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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

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andrewstuart

Why would this be any better or worse than Twitter?

Won’t it be the same with fewer but growing number of users?

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- No pay-for-attention model.

- Third party clients available.

- Blocklists and other more sophisticated custom moderation available.

- Threads and profiles accessible to non-logged-in people (note that you can read the linked post and its replies without being logged in; on Twitter you at minimum couldn't see the replies, and depending on the account/phase of moon might just get an error for the actual post.)

- Less deranged leadership (at least now that Dorsey has flounced off).

- Blocking works.

For now.

I was a private alpha tester "when it was cool" but I get the feel they're taking the discord approach of things.

I predict that in a year you will soon be charged for uploading videos and or something of the likes.

Last week I deleted my account. Now proud to be 99.8% (HN, LinkedIn) social network free.

Yeah, their plans for monetisation seem to be along those lines, vs Twitter's pay-for-attention thing.

I am personally curious into what Linked will devolve eventually.

Is linkedin not already in a devolved state?

It's hard to imagine it being more off-putting than it already is.

The only useful part is the Rolodex of past co-workers and bosses to message when you’re looking for a job or looking for someone to hire. As long as they don’t ruin that, it can’t get worse than it already is, because nothing else about it matters.

What's Bluesky monetization strategy? Are they net positive financially?

I ask because if they are operating on red, chances are they might start doing some of the things Twitter currently does.

They've started charging for an easy verified domain thingy (https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-05-2023-business-plan - Doing it yourself involves messing with DNS records), and I _think_ they said they'd charge for longer/higher quality video uploads (video currently limited to 60s) and profile customisation stuff. They've claimed they won't do targeted ads; we'll see how long that lasts.

While this seems like a reasonable way to start monetising, I would add that the domain verification is very straightforward for anyone who's touched nameservers before. As an aside, their use of domains seems like a relatively clean way to inherit existing identity verification, particularly for organisations.

> I would add that the domain verification is very straightforward for anyone who's touched nameservers before.

This kind of feels like a bit of an example of this: https://xkcd.com/2501/ :)

Perhaps one in a thousand people on earth have ever even _heard_ of a nameserver. I'd agree that if you've done anything with one before, the domain verification is fairly trivial, but most people have not.

Right, I really just meant the last sentence in your comment but that could have been phrased more clearly. I definitely support having the easier option!

I'm not sure you're aware of what's happening on Twitter, but for starters it's called X now for some reason, crazy I know.

Everyone knows. That isn't remotely related to my question though.

For a side project I created a new account on X and on Bluesky, both before the election.

Bluesky asks what my interests are. I said software engineering, science and tech. Bluesky showed a lot of posts of cool space photos.

X asks me to follow an account from a list. I chose NASA. Out of curiosity I checked out the "For you" tab on this brand new account. I did not get recommended space photos. X pushed a lot of political posts, some bordering on hate speech (one used the n-word).

I don't quite know what explains the differences between the new-account experiences, but I had a much better time on Bluesky. I don't know if this will last, or if Bluesky is destined to follow in Twitter's footsteps once more people start joining, but I think right now Bluesky is in a good spot.

Did you try Mastodon?

No. I should probably give it a go

(I have a mastodon account from 2017(!), but there was so little activity back then I think I just forgot it was there.)

It's oddly different. I think the reasons are subtle, but exist.

I know one technical difference: if someone quote-tweets to dunk on you, you can stop it.

There must be more like that, because the effect is readily noticeable.

It doesn't stop the dunking because people will quickly adjust to use screenshots instead of detachable quote-tweets, but you're less likely to stumble on it, everyone remains in their bubble.

Although it’s strongly left-leaning at the moment it’s not exclusively that. I’ve seen some conversations where the “bubbles” (as you say) crossed, which would have exploded on both Twitter and Mastodon. Being able to cut out people when they start screaming and being abusive definitely helps to maintain a more chill atmosphere.

It adds _friction_ to the process, though. Never underestimate the laziness of annoying internet people.

Whatever's good enough to preserve the atmosphere is good enough.

People can't pay to force themselves to the top of the replies.

The owner of bluesky doesn't artifically inject themselves on top of your feed.

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