So I thought that BlueSky was set up just like Lemmy in that it was fully decentralized into a sort of “terrorist cell” structure that wasn’t focused on profits, but then found out that BlueSky has a CEO. Since this is a business, what makes BlueSky fundamentally different from Twitter or Instagram?
I feel like so long as a social media platform exists through monetization (in some form or another private companies need to make money), we are ultimately replacing one dictator with another.
Bluesky is still in the “trust me bro” stage. The others have matured into the “fuck you, pay me” stage.
It isn’t. It’s just the shiny new toy that twitter users who are desperate to leave the platform jumped to because everyone they know who already jumped ship moved there. They’re marketing themselves as “better” than twitter and supposedly have better guardrails, but only time will tell when they start to enshittify.
I enjoyed Twitter for a long time when it was smaller and ad free and didn’t suck, and now I’m enjoying Bluesky while it’s smaller and ad free and doesn’t suck.
It’s unlikely Bluesky could ever suck as much as Twitter and Reddit have come to suck, but if I have to leave Bluesky in a few years for the next one, then so be it.
Keep an eye on the interest rate of some relevant central banks. When interests are low, investors have money to spare, and they can even make large rocks float. Once inflation gets out of hand, interest rates respond accordingly, suddenly investors disappear, and rocks begin to sink. That’s exactly when the CEO of SinkingFast Inc. has to make some quick decisions about strategic enshittification.
It’s different because it’s the only one that’s called “BlueSky”
Different? Jack Dorsey, the founder, and still largest single shareholder of BlueSky hasn’t sold it to a Saudi Arabian beard. Yet.
They’re getting ready to release a subscription service.
Some of this is more just a generic overview of differences in perspective.
- It was inspired by this piece by someone who is now on the board that manages it. Yes they have a CEO, but there is a bigger board collaborating on direction decisions
- They have an explicit policy opposing sharing data for AI usage.
- It was initially the place for a bunch of frequently targeted minorities and the leadership implemented a bunch of changes that — in combination with a attitude of “block don’t engage” because many people aren’t rational actors — significantly make the space safer for users and less susceptible to dog piling and harassment.
- Moderation is handled far better that any other large social media platform in my experience.
- It was created as open source and as an open protocol from the start so in the event of a takeover, it’s relatively easy to spin off a clone (see protocols link).
- They allow more openness to 3rd party moderation tools in a more integrated manner.
- They have been open about discussing funding planning in the future and red lines that are unacceptable to them.
- There is no algorithm in your main feed. You see only what those you follow share. There is a discover feed, but if you hide that it has no impact on your future experience.
They banned libsoftiktok
Technically it supports federation, similar to Lemmy. But there’s still only one instance. I don’t know if it’s due to the immaturity of software or something else. If someone want’s to try the code is there.
I think the presence of ActivityPub (basis of Lemmy) already attracted most people willing to bother with hosting an instance so the potential adopters are not very incentivized to experiment with another thing.
The link is to their open repos. Which is example implementations of their protocol, their web/phone apps, stuff like that.
Not their actual instance code.
You can’t run your own bkuesky instance
Bluesky was developed by twitter before musk took over. They spun it off and now we’re here.
It’s not. I’ve seen its ads on billboards along the highway. They call themselves “Truth social for liberals” or some shit like that. I won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole—regardless of my political leanings.
