I am here: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social
I used this tool to find accounts that match on both platforms:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sky-follower-bridge...
Maybe that is the future for BlueSky as well, but at the moment I am enjoying it and more people I followed on Twitter are making the move.
I have an account there because so many people seem to be moving from Twitter to Bluesky instead of Mastodon, for understandable reasons, but I expect Bluesky to be be awash in bots, AI and Nazis within a year. That's just the way things go now.
Echo chambers are, by default, less combative.
As Twitter becomes more hiveminded, you can expect it to become less combative, as well.
Could it also be that people who left Twitter are simply less politically minded, and by definition will be less combative if they get to focus on their interests instead of their differences?
I left Twitter in 2017 because I was only there to get one liner jokes from professional comedians and follow some record label releases. I’m not joining any platform where memes and other low quality opinions are the primary modes of communication
Similarly, I expect Trump and Elon will have a falling out rather quickly. Two megalomaniacal narcissists don't generally play nicely for very long. When that happens, Elon won't be able to help himself from whacking the bees nest he's created, by criticizing Trump. I expect the combativeness of twitter to skyrocket soon afterwards.
Hardly appealing for someone like me who goes on twitter less because there's too much politics
The network effects of Twitter/X are just incredibly powerful. Even many people who ostensibly dislike the fact that it has become a right wing propaganda tool seem reluctant to actually leave.
I think there'll be a tipping point where nobody of value is posting enough for anybody else to bother checking in, death spiralling its usefulness. It's already 80% bots, grifters, and engagement farmers.
The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky. It's endless people saying "Hello, bluesky! I'm new here!" or "Hello, new bluesky users! Follow me!" Feels like there's less focus on content and more on the individuals themselves. It's further exemplified with weird stuff like "Bulgarian game devs with webbed toes between the ages of 33 and 47 Starter Pack". These starter packs get spammed nonstop and it makes it feel very cliquey, with lots of them being groups that had some degree of twitter "influence" trying to bring it over to Bluesky as-is and without others butting in.
Another thing that's strange to me is that lots of bluesky users post selfies almost nonstop and half of users have selfies as their profile photos. Which, I mean, that's their right. But I feel like with twitter, nobody cared what you looked like or what your background was.
I post on both, but I mainly browse twitter despite having no fondness for the dude running it. I never interact with political slop on twitter so its algorithm only suggests me incredible art. I never interact with selfies but bluesky keeps throwing them at me. Like, no, I really do not care about your cute new lipstick or whatever. I don't care about political hot takes. I just want to see art. And like 50% of it is art. But the other 50% is an endless feed of "look at me! As in literally, look at my face!" that I just cannot get rid of.
Maybe someday the novelty of it being the "new" thing will fade and the selfie obsessed people will go away while content will rise up, like it did with twitter. I hope so.
Honestly that sounds like it could be bots. Although maybe it is just people making new accounts.
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3laphnufp222...
It is in pre-enshittification phase.
> The problem is I don't see much interesting on Bluesky.
You have to search for things, follow a few people, and give the "Discover" facility something to work with I think. Also use the Feeds tab - search may bring up some feeds which are also super helpful.
When I delve into art or gamedev feeds and whatnot, I'm still hit in the face with selfies and people talking way too much about their personal life. I feel like I really need to dig for content, whereas with twitter, the top 10 things I see upon every refresh is some great art.
I know lots of artists have left it permanently for bluesky, and I try to follow them whenever they leave, but there's still a massive imbalance in the quality of content that the algorithm feeds and it's heavily in favor of twitter.
Totally agreed on this part, and, this lead me to a weird thought: maybe we're witnessing human adaptation of "[the users] are the product" phenomenon. Twitter the product was sold to a rich kid way over valuation and in form it can't be used commercially, like a consumer branded prepackaged food that are too blatant to serve at a restaurant.
IOW, it was sold at profit, with no opportunities left on the table. And a new instance of the product is being manufactured.
What I'm trying to say is, I think there is a chance that that's just how enshittification, social media, freemium-minus-mium model, etc works from this point on, as if it's junk food made of DAU.
And they seemed committed to giving researchers and academics lots of access to understand and share how the network was working, look for disinformation & "foreign influence" campaigns.
Now there's no one at the helm and all the researchers and civic interests have been given the boot. They are being threatened by ExTwitter to the tune of 1.5c per tweet accessed if I remember correctly. These people were helping you but there's this sense that finding out what's happening is risky for business, that it could hurt, when in fact the network is just being overrun, turned into the maelstrom, and is deeply into rot and decay stages.
