Bluesky's Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media

(I had to unfollow Mark Hamill though because of the politics firehose. And I generally agree with him politically ... I just don't need it on BlueSky all the time.)

I was part of a cycle community on Twitter. After it became X, my feed is just full of political crap or viral content, not the content I used to see. Most sane people in my circle stopped posting, so the algorithm push other stuff. Couldn't discuss any bicycle topic without some blue check person showing up telling us how they love to run over cyclists.

On bsky we've found a new home with custom feeds and stricter moderation. Blocking actually works and even detaches the discussion entirely, so idiots can't use my content to spread their hate.

So portraying it as "both sites bad" is dishonest imo, as it's not just that they lean differently.

I think it's a great idea for the rest of us. Keeps that kind of demographic mostly self-contained in their echo-chamber, thus freeing up the rest of the internet from culture war content.

At least in theory.

I assume there's some convenient way to cross-post?

You might be interested in Nitter: https://status.d420.de/instances (you do need a Twitter account to self-host, though)

Just delete it.

Def get the impression they're driving people away who were enjoying bluesky previously, there's just so much of them on the feeds atm.

The biggest deviation from the norm with Twitter is the ideas of quote-tweeting and subtweeting, making a new post rather than replying to something you disagree with in the comments. The automatic signal boost this achieves incentivizes it strongly, and when the larger account is the quote-tweeting account, they are inclined to hear reply comments almost exclusively from people who support their critique. The structural decision to make this form of interaction easy and productive leads to very Twitter-specific sort of toxic groupthink.

"You, a Twitter nobody, just disagreed with someone on their misinterpretation of a well-documented point of history. In response, they made a new post to their 700k followers calling you a chickenshit know-nothing. Your followers heard nothing. 300 of their followers have piled on to elaborate on your faults."

This used to be limited to the sort of instant cancellation associated with "Central Park Karen," who IIRC went viral just after boarding a flight and was fired before she landed.

BS is full of vitriol against anything outside of the desired narrative, I do not consider this 'nontoxic' no matter your perspective.

I block any account that is primarily politics-based (Hillary Clinton's social media team joined a month ago and has 5k blocks already so I'm not alone), and other accounts as and when they become tiresome (ie when they go on a political rant). My feeling is that academics broke mostly to bluesky while techies broke mostly to mastodon. I follow some academic accounts that occasionally post interesting things - nothing earth-shattering, but worth checking in once every couple of days.

My main problem with bsky is that a lot of academics seem to approach it as a write-only medium. No engagement.

Text microblogging is one of the lowest-bandwidth-requirement, and therefore least-capital-intensive, internet startups.

They are federated as well; I just educated myself on BlueSky, I had heard that maybe it wasn't but it looks fairly federated. Companies can always slap a lock on after the fact though.

What's wrong with that? I mean, yes, lefties can be pretty scathing against their own - particularly the questions of Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia come to my mind as major dividers.

But even then: the death threats, "I wish you'd get raped by the n----s you invited to Germany, then you see the results of the great replacement yourself" and similarly inclined comments on Twitter are all but completely absent on Bluesky, and instead of feeding even the most obvious trolls, the general policy is to block them and move on - which is why the far-right is complaining so often about Bluesky being a "librul echo chamber". They just can't fathom that people might not be interested in interacting with them.

I personally think the idea of creating a place that suits everyone is unrealistic. It will never happen, and there will always be something that offends one side or the other. It seems like open social networks will always be toxic (whatever that really means).

I agree, but you can't ignore politics because in the end your definition of Toxicity is probably a direct reflection of your political positions.

And if current platform are so toxic I believe it's mainly by choice, be it an ideological or economical one.

Mastodon is a social media platform that's not built on a content promotion algorithm. Mastodon has a lot of group think, and you can absolutely build yourself an echo chamber full of political virtue signalling if that's what you're into. But I wouldn't characterize this as "toxic," it just reflects what you put into it. There's no algorithm to pump it into your face if you don't want it.

I'd love to see a version of Mastodon, or some social media platform, that manages to promote sensible discussion algorithmically. I don't know how this would work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that this proves that it's impossible.

Bluesky has plenty of toxic communities (e.g. the trans one), but hey are on the "good side" of the political spectrum so they get a pass.

The problem with X is, the mirror is artificially dented by a ton of people paying for the privilege of getting their replies prioritised. That in turn drowns out the voice of those not willing to pay Musk for the privilege.