.gy
There's one on each platform, and when you follow it it'll create you a bluesky/mastodon counterpart and send you the link to that bridged account
And I still to this day don't get the appeal of the twitter model
Yes, I much prefer following topics over people. Every time I glance at microblogging, there is just so much noise. At least lemmy-style forums have upvotes to surface quality content rather than the jumbled mess that microblogs are. No matter how much I like someone (even IRL friends/family), I won't be interested in their every passing thought, it's just exhausting.
Me neither, but I guess once you start following enough people, or the platform has a large enough amount of people posting there, it becomes "interesting" by quantity, if not quality.
I think I tried twitter for a week back in 2018, didn't "get it", deleted the account. Tried Mastodon last year, enjoyed the much larger character limit, but didn't feel like staying.
"The number of characters is limited based on old SMS standard! Lulz!"
Yeah, good way to have meaningful conversations where you can bring convincing arguments! /S
The amount of internet spaces with generous character limits and shit discussions makes me think that's far from the biggest issue.
It becomes a pretty major issue when it's one of the main sources of information for people though...
That's a different thing, and I don't think bigger character limits would help with a culture of not reading past headlines, not verifying and sharing sources, lacking moderation, and so on. Bigger issues.
It's good for when you want to keep up with what people or organizations you're interested in are up to. Artists, authors, game developers, etc.
It sucks for any kind of in-depth content or conversation, including politics.
But that's just Facebook, why would I have twitter if that is my only motivation?
I feel like Facebook is much worse for that, but I haven't touched Facebook in many years so I couldn't tell you why I feel that way.
No, and it doesnt federate even though they promised that a long time ago. Unless they do, they will inevitably also go to shit, there is no way around the enshittification pipeline. Just stick to mastodon and invest in a long term future.
For a slightly more detailed explanation: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
Maybe offtopic, but does anyone has a good guide on how to join Mastodon? I'm still trying to find a good instance.
The best guide isn't written down: don't be afraid to try a few instances until you find one you like!
Once you're on Mastodon and following people, you'll start to notice the servers and gravitate towards the ones you like.
I would advise against mastodon.social since it is the biggest and also has some problems with moderation. But some people like it, so maybe it is good enough also.
To choose a server, check out https://fedi.tips/which-server-should-i-join-how-do-i-find-out-more-about-a-server/
The fedi.tips account also posts a lot of helpful tips and themed lists of accounts to follow/discover so I recommend following them too!
Appreciate the info!
No elon involved so it has an enormous advantage over Twitter
Thats an advantage so thin it is almost invisible. Its a centralized platform, it could be bought by Elon or shutdown for whatever reason at any second. Being this shortsighted about the future of global communications systems is not a great idea when Trump is about to take office.
That's the same advantage all the other options have, too.
So you are of the opinion that the bluesky devs are currently lying about working to get it federated?
I wasn't thinking about that at all, but they probably aren't trying very hard, if I had to guess. What's their current monetization model?
Not sure. You can run your own instance right now so they have enabled that but you can't yet federate with the main instance. I believe you can store your own data in your own instance though but I'm not sure.