What that means is moving is easy, meaning competition is possible, without the need to migrate platforms and rebuild followings and the network. Beyond that, ATProto supports custom record types, so one can build all the social media application types (Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Substack, ...) on the same social media fabric (ATProto)
I'm inclined to say the custom record type is a fifth core component that now exists thanks to ATProto. Monetization hasn't been widely discussed yet, Bluesky team has something besides ads in mind, but haven't publicly disclosed.
Yes, but if platform API allows using customizable third-party clients it is not really a problem for me (e.g. I can just enable chronological timeline, filter out all the ads and noise).
Twitter isn't the problem, Musk is the problem. Twitter was fine until he took over. Bluesky is Twitter - Musk.
I'd like to see a platform where after a certain number of people join, a new server is automatically created and new users are redirected there, similar to how MMO servers worked.
1. Your username can be your domain name. I’m @bradgessler.com, which means I can build more “equity” in my domain than I can on other platforms. It’s also really great for brands or open source projects that have their own website.
2. Lots of technical folks have come over from Twitter and the signal to noise ratio is much better. There’s less weird random videos, less people screaming past each other, less porn bots.
3. When I share a link on Bluesky, it doesn’t get penalized.
4. It’s a global namespace so I don’t have to worry about what server people are on that I want to follow. I struggled with this on Mastodon.
5. The UI is as good as Twitter. There’s been a few times now where I forget what network I’m using by just looking at the app.
6. Starter packs are handy to bring folks from your communities over. I created one for Ruby devs at https://go.bsky.app/HXB2cPh and one for companies built on Ruby at https://go.bsky.app/JQyXa2u
I fully expect Bluesky to become completely enshitified over time, but I think it’s going to have a pretty good run for a while. They’re doing a lot of things right and it has fun early Twitter vibes, but without the fail whale.
I kinda like the IDEA there, but no idea how you separate things like “I’m concerned about my individual rights” from politics?
And usually when people say “no politics” they mean “no politics I don’t like “.
Still in sympathize with the idea, I want to hear from people about what they’re doing and so forth, not a rehash of the news.
b) You can switch to the chronological feed which is much better. But as you say you can't make it the default.
From what I can see, bsky mostly consists of rebels. And since users flock where everyone else is, it will be an uphill battle for them to get Twitter’s userbase.
Admittedly I ran into less straight forward combativeness and that’s nice.
But still the content was just as inane and hot take heavy.
Granted I accept that “pretty much another twitter” is what the users want.
Twitter's greatest flaw—no, I won’t call it "X"—is its obsession with engagement to promote tweets. This creates the worst feed you can think of:
- People ask the dumbest questions, just to bait responses.
- Someone makes a reasonable point, and along comes the dumbest reply. Why? So others can pile on, calling them out, driving up engagement.
- External links are buried. Good articles? Forget it. They’ve vanished from my feed.
- The most toxic people are constantly pushed to my feed. And it's a losing battle to block them all. Keeping my feed politics-free is borderline impossible.
- The fact that you can buy a subscription and ensure that your tweets get highlighted more is absurd. It has made it really easy to get the worst accounts in your feed.
It’s exhausting. I am just there because I think it is still a good marketing channel. But I am not sure anymore if the pros outweigh the cons.
As for it being an echo chamber, that’s a function of who chooses to join. Again, there are no algorithms, so no viewpoints are favored by the site (unlike on some other sites, ahem). And the protocol ensures you can’t really be banned.
I find it great because there is a ton of interesting people. It is not a website for discussions, it is for one off messages.
Even before the election results on Tuesday, the vibes on X have been steadily been getting worse from my perspective, and the fact that Musk will get more power and influence from a Trump win may have been its Digg 2.0 moment.
I have replaced my Twitter contact information in my HN profile with my Bluesky contact info, and will be doing the same on my personal website soon.
I'm sure there's a huge cohort of people active here have never heard of Digg except that it was a thing that fumbled and made Reddit bigger.
Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.
They remember fondly when left-crazy ruled Twitter. They forget that the opposite and more-enduring right-reaction formed as part of the same dynamic.
If Twitter had never existed, Donald Trump would still just be playing a rich guy on The Apprentice, and licensing his name to developers of hotels and colognes. Elon Musk would just be pushing electric cars and rockets and solar panels.
Which is why this effort to rebuild Twitter as BlueSky is not good news.
I know it seems that we all need to develop a fever again to dislodge Trump. I don't think we do. Incumbents have gotten wrecked all over the place. The world is not getting better. Four years from now, Team Trump will be the incumbents, and the voters will express their dissatisfaction again. This will happen without efforts to make society start boiling over again. Those will just cause more blowback. We don't need another Twitter.
