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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

Haven't invested time into bluesky yet but I'm always shocked at how fast the pages load. The contrast to twitter is stunning.

Lemmy is a bit more hit/miss on loads but the content posted seems so much more wholesome than other socials

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I'm shocked that it's as slow as Twitter.

There was a time when tweets were just good ol' regular HTML pages. Today it's unbearable if you remember that you're just trying to read one small paragraph.

When I went browsing through their GitHub I was surprised at how little web-specific code they have. It's basically just their React Native mobile app and a tiny go server. I understand that with a small team they've got to prioritize, I do hope at some point they implement server-side rendering for when you click on a direct link to a post.

I get as much out of bluesky as I ever did from twitter. It may be honeymoon phase but since I mostly just follow experts, journalists and the like I see as much as I ever did. There's less silliness on there but definitely some and I expect that's due to the times we're in and not the users.

Unlike Bluesky, which is a website and community, "Lemmy" is software. There are many Lemmy instances; the content varies wildly, just like it does between Mastodon instances, or web sites.

What instance is more wholesome? As written, your comment is like saying IRC is more wholesome. It is? On what server?

I'm thinking of programming.dev in particular but suspect my wholesome comment is pretty universally true. The type of crowd that sets up their own servers like these are in my experience slightly biased towards wholesome side. Setting up software, build initial user base etc...there is a level of intent there that you don't get with the free for all that is reddit or whatever.

Maybe that's just my impression but suspect there is a kernel of truth there

Perhaps not so much "wholesome" - because I can definitely provide a handful of historical and current examples that definitely aren't - but certainly more "community minded".

In that regard, your experiences match mine. I've been in the online community space since the Compuserv, GEnie and Prodigy days. Those platforms were more or less self-limiting - you needed to have access to a computer with a modem in the early to mid 1980s - but it was still a bit of a mess for trying to make any real, lasting online connections.

When I discovered my local BBS community, it was a massive game changer in terms of the quality of connections and conversations I had. It even inspired me to run my own BBS for a while.

I don;t like Bluesky's approach to decentralization because their system requires a TON of resources to run an independent instance. ActivityPub - upon which Mastodon and others is based - is mature, flexible, and allows for true decentralization. I can self host my own instance, or I can host an instance for one or more of my communities. I actually host my own Mastodon instance just for myself, and it;s remarkably easy. I imagine adding accounts would not increase my effort at all.

The right approach to decentralization is for those who can host instances to do so for themselves and for those in the communities that matter to them. That way, those who can't self host should still be able to find an instance they can trust. Then, those instances should be allowed to communicate with one another - only blocking instances if they go rogue and affect performance, but letting individuals have fine grained control over the messages they receive and the individuals with whom they interact.

This creates a world of alternatives for anyone seeking connection. Mastodon already works this way - you have art-focused instances, infosec focused instances, erotic content focused instances, etc. I can follow folks from any of those instances on my own account and engage directly with them. I'm seeing more folks start up PeerTube instances - which also use ActivityPub - as alternatives to YouTube. I can follow everything from my self-hosted Mastodon account. It's awesome.

I eventually plan to launch my own ActivityPub implementation so I can host others in my communities and provide a workable alternative to the centralized social media companies - e.g. I'd like my kid's school PTA to stop using Facebook Groups.

I feel like that's more the "small" effect. Humans are generally more community-minded in small groups than in big ones because we were built for groups where everyone recognizes everyone else. So big groups where nobody recognizes anyone else can be a problem.

(From this perspective, it matters much less whether someone is self-hosting the servers or not if the group is small, those two things just happen to coincide.)

AP instances tend to reflect the same clusters that emerge in social media where most people are on the same app.

https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3ltda4vl5322z

It's just a different way of organizing communities.

Hrm, this is actually a frustration of Bluesky for me; I find it relatively sluggish, particularly compared to a decent Mastodon server. I also remember Twitter as being faster, but I haven't had an account for a couple of years, and it _was_ getting slower before I nuked my account, so maybe it's worse now.

Anyone remember how fast geocities pages loaded?

> Anyone remember how fast geocities pages loaded?

Yeah, they were slow. Mostly due to the low speed of dial-up modems.

And the heavy gif usage.

Huh? Bluesky loads very slow, a lot of loading circles and placeholder skeletons.

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