Bluesky's science takeover: 70% of Nature poll respondents use platform
nature.com
nature.com
I can follow mastodon and threads accounts on my bluesky timeline using one of many bridge services: https://fed.brid.gy/
I can merge mastodon, bluesky, nostr, and threads one timeline using one of many third party apps: https://openvibe.social/
I can unsubscribe from the default bluesky moderation service and choose one run by a third party: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation
The only differentiator for X is the content, and that's an easy choice.
What X has become is a place where you can pay to have your "views" promoted into other people's feeds, a place where bots run rampant, and a place where extremists can share their views without any fear of consequences.
I'm sure that a platform policed by said privileged groups is somehow better morally or something. Who was dogwhistling again?
Nor is Bluesky policed by privileged groups, and as a bonus you don't even have to pay for some silly checkmark. What could be more egalitarian than "Free"?
But there's still a long way for it to reach out of the US and Europe. I don't know why, but X is extremely popular in places like the middle East (I was following the fall of Assad in real time), and even Asia, etc. It's something that doesn't even exist anywhere else.
They all seem to have diminished audience, lessened influence, and resulted in less ad revenue. It's very clear that X has a far smaller burn rate than Twitter did, but it also seems to have lessened revenue, and it's really unclear that there's any profit at all.
It would be irksome if Musk went on lawsuit spree + PR campaign incessantly complaining that advertisers are 'killing free speech' by not advertising on the platform. Like some weird civic duty that publicly traded businesses with a fiduciary directive ought to have. But, let's be real, folks operating on Musk's level are too clever/business-savvy for anything that amateurish.
However, this is exactly the argument that people use to criticize bluesky. What is an echo chamber if not going to a place where you get the content you want. 99% of people who think they're taking a principled stand on moderation or openness in either direction are lying to themselves.
Anyone else here remember when Twitter had RSS/Atom feeds for each account? You could read Twitter with a news aggregator.
That's the case on Bluesky too: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/blob/355c50fc0f... https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/blob/355c50fc0f...
I think bluesky only hides people who opt in to hiding their posts.
Twitter used to be great that way as well, but now it isn't. Losing those communication channels is a big loss, no matter what you think of social media.
Hostile actors seem to be trying something else: LLM "reply guys", which make superficially plausible conversation in your replies.
Twitter is really the King Log/King Stork parable writ large. It had problems under Jack, as absentee owner, but getting an owner who is interested in making it his personal platform is much worse.
Edit: this post has already been flagged off the front page, lol
The block system also being being weaponized at the moment. I've personally been added to a "MAGA Trolls", a "Porn Bots", a "Zionist Allies", and a "84 second automobile extravaganza" block-list in the last few days. I even got added to a list because I subscribed to the Listifications [1] service, which is what notifies me about these additions. But all these lists, as well as their creators, have subsequently been banned.
As I pointed out in another comment:
The right can pretend to be antagonizing extremist LGBTs to get more centrists to support their agenda - while undermining the LGBT movement itself also from within.
I'm saying that right wing activist groups can use botnet to pretend to be LGBT, while being hateful and extreme in their views, to the point that "normal" people (who are indifferent about LGBT) become annoyed with "LGBT" to the point of supporting Trump etc.
I'm saying that LGBT groups need to be aware that there is a serious internal threat of people pretending to be LGBT while harassing people who are not against LGBT, but will be.
An alternative explanation is that LGBT people are just a hateful bunch, but I'm trying to argue against that hypothesis.
Yeah, it's kind of inspiring to see even the common person is getting used to just block trolls on sight, rather than engaging in it. Something we veterans been doing for 2 decades or more, but good to see others are catching up on how to save your sanity :)
That said, the other day I ended up on a "Transphobes, Genocide Enthusiasts, and Crumbums" list for some reason on Bluesky, while I haven't even posted anything about those topics or engaging in anything like that. Makes one wonder how many others on a list like that actually even discussed the supposed topics?
