Matt BlazeMy decision about whether to try Bluesky depends on what everyone else does. I just want to be where everyone else is, and not be around too many Nazis. My needs are simple.
What I *don't* want is 10 zillion social media du jour accounts.
nak@mattblaze something about one account to rule them all…
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸@Nak @mattblaze This is where I had hope for Berners-Lee’s Inrupt, in which the data itself is owned by individuals who give permission for social networks to pick up or not. But it seems to not be going anywhere. Or maybe they sold out. It’s hard to tell from a quick assessment.
Dan Riley@Nak @mattblaze login with twitter oauth on all of them, what could go wrong?
verb (printfJess) 🦄@mattblaze It's kinda like Instant Messenger clients back in the 90s. We ended up with friends spread across Yahoo, Excite, AOL, MSN, ICQ, and others... Anytime there was something new happening, we had to repeat the same message over and over. Chat rooms made things easier but not by much because they were also separate social circles, and if you were offline, you missed the conversation entirely.
We're on the precipice of another change. And I'm curious to see what social media evolves into.
EvilKiru 🇮🇸 he/him@mattblaze I know what you mean, having joined 3 other new services, before I finally put in the time to find a Mastodon instance to join. I immediately gave up on 1 of them, was semi-active on 1 of them for a few months, gave up on the third (as in, I didn't bother to follow-up when I finally got an invite email), and now I'm only active over here.
Before the #TwitterTakeover I hadn't been active there for a very long time, but went back to observe the drama, and finally quit cold-turkey (as in, I haven't logged back in) after experiencing how much nicer Mastodon is.
PJ "Vote Green" CoffeyI think it depends on why you're on SocMed.
For good, thoughtful conversation outside of your normal bubble, this is excellent.
For supporting yourself as an artist/creative, it is less good in terms of numbers, and because of hostility as opposed to support from randoms.
For maintaining a career in the public eye? Terrible, you earn the enmity of the media by being here, free from ads and popularity algorithms.
Everyone has to choose their own path.
And if Bluesky uses ads it will tolerate as many Nazis and bots as legally possible because that's the job of corporations.
I lay out an analysis of the economic drivers here:
https://mastodon.ie/@Homebrewandhacking/110270420198121286
My tolerance for such is zero but again these things vary.
PJ Coffey (@[email protected])
I've been reading and listening to stuff about how social media works. Axiom 1: Services must be paid for == There's no such thing as a free launch. Axiom 2: For profits always want more money. From 1, we know that some shrug their shoulders about surveillance capitalism and accept that ads pay for things. From 2, we know that more eyeballs on ads = more money, therefore more people = money = good 1/T #SocialMedia #Bluesky #AttentionEconomy #Bots #Fascism #SurveillanceCapitalism
Joost@Homebrewandhacking @mattblaze "For good, thoughtful conversation outside of your normal bubble"
Honestly, i feel like this is only half true, at least for me.
I see a lot of good, thoughtful conversation on Mastodon, and it’s blissfully free from disruption by trolls or haters. But it actually feels quite a lot like being inside a bubble, at least politically: the cultural, ideological and geographical horizon seems fairly narrow.
@Homebrewandhacking @mattblaze I see plenty of good, thoughtful conversation on Twitter too, even now still (a question of following the right people). But it comes with pretty continuous disruption by trolling and hostility in comments from randos. On the flip side, the cultural-political-geographical horizon seems wider, as does the range of subjects that gets a critical mass of posts or knowledgeable users.
Pär Björklund@mattblaze same, I basically want an invite to bluesky to reserve my username in case it's the next big thing. Not really interested in using it for now
Norman Wilson@mattblaze With you on all counts.
Matt Sicker@mattblaze how many useless domain names do you own? 😁
Kevin McCurley@mattblaze I have over 500 inboxes on email. I have only a couple of outboxes.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m https://bsky.app/profile/mattblaze.bsky.social on Bluesky. We’ll see.
I have no idea whether I’ll stick around there. I don’t want a zillion different accounts to check all the time, so whatever ends up feeling like home is probably where I’ll stay.
There’s a lot I like about this place and the fediverse concept, but frankly, I still feel like a slightly unwelcome guest here six months in. Who knows.
Lauren Weinstein@mattblaze BS' "moderation" model and issues relating to control of nodes by administrators (or not) suggest that it will face a variety of content-related regulatory and other challenges that could quickly become chaotic as its userbase grows. Too soon to be sure, of course.
@lauren I suspect there’s no sustainable model for social media platforms. But it may be possible to have something usable and worthwhile for a while before it inevitably implodes. That might be ok.
@mattblaze Social media as we know it is probably doomed. Details and timeline TBA.
RevJeber@lauren @mattblaze
"...as we know it...". I agree. There's obviously a need for a centralized communication app, but it will need to be rethought and may even need new technology not yet discovered.
"...as we know it...". I agree. There's obviously a need for a centralized communication app, but it will need to be rethought and may even need new technology not yet discovered.
@lauren @mattblaze Imminent death of USENET predicted. Film at 11.
@oclsc @mattblaze And die, for all practical purposes, it did. But it led the way to much worse. More to the point, the regulatory environment is utterly different now -- for all routine purposes it didn't exist for Usenet back then.
