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Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

Bluesky to me still seems like a place completely dominated by software type (HN crowd). I know there are obvious exceptions there's no need for you to list them.

Threads has extreme normies, bluesky has the nerds, and twitter seems to have just the right mixture of both.

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I won't list out exceptions, but my Bluesky experience is not at all how you describe. Obviously it just depends on who you follow, but I don't think "dominated by software type" describes the Bluesky demographic as a whole, and it hasn't for some time.

if you don't follow anyone, like me, the timeline is dominated by journalists, furries, and people who post nudity. i'm not saying these are bad, just an observation.

There's starting to be lots of news and politics sources on there. The Swifties are moving over, there's a nice "BlackSky" movement, and there's a bit of sports popping up now too.

This thread (no pun intended) is the first I'm hearing that anyone uses Threads at all. To me, it seemed like after the initial week or so, there was only bots left on Threads, trying to hook people to the person's Instagram, or whatever other place they actually post content at.

Threads is the highest ranked "social" app on the Play Store right now, so a lot of real people must be using it despite appearances. Next down the list is TikTok, then Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, X (below Bluesky!), and finally Reddit.

I’m pretty sure app stores rankings are regional. You should mention your region and device type if you want others to compare

Also at least here in Australia, Threads is ranked #3 of all free iOS apps.

And it's been in the top 3 ever since it launched a year ago. X is #69.

Threads isn't a place where I specifically go to follow someone. To me it's more like TikTok, but text.

I open it, get a few random engagement bait posts, maybe reply to some and then close it. No meaningful discussion will happen.

> dominated by software type (HN crowd)

i find this very surprising. i don't see a lot of technical people out there, except for the bsky devs or devs who are building apps on top of atproto.

i've visited bluesky enough over the months, and to me, there's 3 types of users you will always see on the Discover or What's Hot timeline - journalists, furries, and people who post nudity.

tech people are still on twitter. i feel like the "exodus" of tech people following the election are just them making an account, and then returning to X after some time. it happened then during the private beta, and i feel like the same is happening now

one of my biggest subjective takeaways from spending hours scrolling around the map is that my impression that the userbase was dominated by software types was ~mostly wrong! feels like less than half, and the rest is huge swaths of normie, artist, furry, and media people

I find Mastodon much more dominated by that crowd. Bluesky seems to have a decent mix of software nerds and artists, but yes there's definitely a "nerd" bias there that Threads doesn't have which is more aggressively "normie".

Bluesky seems to be also very common among artists.

The mid-October bump was artists discovering that posting on Twitter allows them to use posts for training AI.

https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/bluesky-year.html

That and the change to how blocking works on Twitter, which coincided with the AI policy change.

If Bluesky is decentralized, can't twitter still train on Bluesky posts?

There’s arguably a moral difference between having your stuff stolen, and giving it up as part of the TOS. Most artists, you’d assume, would prefer the former.

Bluesky's TOS[1]:

> You grant us permission to: Use User Content to develop, provide, and improve Bluesky Social, the AT Protocol, and any of our future offerings

[1]: https://bsky.social/about/support/tos#user-content

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