Mastodawn

Eppy NWS Aug 18, 2023

I had an epiphany about why BlueSky's forever invite system is pissing me off so much.

It's because it's designed-to.

Right now, a bunch of the talented people I follow are semi-gleefully posting their accounts as they get their golden tickets into the cool new place. And talented people, as they get their very few invites, they are inviting their cool talented friends to go hang out, but otherwise the rabble who only followed or commissioned them have to stay on the outside, because there aren't enough invites to go around.

That breeds resentment. It immediately shows folks where they are in the pecking order, and a majority of folks are going to realize they are lower than they felt they were or want to be.

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Eppy NWS Aug 18, 2023

And what makes Social Networks the most money? Angry people showing up to start drama. There are already folks starting to clap-back at artists posting their bluesky profiles going "STOP ASKING US TO FOLLOW YOU THERE. WE CAN'T YET. THAT'S BY DESIGN. THERE AREN'T ENOUGH INVITES FOR THE NORMIES" and the FIRST thing a lot of the normies are gonna do when they get on bluesky are gonna go digging in people's prior posts looking for 'God. this place is so fun and free without all the fuckin' normies', doing whatever the bluesky equivalent of a QRT is, and reading them for filth right there in public.

And bam: The artist and their followers are now embroiled in drama, staying extra long and providing bluesky with extra ad views, probably paying bluesky for some extra features like the ability to quiet-block whatever normie or make extra-long rebuttal posts and post higher quality GIFs about how the normie's mother is a whore.

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Eppy NWS Aug 18, 2023

And yeah, the artists being like "I AM SO GODDAMN HAPPY I GOT CHOOSENED IN THE GREAT BLUESKY CHOOSENING" is... not helping. And that goes double for the artists that loudly flounce other twitter alternatives for not having "good engagement" when they only made 8 posts and didn't interact with anyone else...

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HawkWolf (H. A. Kirsch)Aug 25, 2023

@EppyNWS will this have the effect of creating a Gab-esque echo chamber of furry artists who are like "wait are only other artists looking at my posts? that's not fun”

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Eppy NWS

@hakirsch Enh... Maybe? Furry artists seem to greatly enjoy looking at each other's posts.

Where I think the problems will arise when people who DONT want to see furry content keep getting shown it and get stroppy about it. (I've heard scuttlebutt that this has already happened because BlueSky is trying to use some sort of AI suggestion algorithm generator that doesn't need as many humans and is therefore doomed to be excruciatingly shitty and laughably bad). The other problem is the whole "Furry artists keep passing around the same $300 to each other for commissions and make lots of art but never actually make money" trap which means they'll have to go back to Twitter/furaffinity/less-fun-places to try and pull coin and will, likely as not, bitch loudly about it. Probably right when all the normies show up and are doing initial checks to see which people to buy art from... Hilariously warded away from the "Grumpy" ones who would've made bank if patient...