@lauren We got, what, 8-10 years out of Twitter before it started to turn into a disinformation weapon, and another few years after that before it completely imploded, so that's not a bad run. If Mastodon, or Bluesky, or whatever last half that long, that's still something. Anything still usable after 5 years might be like a spacecraft that keeps sending signals back after its batteries were supposed to be dead already. An unexpected bonus.
StuartB@mattblaze
@lauren
I've had accounts on various Fediverse servers (mostly Mastodon, but also others) since 2017.
And I wasn't in the first wave, or any of the first few waves.
I think we've succesfully passed that 5 year limit you talk of.
@lauren
I've had accounts on various Fediverse servers (mostly Mastodon, but also others) since 2017.
And I wasn't in the first wave, or any of the first few waves.
I think we've succesfully passed that 5 year limit you talk of.
Jeff Craig@mattblaze @lauren At this point, I'm looking forward to a return to smaller, more focused communities. Though there is a major problem to be solved in discovery of those communities.
@foxxtrot @mattblaze And controlling them. Inferior moderation systems make that effectively impossible.
Mike D@mattblaze
I'd prefer you stay even if it means I continue to see B&W photos.
I'd prefer you stay even if it means I continue to see B&W photos.
john spurling@mattblaze You're one of my favorite accounts here, FWIW. I can't blame you for losing patience with self-righteous jerks, though.
Michael Helm@synec @mattblaze Unfortunately (or otherwise) they are everywhere so ....
Bjorn Toft Madsen@mattblaze for me it gets better and better as I follow more interesting people & #hashtags. The first couple of months it felt like a desert … my trick to unlock the value was looking at people I followed initially and seeing who they followed. Now my graph feels fairly rich - too many posts actually and I am starting to think if client-side filtering is the answer to produce a snackable timeline where I can keep up.
Sami Seppo@BjornToftMadsen @mattblaze #Hashtags following – as a powerful common sense feature – should be better promoted on fediverse microblogging platforms. Hopefully progress will happen with that. 👍
@BjornToftMadsen @mattblaze It's weird that I can't even see what tags I follow, without typing them on search box and checking each by each.
@samiseppo @mattblaze yeah, #hashtags are so much more valuable as a way to build an interesting timeline. In fact it’s the only way to create a sense of “#curation” but #mastodon clients still treat them like the also-rans they were on late-stage Twitter.
@BjornToftMadsen @[email protected] #Curation by #hashtags following caresses one's curiosity and filtering interesting issues from feeds.
It's a shame if #Mastodon apps tend to ignore such power-feature.
Then again tag-following to an extend does tax the amount of following one might otherwise hurry to collect.
But in the longer sight it keeps one's feed more interesting and also suitable surprising when one's #echoChamber is less whole and not that solidly stable.
David Penfold 
@mattblaze Boo, hiss. Splitter!
@mattblaze Do you have an invite?
Deviant Ollam@mattblaze Same Same. I give it a pretty short time window for them to get their moderation act together.
Most of us are feeling pretty raw and abused by other platforms and I think many of us are on a very short fuse when it comes to dealing with hate speech.
Lou@deviantollam @mattblaze having been tied up in the hellrope over there for the last 10+ hours: they pivoted and delivered what they say are protocol level blocks in a few days. That was a huge t&s thing that stopped a lot of my friends from wanting to be there. So muting accounts, threads, and blocking is there. Beyond that, I think more of the content specific moderation featureset is dependent on their protocol development.
If you aren't sold on their "current state" and/or their ability to deliver on a centralized platform, I'd hold off for a bit. Its not clear yet how they're forcing adherence to the protocol spec at a technical level between servers, so once they federate, it might all burn for a bit.
But because of their EXTREMELY handy domain handles serving as a quasi-authentication, namesquatting isn't nearly as much of an issue, and as long as you're clear you're not there yet on your existing platforms, you should be fine re: impersonation.
Derek 🌈@mattblaze just stay here and hang out. It works just fine ❤️🤓🙈
mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)@mattblaze unfortunately, bluesky rushed to implement blocking, not when they had an influx of nazi members, but when trans women started talking back to matt yglesias.
@atax1a an echo of 2018 here when Eugen only started paying attention to the Mastodon mod interface after a bunch of trans people and allies gave Wil Wheaton a hard time!
Chuck Taggart, Private Eye@mattblaze Well, there’s this. https://mastodon.social/@Green_Footballs/110278093126380845
@mattblaze In my humble opinion, I think we’re all better off here.
Everything I am hearing about Bluesky indicates that it makes Twitter appear to be well moderated.
Something about polishing comes to mind.
Pedro Mendes@mattblaze I’m staying on Mastodon and don’t care for Bluesky…
Oblomov@mattblaze what's are you going to do if where everywhere goes is also full of Nazis?
@mattblaze I'm guessing there's going to be some Pareto optimality to the people to Nazi ratio
Luca@mattblaze Atm it is just a whole lot of shitposting really. 🤷🏻♂️
Daniel Thomas@mattblaze Yes. I am also satisfied where I am and so don't want to faff with another thing.
Robert Atkins@mattblaze It’s amazing to me that this appears to be a controversial take.
D J Capelis@mattblaze tiktok is actually pretty fun!
(But perhaps more seriously see you wherever folks end up.)
Maximilian Scholz@mattblaze Their data use policy sounds like the worst possible option.
Umbrae@mattblaze
Would love to have you on Spoutible.
Would love to have you on Spoutible.