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by ejj28 768 days ago
Seems to me like it's not. I rarely hear about it, I've never seen anyone link to a Bluesky post, and it has weird limitations due to it being on top of a new federated protocol (which I still don't understand the purpose of when the internet's already kinda settled on Mastodon/ActivityPub as the go-to for decentralized social media).

Even as they talk now about addressing the stuff that's missing from Bluesky like DMs and videos (which, no wonder it hasn't taken off when those features are absent), it still sounds like even when those features launch, they'll still be subpar. DMs not part of the AT protocol? Did they just not think of DMs when they designed the protocol? And only 90 second videos? Really? In my opinion, Bluesky isn't going to take off if this is the roadmap.
2 comments
_akhe 768 days ago
> I've never seen anyone link to a Bluesky post

Since Twitter/X stopped making some posts public and make it so hard to view profiles you'd think Bluesky would be all over this.

We had a small earthquake not too long ago in SF and I had no Twitter to check - that instant live Internet community is just gone, and it's not just that. Everything used to come out so fast on Twitter, it was a really exciting place to be. It's of course totally ruined now and has been for years, but it was once an awesome thing.

Not sure why Bluesky isn't all over Hollywood and politics, in a presidential election year no less. They're just not doing this very well.

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SkyMarshal 768 days ago
> Not sure why Bluesky isn't all over Hollywood and politics

Ugh, that would turn it into just another online cesspool.

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_akhe 768 days ago
At least people would use it.
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CuriousCosmic 768 days ago
> which I still don't understand the purpose of when the internet's already kinda settled on Mastodon/ActivityPub as the go-to for decentralized social media

The things bluesky wants to do well really just don't map well onto ActivityPub.

Things like:

- Custom feed providers - Custom indexers/firehoses - Labellers (i.e. content filtering/flagging services) - Proper, cross-instance moderation services - Separating identity from the instance

> DMs not part of the AT protocol?

Currently the AT protocol is basically all public. If you want DMs you need to work out an E2EE layer that can still tolerate moderation and a propagation system that doesn't leak details of who is messaging who. That's all very hard to do right. Even signal spent years trying to get this right and they have pretty centralized infrastructure. I'd rather no DMs at first with the expectation that they'll be done properly when they actually ship.

> And only 90 second videos? Really?

Mastodon sets a video limit of 99MB. If you wanted to match the quality of a 1080p 30fps youtube video for example, that 99MB would buy you about 82 seconds. So the 90 second limit really isn't that unreasonable. And if you want a longer form, external video embeds have been supported in the app since the beta.

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