I kind of wish people had to justify additions to lists somehow, like adding a reason or at least linking the post that made you add this user to the list, or something similar.
With that acknowledged, I have to wonder if the listifications bot is solving the problem well. It's catching every list anybody makes, so now trolls are getting more impact. It gives me some questions about the list feature as we wrote it, but listifications is constructed with a default-trust mentality that really shouldn't apply.
While OnlyPosts feed shows posts only from 1 to 4 days.
Sorry about the confusion that caused. It was one of those things that happened in the scaling rush.
I try to follow the situation in Ukraine and I see lots of videos on X with russians murdering ukrainians as well as their own.
One of the major selling points of Bluesky is that you get to chose your own algorithms (or rather, chose what algorithms you want to use, that others built).
So there are way more algorithms than any other social media, today. Only difference is that with Bluesky you get to chose which one you use.
And while that feed doesn't have violence, it does have a surprisingly high number of "dudes holding their cock" and furry-related images, which seems like something that should probably be filtered out or at least tagged.
I understand the free speech principle at work but from a purely pragmatic point of view I simply don't want to see that stuff in my day to day browsing of social media.
That's the cost of a free platform though. Rather have that than being banned for thinking wrong.
Meanwhile, Musk himself is banning people for thinking what he decides is wrong.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/business/x-banned-a-journalis...
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-account-...
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-technology-business-dac...
https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/musk-tried-to-punish-criti...
Should I go on?
Elon Musk's tenure at X (formerly Twitter) has been marked by a series of actions that starkly contrast his self-proclaimed stance as a "free speech absolutist." Despite his vocal advocacy for unrestricted expression, Musk has overseen a significant increase in account suspensions and content restrictions, often targeting critics and journalists.
Notably, X has suspended numerous journalists who have reported critically on Musk or his ventures. For instance, in December 2022, the platform suspended accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, among others, who covered Musk's activities. These actions have raised concerns about the suppression of dissenting voices and the erosion of journalistic freedom on the platform. Associated Press
Furthermore, under Musk's leadership, X has shown a heightened willingness to comply with government censorship requests. During the 2023 Turkish presidential election, the platform restricted access to certain content within Turkey, a move that critics argue was influenced by Musk's business interests in the region, including SpaceX's satellite launches in collaboration with the Turkish government.
These actions suggest a departure from Musk's professed commitment to free speech, revealing a pattern of behavior that prioritizes personal and business interests over the principle of open expression. The increasing suppression of critical voices and compliance with authoritarian regimes' censorship demands highlight a concerning inconsistency between Musk's stated ideals and his actions as the steward of a major social media platform.
How do you define “free”?
The API is open and free too, making it much easier to build on the network. The system is designed so that we can design new record types and create all sorts of applications on ATProto. It's going to go well beyond just a Twitter clone and each app shares the same social fabric, instead of having to attract their own, which is going to accelerate the network effect
Is it perfectly federated, no, there are weak points that will be made less weak with time. It's not a reason to put it down
From what I can tell, most content moderation on bluesky is done via labelers, which you need a pds to run, but not to use.
Both X and bluesky have semi-automated moderation processes with an inherent false positive rate. The two high profile cases I'm aware of (Jessie Singal and Laura Loomer) that were suspended automatically eventually got turned back on once a human was involved.
https://bsky.app/profile/jessesingal.com
https://bsky.app/profile/loomered.bsky.social/post/3lemtdvls...
Personally I found the "job" of managing who you follow / feed and pruning on twitter tiresome and at times impossible.
Bluesky has been better, maybe only due to fewer people, but if so then so be it.
Side note: It is amusing how the current ownership's concern about bots vanished as soon as they took over.
https://github.blog/news-insights/the-library/browser-monito...
tl;dr - anyone can run a labelling service, users have choice which one(s) they use (Bluesky &| 3rd party), competition and network effect will surface the good ones and weed out the bad ones.
This concept is going to be extended to community notes, sometime this year I suspect
I think it will be more successful than Mastodon has been.
