The Rise of the NormieNet – Echo chamber politics | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of the NormieNet – Echo chamber politics

bugeyedandshameless.com

25 pointsverdverm40 comments

Know what I got from Twitter? Assaulted, harassed, and insulted. The rage over there is so intense that every discussion about literally everything (even bread) quickly devolves into either racism, sexism, or insults.

You know what I get from Bluesky? Bread recipes, video game commentary, in-depth legal voyeurism. And my favorite, political discussions with a variety of nuanced takes about the merits of individual policies that doesn't devolve into name calling.

funny i get that too on twitter what you get on bluesky. if you seek out debate you will get it, has nothing to do with twitter. Bluesky will be very boring once upu realize that the reason you hate twitter is the reason you are going to hate bluesky. Its going to be very boring very soon or very toxic. Its still going to be relying on algorithms and. business logic

When I left Twitter I didn't replace it with anything. Just normal offline friends. I joined Bluesky when someone told me that the interesting things I was looking for were there.

If you think Bluesky is a simple Twitter clone, you would be mistaken. There are fundamental differences that give choice back to the user and enable real competition in the social media landscape

My experience has been the exact opposite. On Twitter I get all the nuanced discussion while Bluesky is filled with ranting since one political group decided to decamp to it. Ultimately, even when those people were still on Twitter I didn't really have an issue because I simply didn't engage with them. You get out of social networking services what you put into them. You're responsible for curating your own experience because the hucksters in charge aren't going to do it for you.

Sounds like you're following the wrong people on Bluesky.

Which leads me to my second point: There is a cost for curation. If a given forum is filled with people I don't want to follow, and there's no easy way to sort them from the ones I do want to follow, one can easily say that the cost of curation is high, and insofar as I do not have an unlimited amount of time on my hands and that limited time is better disposed on other tasks, I'm unlikely to ever visit that forum. This is the problem that Mastodon/the Fediverse faces, and likewise Bluesky. On Twitter I can find people from just about any background I'd care to, and I already have a well-developed list of people I'm following. Bluesky and the Fediverse are filled with people who decamped from Twitter that I'd never follow in a million years, and even if there are others there I might be interested in, they're drowned out in the sea of what for me can accurately be categorized as spammers. Put simply: While the onus may be on me to set my own experience, there is a limit to how much effort I'm willing to put forward to accomplish that, and I think the same is true of others. Do not be surprised, therefore, when your particular choice of forum stalls out because a vocal demographic spams the crap out of it and turns others away in droves... because you set it up this way and it's working as designed.

My favorite feature of Bluesky so far are the Lists and Starter Packs which allow you to use other people's curation options as a jumping off point. Bluesky isn't 1:1 with Twitter for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that not everyone is there yet. But the ease of finding your niche is one of the better parts of it to me.

EDIT: Oh, and the simplicity of their blocklists is absolutely worth looking into. There are a few accounts who have automated scammer/spam blocklists you can subscribe to.

I'm sure there are. I'm also confident that they're politically-driven spammers who are simply banning anyone they had an argument with once... so not only are their lists useless to me for finding people to filter, they're equally useless for finding people to follow. Now that might not be the case, but since that's how such people behaved on Twitter when they shared blocklists I'd invariably have to go through those lists to see who was on them and try to divine the underlying criteria used for adding people to the list to know if it's worth anything... and, again, that's time and effort I'm not interested in spending when I've got better things to do.

IMO, those features are actually negatives because they're so good at creating filter bubbles relative to how good they are for anything else.

People are block listing offensive people, trolls, and bots. I don't really see these accounts as adding to a diverse and vibrant discussion. There is a lot less "dunking" on Bluesky too.

The moderation and interaction tools at the individual level are really great

My concern is that a lot of people getting added to those lists for being "offensive people" or "trolls" are actually just people who civilly express viewpoints that the list maintainer disagrees with.

That probably happens, but most cases are combatting the trend of right wingers creating throw away accounts to say the most offensive things they can for the reactions and getting blocked

I'd invite you to check out the options this labeller provides as an example. You can also see who is on the list, so anyone can audit the list. Transparency is built in

https://bsky.app/profile/skywatch.blue | https://bsky.app/profile/skywatch.blue/lists/3lbckxhgu3r2v (list of trolls)

The thing to notice here is how much control you get as an individual. The moderation source code backing this(https://github.com/bluesky-social/ozone) has features for the subject of a label to contest as well.

What is most powerful about the labeller ecosystem is that it is an ecosystem where competition can occur. There are an ever expanding set of choices, people can make their own choices, and they can stack them together

https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...

The number 1 thing users like about Bluesky is that they are put back into the drivers seat of their social media experience

> I already have a well-developed list of people I'm following

Network effect plays a role here. You can see certain groups, like economists, all moving over. They all follow each other and congregate in the same place. News orgs are reporting greater click through and conversion with fewer followers. I'm pretty sure Bluesky is here to stay now that a critical mass has been reached.

> because you set it up this way and it's working as designed

Bluesky/ATProto gives us the tools to sculpt the experience we want. No longer are we forced into a one size fits all algorithm or platform. It really seems like you are criticizing something you don't understand

Same, was very sad to see a lot of my friends in the open source community constantly have to restrict replies every time they posted, just because of their identity or the project they contribute to. On Bluesky, those people are mostly absent, and when they show up to harass, they get banned or nuclear blocked.

This happens on both of them, the difference is that on Bluesky you can remove their ability to interact completely and the support staff will remove people who use insults. You can't avoid abuse on Twitter and the support system doesn't do anything even for outright nazi comments let alone an insult.

Before social media no one was lamenting the people who read the same local newspaper each day and only discussed the news with their same handful of friends. Now that's seen as being stuck in an echo chamber and people should be forced to engage with every single view point under the sun. I can't say I agree.

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