Anecdotal, but so many people in my circles have jumped ship to Bluesky that the transition is pretty seamless at this point. It feels more like Twitter than what became of Twitter does.
Curious: what happens when Bluesky has all the same people/posts as Twitter? Will it be any better? Or will it just be the same thing on a new website?
Well, for a start it won't have Musk trying to break it. Like, its worst near-term case is probably 2022 Twitter. It's unlikely they'll do pay-for-attention, say; musk!Twitter is the only social network I know of to have done that outside the dating/hookup site world.
Also, though, it has significantly better self-serve moderation tools than Twitter ever did (they _kind_ of existed for pre-Musk Twitter as third-party stuff, though Musk's API changes broke most of them). For instance, I subscribe to a moderation list which auto-blocks transphobes, so I don't have to read their One Joke again and again (seriously, they've pretty much had the one thing for the last 20 years; you'd think they could at least come up with some new material). People who, er, enjoy the one joke are of course free to enjoy it by not subscribing to that mod list.
I do expect it to get worse over time as more people join, tbh; the current user base is rather self-selecting. But I don't think it will get as bad as current-Twitter. If it does, er, onto the next thing, I suppose.
I found the moderation and choosing your own feed with blocklists so far implies that even if you copied and pasted all the odious people from Twitter, I still would never see them, nor would any other thinking person, and they would die in darkness. Also, there are examples of the most odious people joining and BlueSky banning them sua sponte almost immediately.
Do you have any examples of the odious people being banned?
It was my understanding that with most social networks the moderation is usually very opaque/can only be gleaned from public comments. Examples would help to understand how BlueSky would systematically moderate differently than Twitter (or what the ban process is like).
Interestingly, if blocks are public, I guess you can audit the state of the interconnectedness between people, (seemingly what https://clearsky.app/ does?) and therefore, what has happened to the people odious enough to receive these blocks but not odious enough to be banned.
It's worth mentioning that X's problems with toxicity are greatly enhanced by its current leadership, so even if everybody switched to bsky tomorrow it would be different. There are far better tools for users to manage their own experience on bsky than X allows.
But, assume that bsky does turn to shit too... if nothing else the (successful?) migration from X shows that people are capable of moving - should bsky face its own calamity the friction to move again will be lower.
There's reason to hope that it won't end in total disaster though. It should (at some point) be possible to federate with bsky in a meaningful way, and perhaps a migration can be even easier than this one (i.e. you can switch to another instance that is run differently).
The ability to control your own experience via custom feeds makes Bluesky so delightful. The new X algo made it impossible to just follow the people I wanted to.
This launched today, trying to address your valid concerns:
> Bluesky is an opportunity to shake up the status quo. They have built scaffolding for a new kind of social web. One where we all have more say, choice and control.But it will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart. [0]
> FreeOurFeeds aims to build a new social media ecosystem on top of the AT Protocol, an open, decentralized framework designed to enable interoperable social media platforms, giving users greater control over their data, algorithms, and online experience (it’s what Bluesky runs on). They want to leverage this tech to create a social media ecosystem focused on individual control, creativity, community well-being, and free expression.
> They basically want to build Bluesky out from one company into a whole ecosystem of different apps and companies by making a non profit foundation that opens up its underlying technology so anybody can build on it. [1]
That last part is not very accurate. Anybody can build on it now. Their goal is to make a second AT Proto Relay [2] that is not under the control of Bluesky.
I don't believe that will happen. It looks like the eternal September will never leave the current giants. As more and more of the world came online, we passed a threshold where a majority of users are passive and undiscerning. The current giants are the generation of platforms that benefitted from this.
It will be better because Bluesky gives users control of the algo & moderation via the open ATProto(col). We get choice and competition without the switching cost (after you move over to ATProto)
No, it's not just that. Twitter had already been going downhill when Musk took over. Even if the old ownership was still in charge, now would be a good time for early adopters to find the next generation of platforms.
Curious :why Bluesky and not Mastodon? I would have thought that decentralization would be a better safeguard against Bluesky becoming Twitter after being successful...
Honest question: I left Twitter so long ago (I guess that I never got it) and am not really using Mastodon... so I think that I'm not the right people
Bluesky is much easier to use than Mastodon, particularly for non-technical folks. It’s also has an UI that looks a lot like Twitter from 2-3 years ago.
I feel like “much” is an exaggeration. In my day to day use, the only annoyance I regularly run into is having to tap an extra link or two in order to follow someone on a different network.
I big question is whether "official" accounts will move to Bluesky - governments, businesses, organizations, etc. I see some, but not too many.
Of course, maybe that's fine, some people prefer it that way. But, for me, it seems nice to have a common place where organizations put out announcements.
Honestly I thought most of that was strictly Facebook's domain. Maybe that's just the consequences of living in a smaller metro than most, the folks around here are slower on the uptake of new tech. But yeah, none of my local municipal orgs are on Twitter or ever have been in any capacity. They use Facebook for everything, that and local businesses are the only reason I still have a Facebook account.
I second your anecdote. I ran both for a good amount of time but the last time I went to X, I opened it on my phone, waiting for a coffee, and got 3 posts about idiotic culture war nonsense chased with an ad for a crypto scam, and I genuinely aloud said, "what the fuck am I still on this for" and deleted it. Haven't missed it once since.
I'm not sure why but blue sky serves me a lot of very specific content I'm not interested in seeing and no matter how many dozens of pictures I choose (show less like this) on, it continues to show.