It's possible that they are uncertain about the path to monetisation. As far as I see, it's either subscriptions or selling ads.

The best way to think about it is to assume you'll want to leave someday, and you'll be going to whichever is the best of the choices at that future time that are early enough to be years away from needing to monetize.

Don't let yourself get attached to any one place. That's the lesson. Staying ahead of monetization is the move. Nothing will stay good forever.

> the promise of decentralisation

AFAIK actual decentralization needs still a big engineering effort.

I personally can't even imagine a world where their VC investors would ever sign off a "let's make it possible, easy and risk free the users to exit our silo" project, over the many ways they try to squeeze profit out of their users.

I believe this isn't as much of a problem as it appears to be at first glance because of the scale of social apps like Bluesky.

For example, Wikipedia generates >$180M/yr just by running ads for itself requesting donations. Requesting donations is the least effective monetizing strategy and yet it still works because of scale.

Donations would probably work but Bluesky has additional options. They could create a premium app for power users that just adds nice-to-have features (which may cost real money to provide and maintain), they can resell domain names, they can sell merch, etc.

Bluesky doesn't need to generate billions of dollars to be highly sustainable and profitable. It was built and scaled with fewer than 20 full time employees.

The most important and most difficult part is getting to sufficient scale, and that's mostly a matter of just making the app even better than it is today.

I posted a bit about this here: https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3lr5j6o7emk2t

My guess is, they're going to have to be okay with only reaching break-even or slightly over. That's the point, after all. If you're dissatisfied with how any of these decentralized protocol platforms are running things, you're technically free to start your own, and plenty of people have.

Enshittification can't consume low barriers-to-entry markets.

I mean, feels like we're going to have relearn what the tech can do.

It's possible to do all of this without permission, it's just hard...

If YouTube or Reddit requires me to upload ID, I am going to delete my account.

> Not BlueSky specific, but I am getting ready to nuke my accounts on social media

This is the way, folks.

> demonstrate that you are an adult

maybe they mean a captcha like "do the taxes for this guy"

The hyper-polarization is probably preventable, in my estimation. The main thing a social network would need to do is to stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly. That might mean something along the lines of a system that puts a hard cap on the reach any profile or topic can have, and when engagement exceeds the triggering threshold, reach actually tapers off proportionate to how far the threshold is exceeded.

In theory this would naturally elevate posts that are more measured and mundane while sinking posts with big emotional lizard brain appeal (by design or otherwise). With time this would establish a self-reinforcing norm that makes polarized and inflammatory posts look as clownish as they actually are.

There's a lot of hot tub parties out there. Some have people you want I really want to interact with, some do not. Some have good house rules making it feel comfortable, some do not.

The best part of BlueSky in my opinion is that it's really easy to control what you want to see, without the site-owner's algorithm choosing for you. No matter who else is at the hot tub party, I don't have to worry much about them peeing in my particular hot tub. I hear Mastodon is somewhat similar, but it's been a while.

The balance between discovery and curation and control is nigh-on perfect for me in BlueSky. If I want to focus just on my corner of the science world, it's super easy for me to build a network of people just in that corner and not get spammed with, say, racially-tinged fight videos that are meant for engagement bait, as has happened on other social networks.

If you want hyper-polarized communities, some of those can be found on BlueSky too! But at least on BlueSky I'm able to choose what I want rather than having the preferences of the site owner control my information environment.

This completely depends on the moderation policies of the website. So, yes, the platforms are at fault.

The hyper-polarization is already in the real world, so I don't think social media can avoid that.

I left X because of how bad it got but BlueSky is also quite often useless in terms of good discussion. Recently any substack article posted is just filled with comments about how using substack supports Nazi ideology, no other discussion to be had. When it comes to anything related to AI the comments are all about stealing from artists. It is as if people just wait for the right buzzword to appear and post their canned response. Interesting posts that don't cause any controversy just don't have much engagement.

I think that Twitter (and by extension, Bluesky) is designed in such a way that it promotes hostility and division. You can't really have a good discussion when the format makes people limit their posting to super short messages; it means people just dump hot takes on each other and wind up shouting past each other. So in that sense I certainly would call it the platforms' fault. Twitter (and Bluesky/Mastodon) are toxic to our society and we would be far better off if they were never created.

For all that it sounds unlikely, it'd be nice if the blogosphere, with blog replies and pingbacks, could come back for this sort of discussion. No monetization, though, so substack and co. are out.

I couldn't agree more. It's like when you see headlines claiming "people" are outraged by a jeans advertisement. Are they really? Who? How many? Really I think it's just something to argue about for entertainment's sake.

Outside of bullying, which I do think is a real risk for kids, I don't feel like the time I spend on social media is unhealthy at all. Granted I'm mostly YouTube, zero percent IG or Facebook. I'm really grateful for what Google bought/built.

Excuse me now as I need to go watch a short that explains the difference between Australian and British accents. Very important, goodbye!

For me it's the complete opposite. I stayed because I thought it's a storm that will pass. I even had hope Elon gets bored with it and writes off the loss. Nothing of this has happened and probably ever will.

Most of the interesting people in my circles have left and the ones that stayed are so disconnected that there is no real community any more.

The end this on a higher note. Would you be willing to share some people to follow that make being on X worthwhile for you.

This very much my experience as well with current Twitter/X. I think I can at least express myself without having to ponder if the service itself will ban me for saying that ”the king has no clothes on”.

I finally see on my timeline art and music I like. Not to mention the interesting technology-related discussions.

It’s not all sunshine but things are clearly better with a wider range of opinions being present on my timeline and more variety in content. I just wish I could better filter foreign (esp. USA & UK) political content out of my feed.

X is so large that it can simultaneously be a giant dumpster fire, the most toxic social network ever to exist, and still have room for honest discussion and good communities.

Gives me some hope for Bluesky, etc. I don't think you need to be Twitter scale or have global network effects to work. Your community just has to choose a particular platform and show a preference for it. You get miniature network effects once your community adopts it.

So if your favorite community doesn't like a particular platform, I don't think they're stuck there, just because it's the one with global scale. They just have to organize an exit.

I assume there are better Discover feeds out there. Anyone have any recommendations?