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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

It looks like Bluesky is already in the lead of Twitter alternatives with fast growth and attracting normal users (not techies) and demand in less than a year after launching their app.

Users don't need to 'Choose a server' and aren't confused on signing up and know how to use basic features like search and can find the users that are who they say they are. For BlueSky, two months with this growth in adoption is very early days.

But we will see what happens when the invite system is lifted and if the users are retained enough on BlueSky and what the users on Twitter will decide to move on to if Twitter gets 'worse'. But it seems that BlueSky so far is winning amongst the rest of the other failed alternatives that have tried for years to challenge Twitter.

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I wonder how well the "find users who are who they say they are" is going to work once the test server starts federating. They've got this whole platform now with users who never got the brief on federation and its implications, so it'll be interesting to see what will happen once they unleash federated identities on the unsuspecting masses.

BlueSky is already worse because you can't just link to public skeets, you need to be in the special club to see the stuff people post. Sure, you could use some kind of external service that parses the underlying data, but what user is going to use that?

I'll happily stick to Mastodon until the people I follow all disappear to nostr or BlueSky. I might give running a BS server a go, but with the utter lack of documentation there is now I'm guessing that'll be in a few years at the earliest.

> Sure, you could use some kind of external service that parses the underlying data, but what user is going to use that?

I already do this for Twitter, given it fucks up Discord embedding, and also use a similar tool for Bluesky, called psky. All you have to do is turn the "b" in "bsky" upside down, and change it to "psky". Not hard to use. I've heard some Bluesky clients also give out "share" URLs that are world-readable.

That said I agree that posts should just be public (and my understanding is that the current state is temporary).

I hope the Bluesky PBLLC will submit their "AT protocol" to the ietf as an rfc. we already have an existing protocol though

Maybe they’re not submitting it because they’re worried the IETF will say “we already have an existing protocol” and use the standards carrot as a way to force them to make compromises.

they can submit an I-D if it were so desired:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/pubprocess/#:~:text=Anyone%20can%....

> But we will see what happens when the invite system is lifted

The devs have said that they don't intend to lifting the invite system, because having a tree of who invited who is a powerful tool for detecting things like spam.

It is not part of the protocol proper, and so once federation is turned on, it will be lifted in that sense, but it's not yet known how widespread the invite system will be used throughout the federation.

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