What’s your take on where Bsky will take “safety”?

I’ve seen right-leaning satire sites get flagged as “Intolerance”, which is fueling a fire that Bsky will cater to a left-leaning audience.

The weakness in AT seems to be the relay servers. Data/posts may be edited or deleted on a PDS, but once published what is the mechanism to alter or delete in clients/relays downstream?

Also what’s the mechanism to prevent AT from turning into a firehouse of usenet bot spam?

Being banned is some of the best user privacy around. Can't beat that.

Was she grinding code on the clone app, or simply telling other folks what to build? To quantify experience, it requires accompanying detail.

Sadly Archive can't pull the entire article.

Anyone have a link for the full thing?

It doesn't matter, the quality of discourse is very different

What Bluesky gives all users is the choices and control at an individual level, and the ability to operate their own moderation labellers if they so choose

They have taken the controls from the corporation and given them to the people. People use these tools to remove the trolls and unproductive discourse, the fresh start means it is not a sisyphean task to keep your feed and comments cleaner

This post from Mark Cuban sums up the general vibes: https://bsky.app/profile/mcuban.bsky.social/post/3lbx7p3vdgs...

It suppresses outgoing links, which is like, the whole reason for many content creators to be on a website like it.

Serious research on the topic is unambiguous in that it promotes right-wing content: https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298669/musk-trump-endo...

From my limited research, most new Bluesky users are ecstatic they have regained the ability to gang-report and tattle on people they don't like again.

I used to like Musk pre-Twitter, but he's turned into such an immature person -- or maybe he always was and now can just flaunt it without consequences.

Being immature is fine if you're alone in your basement hacking away, not when you have the power to single-handedly control the (formerly) most useful digital public square in the world, and use it to your own political ends.

Here's what the toddler Musk said about Bluesky yesterday:

https://imgur.com/a/AOd6lIp

At least we know it's getting to him.

It's worth noting that Bluesky has exponentially grown to 23MM users on the back of changes that increasingly force X users to engage with what begins as a minority of trolls.

These types of users are not some noble vanguard of the free speech of the wise masses, or whatever else proponents try to portray them as - quite the opposite. Who do you actually know IRL who's a bitcoin-obsessed tradcath neo-nazi?

The "freedom of speech" being afforded here isn't going to the benefit of scientists or economists with technical misgivings of a small part of some overreaching left-anarchist agenda. If it were, the "free speech" crusade would be much easier to understand. But for every Jordan Peterson, there's twelve Nick Fuenteses, being treated as if their opinions have the same value. These types of users are a very vocal minority exceedingly committed to flowing a firehose of low-quality, sneery, fact-free, outrage-bait content. And fewer and fewer people are interested in any of it.

"Free speech" is the government-level abstraction. Private platforms are better to moderate their service, because this specific contingent ruins every platform they're permitted to dominate. It's the Nazi bar problem in a nutshell.

X's usership is dropping like a rock[1] as Bluesky's growth surges[2]. Nobody wants to be forced to engage with these types of users, and the trends demonstrate this. If I were one of X's investment partners, I would be fuming at Elon's abject squandering of my perfectly good investment capital.

If this is the platform Elon actually wants, then fine and dandy. Just don't complain when the result is different than what you expected and huge amounts of people leave instead of assimilating to the hivemind.

[1]: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-los... [2]: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/11/26/bluesky-plans-to-qu...

Would you be able to link just one example of high engagement, horrible racist shit against black people?

Weird, I created an account for a family member last evening, and I didn't see anything racist at all. Without following anyone I only saw ads and some tweets by Elon Musk.

Wow I have been on twtr dor years, never seen this.

Why don't you mind racist shit against black people in forums and 4Chan? Do you think black people shouldn't mind it either? Where else do you think racism is acceptable?

Not a Musk fan myself but I echo your sentiment about Twitter. I have mostly used it to lurk and follow tech personalities that post things I enjoy reading.

Now I can’t open it at work because the main page is likely to contain horribly racist or otherwise bigoted memes and diatribes from people I’ve never followed or interacted with.

From the linked interview at https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24108872/bluesky-ceo-grab...:

> And so, mid-2021, they interviewed me along with some other folks and then chose me to lead Bluesky based on this vision that I pitched for how we were going to build Bluesky, which is essentially how we’ve built it. And so that’s how I got involved.

Considering that she was not hired _just now_, it would be more reasonable if she is criticised on the basis of what she has done there last 3+ years rather than based on vague qualification-based arguments. Though I am also curious as what you think would make good enough qualifications for such a position, because I do not think that very traditional CEO qualifications would work that well here.

You don't need qualifications to become the CEO of a brand new company, which is what BlueSky basically was when she got the job. It doesn't matter how she got it at that early stage.

Seeing that company grow, and remaining CEO through that transition (and beyond) on the other hand isn't for everyone. I'm not a user or a customer, but from all the publicity and excitement, it looks like she's doing a pretty good job so far.

You seem under qualified to make this assertion. On what basis do you think you can make this claim?

Handed out? She built it.

Self-appointment? Nobody stops you from founding your own company and becoming a CEO of it.

[flagged]

The hope is being open and decentralised are counteracting forces to keep bluesky in check if they attempt to pull the rug.

We're yet to see how this turns out in practice. I do fear that the ATProto model means that Bluesky is still a pretty central component in the ecosystem. Mastodon, in comparison, seems to be more resiliant to one 'instance' screwing things up.

If Bluesky shut down all their servers tomorrow with no notice, what will happen to the network? If Mastodon shut down their servers (mastodon.social), users on that instance would be screwed, but me and many of the people I follow aren't on there so we would be fine.

I can’t tell what their business model is - it seems creepily like the original twitter in that it’s not about making money but about making connections etc etc. Which is great until you need money.

Because of baseless nostalgia, you’ll always prove yourself right in this matter.

Focusing on the things that are good and beautiful and making the future better than today would be a good start for someone with your mindset.

Bluesky reminds me of Twitter around ~2008, and Twitter only really got enshittified to the point that I barely use it this year. So I'm optimistic that we'll get a good decade in at least.

Your cynicism is well founded, but until that happens, enjoy the platform.

From some of the comments here, it sounds like BlueSky started with healthy dose of enshitification: censorship and suspensions.

ex-twitter?