Though people do seem to prefer a consistent moderation policy, even if it's harsher. People don't like to have free speech about the things they want to speak about, and have another group of people choose to ignore it. They want to either speak to everyone at once or be blocked from everyone at once (at which time they make a new account).
The reason Mastodon | ActivityPub is not on boarding users like Bluesky | ATProto has a lot to do with the friction and discovery differences. ATProto was designed in part by understanding where ActivityPub had limitations and rough edges
I had this same problem with twitter - I would like to follow a person, say Joe, that talks about X, Y, and * ... but I'm only interested in X.
I would like more granular pub/sub so I could follow Joe/X.
Of course, Joe would have to set up those channels.
There are some things they won't host, but it may be possible to work around that with your own PDS.
But long run, I think we suffer when the biggest platforms turn into partisan black holes.
I want a platform that is accessible to "normal" people, spends tons of effort blocking bots, has a UX that makes it easy to manage content you do and don’t see, and is open to any human to speak.
I want a platform that: • blocks bots and maybe doesn’t allow companies as users • user control first (blocking, custom algos, smart word filtering, content/topic based filtering) • does not deplatform users for their views • has community notes
If the conversation is about climate science, no you cannot unless your POV is the oceans are going to boil off in the next 5 years.
Really that's internet services history in a nutshell. You use the thing, you move when you feel motivated.
It's the nature of the internet now.
Granted network effect does "work" to some extent.
Geocities is out there for download, but ... still not the same, even with Internet Archive doing its thing.
It's at least refreshing to see Bluesky PBC try to prevent it by setting up guardrails themselves, like allowing people to host their data somewhere else, which seems to work today already.
Here's to hoping the federation stuff shapes up nicely too.
Getting together to show and talk about building the next gen of social media
https://atprotocol.dev/atmosphereconf-confirming-date-seattl...
I'd recommend
- getting on the ATProto dev Discord: https://discord.gg/VweB8gn5
- getting involved with: https://github.com/lexicon-community/lexicon
- using the #ATProtoDev hashtag
There is a lot of overlap in the people and the developer community is starting to snowball
There's a guy on Twitter who posts about AI and has been reposting his Bluesky interactions on Twitter.
Absolutely unhinged people going off on his benign takes. It's hilarious.
People who have moved to Bluesky like to tell themselves it's the "smart place", but it's really just the place where you agree with the politics.
> People who have moved to Bluesky like to tell themselves it's the "smart place", but it's really just the place where you agree with the politics.
I migrated to Bluesky and I don't regard it for one second as a smart place. No social media is. My experience is that it's a quiet place, in the sense that a lot of people are talking but there are way fewer raised voices than there are over on Twitter, where people get monetarily rewarded for making viral content so they scream for attention.
If they’re a “GAI is here now” kind of person I can see that people might make fun of them; the dominant culture on Bluesky is AI-sceptical.
Loads of authors and artists and other creatives flooded to bluesky early on, and kind of do a territorial land grab in the Shirky "A group is its own worst enemy" fashion. There are a number of groups on the site that feel that it is "their" site and they need to bully contrary opinions away.
Though if some guy is feeding his Twitter audience by baiting people on Bluesky, they're likely fomenting the response.
You can probably find it if so inclined, he appears in my feed whenever these conversations come up. I have no interest in "proving it".
>My experience is that it's a quiet place, in the sense that a lot of people are talking but there are way fewer raised voices than there are over on Twitter, where people get monetarily rewarded for making viral content.
Both are the same format: it's a post and a stream of replies. Both are the same "volume". Both provide monetary value for viral content, though Twitter is much more explicit in that sense.
Then you should not be surprised when people are skeptical. It’s notable in your post and replies to it we’ve got multiple instance of folks saying “this totally reasonable thing happened on Bluesky and people went crazy” while providing zero contextual links. Very possible we have quite different definitions of “totally reasonable” and “crazy” here.
> Both provide monetary value for viral content, though Twitter is much more explicit in that sense.
