Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users | Hacker News Reader

Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users

bsky.social

35 pointsmkeeter30 comments

I'm of course very skeptical more VC is a good thing and will continue using my profile on Bluesky to grow my newsletter[0] just in case.

That said, if anyone can make it work, it's the team there. It's no accident the CEO was able to navigate Bluesky's exit from Twitter.

[0] https://kyefox.com/newsletter/

There's been a large tech migration to BlueSky the past few days. Initially I was really excited as it was mostly high signal people, reminiscent of HN or early Twitter. However, I quickly encountered there's a large existing userbase that adopted it because of lefty / anti-Musk echo chamber views.

Matt Yglesias, a milquetoast centrist liberal Harris voter, founder of Vox, had his comments entirely brigaded by leftists doxing his old house, threatening him with hammers, and the highest liked comment is: "matty i hate to break it to you but the majority of this website would chase you around with a shovel" https://bsky.app/profile/manateejay.bsky.social/post/3k7x4lk...

You'd think if the milieu was intellectual, you'd have some reasonable debates about policy but it's all "gtfo" and threats.

Expecting ideological consistency from twelve million people seems like wishful thinking.

I didn't indicate that at all. What I expect in a platform I'd want to use is thoughtful discussion from diverse perspectives. Leaving right-wing echo chamber filled with godawful comments to join left-wing echo chamber filled with godawful comments isn't much of an improvement. I think HN treads this far better.

"echo chambers" are groups with ideological consistency. Expecting everyone to prioritize "thoughtful discussion" is asking for consistency: some people aren't interested in discussion. A few accounts saying the same stuff doesn't mean that all the accounts are.

I'm not saying anything said against Matty are good or bad, just that like, you're taking one incident and claiming that the whole site is one thing. It's really not.

It's not just one incident though. This was over Matt's entire Bluesky tenure and there are many more examples elsewhere like: https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1849556209956769937/photo/1

I don't think you'll find almost any post in the 50% right of US political opinion that wouldn't be viciously attacked as a way to enforce conformity rather than debate its merits. That's an echo chamber to me and most people I reckon.

I’d say a large part of that is quickly dissolving —- they had less than 2M users at the time, and now have over 13M. I’m no Matt Iglesias fan and I don’t expect him to ever be given a warm welcome by any zoomer-dominated space, but obviously threats are an easy no-go.

Hopefully they get a handle on that; a reputation for lax moderation re:violence could easily deflate their sudden hype.

Yeah it's explicitly against our mod rules. https://bsky.social/about/support/community-guidelines

That sounds nearly indistinguishable from the caliber of bottom-barrel discussion that happens on Twitter/X. Not to say it's justifiable on either platform, but I can't really recall any threads on Twitter promoting high-value content over funny reactionary gobbledygook.

I'm in agreement there about the first part, although I still find some high value thread on Twitter. Was hopeful BlueSky was going to be a lot better but I'd rather not have to sift through crud on either. Hopeful one day that can be true.

I was not a big Twitter user, so this may have been possible there as well, but...

I have been really enjoying the ability to create my own user Lists, and then being able to pin them to my Feeds. I have one for Astro, one for Web Dev, etc.

The next feature that I really want to see is the ability to move all users in a Starter Pack directly into one of my own Lists. That's a nice way to 10x my list size by interest group. The coolest thing is that I just created a decent feature request for that, and I know it will at least be considered.

Interest groups are something that I have realized is why I still come back to Reddit a lot. Nothing else does that as well as Reddit. While big Bsky Lists are not the same thing, it does scratch that same itch.

I could imagine user curated Lists becoming a bigger thing on Bksy, as far as finding other user's great lists and pinning them to my own feeds.

Do you find it interesting to browse for interests specifically on Bluesky? I'm very selective about who I follow and so my chronological feed is very relevant to me. There's a couple folks I have that push the boundaries of how activist-y I want my feed to be, but they're not so out there that I get angry (and if they are they get unfollowed.) Just curious if you find more value in the List approach than a chronological one.

Yes, mostly why I use it. In my case, I also follow too many people for the Following feed to show me everything, by everyone.

Also, sometimes I am in the mood for one nerdy topic, while other times I am in the mood for another.

Apologies for missing your reply for so long.

Thanks for the reply! I'll try the list approach myself. The Mutuals list is one of my favorites because I catch stuff I wouldn't otherwise.

There's still a large lefty userbase but centrists are growing on the network and I think at this point in time that kind of behavior won't be tolerated anymore because there's enough diversity in the network to push back. In my experience Bluesky is a lot less homogeneous than the other splinter networks like Mastodon or Lemmy which all converged on the same exact nerd archetype. YMMV but if you're a centrist I would certainly try the network out.

Unfortunately Twitter Matts (Matt Yglesias, Matt Bruenig etc) are an invasive species to blue sky, and the native species don’t know that annoyance and anger is what they feed on.

13M+ users would put bluesky's user count above mastodon, according to this page:

https://mastodon-analytics.com/

I would be interested in some stats that compare the number of active users, and also number of users who actually made use of decentralization features (i.e. use a custom domain instead of bsky.social).

I'm worried the need for growth will start to hurt what's otherwise still a good place. On the "Discover" feed there's an occasional carousel of accounts you're suggested to follow and being unable to turn that off is the first thing that's started to make it feel like the bad parts of the Twitter user experience.

It's possible unpin the Discover feed at least. If they pull a Twitter/X and make it the default then I'll be worried.

What's the worry if you can use a different client with a different interface?

> Bluesky’s upcoming premium plan won’t give paid users special treatment

https://www.engadget.com/social-media/blueskys-upcoming-prem...

This is the sensible way to do it, assuming they stick to it. I don’t think anyone could reasonably look at Twitter’s upranking of blue ticks and how “yeah, that’s a sensible way to monetise”.

There is a huge changeover now with academics switching to Bluesky

I am finding many astronomers on there and other scientists.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/twitter-academics-x-elon-...

Yup it’s pretty crazy how quickly it’s changing now. Kelsey Hightower brought over a small army of startup/tech influencers last week when he quit Twitter, and I agree the astronomy community in particular is shockingly robust. Casually got to congratulate someone on their JWST image the other day, and the JWST itself has an active account. And so many astrophotographers!

If you’re interested in such things, make sure to scroll through the “feeds” and sub to a few relevant ones. There’s also a “starter packs” feature allowing aggregators to suggest people to follow. As of now the social science spaces are a little quiet in comparison to tech, politics, and astronomy, but I have hope they’ll grow.

As Twitter becomes more and more monocultural, the exodus of academics will only accelerate, IMHO. I mean, they have NPR on Bluesky! Can’t beat that.

First the artists changed over and now the academics.

What's weird is that PBS isn't on Bluesky (yet) because didn't Musk start to treat them very toxicly and label them "state-affiliated" (which is ridiculous).

I'd really like PBS SpaceTime on Bluesky, there is an unofficial bot but the real thing for interaction would be great.

Yeah there's a whole bunch of photographers coming online too!

I followed a bunch of climate scientists using a starter pack then weeded out the ones who post irrelevant stuff. Turned out pretty neat

And the cycle repeats, over and over... nah, I'm done.

They need to change their name so bad. Sounds like a Russian scam site.

> A financing led by Blockchain Capital

Yeah, crypto bros.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com