Come on. Twitter literally pays our users based on the viewing figures of their tweets. Bluesky has absolutely nothing comparable. The quality of conversation on Twitter made a notable dip as soon as they made their change.
I don't care if you're skeptical, I'm not going to placate sealions. Go use Bluesky. My experience there is it's just as political. Let's revisit in a year.
>The quality of conversation on Twitter made a notable dip as soon as they made their change.
"...while providing zero contextual links."
I can't provide a contextual link for a subjective judgement about the quality of conversation on Twitter. You can provide a contextual link for the guy on Twitter who posts about AI and has been reposting his Bluesky interactions on Twitter.
All I'm hearing from your contributions to this thread is "I'm interested in saying things, I'm not interested in listening to responses". Which makes for a pretty poor level of discussion that's beneath HN.
It's called citing sources. You've posted 2,087 times and only 56 of those posts include "http"[1], which is a measly 2.7%. In comparison, I've posted 556 times and 205 of my posts include "http", which is 36.9%. The problem isn't sealioning; it's that you're either lazy or you just make things up. And given that you're not too lazy to reply to a request for a source without actually providing a source, it's reasonable to assume you might be making shit up.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?prefix=true&type=comment&query=autho...
However while I'm not the other guy, how about [1] and [2]. I desperately hope that this ups my links to post ratio!
The whole "block list" thing on bsky has been a massive torch mob/brigading tactic, and it's boorish.
[1] https://eugeneyan.com/writing/anti/
[2] https://bsky.app/profile/eugeneyan.com/post/3lcykteugys2w
You should, you made the claim.
I don't care if it's the smart place, but it's nice to have a feed that reminds me of pre-2015 internet spaces where people talked about things other than politics. I just did an experiment and opened up the for-you page on X, and out of 18 random posts of people I didn't follow, 10 were political in nature (ranging from MAGA to far left).
I open Bluesky and I see art, technical projects, people's pets, etc.
Sure. I went over in the recent migration/exodus and half my feed was (and still is): anti-Trump, anti-Musk and COVID. And I am following a very particular topic/niche, not random accounts. There is plenty of politics.
I wish Bluesky was the answer, but it isn't yet, as much as people keep pretending.
No thanks. Not interested in echo-chamber echoing; I only care about the best truths I can find.
* that's my politically-defanged term for "terrorists"
It's already a ghost town. Sparse posting, lots of empty "here's what I cooked for supper" posts.
https://bsky.app/starter-pack/miniapeur.bsky.social/3lc4zmcf...
Bluesky is ad free (for now).
Choosing not to interact with Twitter is not equivalent to sealing oneself away from the world.
These people thrive on reactions, if there is no reaction to what they say, they'll get bored and move over to the place where the people who'd react is.
> Although the survey is not statistically representative of Nature readers or the scientific community at large
I found that the survey seems to have been advertised for with "Has Bluesky replaced X for scientists?" according to this article from Jan 14 [1]. This attracts people who switched more I think. So the 70% figure is nothing than hot air.
It is still interesting seeing the positive sentiments and reasons for switching analyzed.
1) The ones that moved because of ideological reasons 2) The ones that moved b/c Twitter became a desolate hellscape.
I'm closer to (2) than to (1), and the difference between 2024 and 2020-2022 twitter is stark. Before, if you had an interesting tweet about a new article you would get lots of engagement (retweets, discussions, people disagreeing and pushing back).
Now? Nothing, just a few random retweets or comments from non-academic people that almost feel LLM-generated. Compound this with network effects, and even my right-wing pro-Trump colleagues (and there are some) decided to at the very least dual-post.
I don't understand why this isn't talked about as much as the MAGA garbage. I occasionally read tweets by a couple prominent Rubyists who've been using Twitter since 2006 (because Twitter was written in Ruby, which attracted Rubyists) and none of the replies to their tweets are written by familiar Rubyists like back in the day. Most of the replies are from accounts created in the past few years with AI-generated profile images.