I have a look at Bluesky from time to time and there is (for me ofc) as much info/interesting stuff as I was getting from the other one before the acquisition.
it’s just people raging about trump and whatever brand they’re looking to try and cancel next.
it’s so far from the greatness of the original twitter. no tech community or content.
Although I still have a web/programming which I follow and have found some people interesting from Hackernews and others too in bluesky (emsh,simonw)
What is the HN consensus around lemmy? I really like lemmy and think that it might be better for tech stuff (almost similar to HN/reddit you can say and federated)
I used to follow lemmy c/technology but I do feel like HN is pretty unique in its own manner.
Regarding twitter alternative itself. Maybe mastodon too can be an alternative.
Another minor nitpick about bluesky is that its 200 characters limits actually really removes the tech community from too deep discussions imo. Although I guess twitter had that limit for long time too until it got removed but now I do see sometimes some tweets which are really long (sometimes even complete blog?)
It actually really (pissed?) me off so much that I ended up making a tampermonkey script which can actually write a long message automatically and split a message into 200 messages chunk and post them in a thread of sorts you can say although its very hacky and messy and it starts to glitch around 10 threads from what I remember.
I dunno. It probably depends on what you’re looking for.
It doesn't seem to be as bad anymore, a quick glance at the public feed suggests that the percentage of political posts has gone down, but considering how many times the word "toxic" appears in this linked blogpost, I'm guessing they're still banning anyone who expresses the "wrong" opinions, so the userbase is unlikely to grow much further in the future. It seems to have plateaued at around 1.2M daily likers.
Source for the stats: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
The US does not have a "far left" in any significant numbers, and never has. At least not in a self-aware sense.
Maybe you meant to say liberal, to which I'd agree.
That's not to say there isn't a "left" or "far left" on Bluesky, but there's no way it's a majority.
I agree echo chambers are a problem there, which is why I only posted there briefly before leaving. One feature that seemed to exacerbate the formation of echo chambers was users sharing and blindly trusting mass block lists to silence things they didn't want to hear (leftists and liberals alike).
Bluesky does, however. Clearly they've made that their target market, but that's also why growing beyond that base seems to be difficult for them,
From the left's perspective, the liberals deserve muting and are spam, and same from the other way around. It's siloed echo chambers everywhere.
Part of it is unrealistic expectations of users thinking they're right about their world views. But part of it is platforms making features that amplify the former.
There's really a problem that needs to be solved here. I really think anonymous or phony posting needs to stop. It's not helpful here. All it does is amplify false talking points with a "Fake it til you make it", "the loudest voice wins" methodology.
But unfortunately, engagement is financially incentivized now. So the big corps reap $$$$$ while the public burns itself down.
There is hope, but it requires enough people to care and act accordingly:
Can you explain what exactly you mean by "local nazis"? Are you getting ads for Nazi barber shops? Sieg Heil Heating & Cooling? Hitler Juice Bar and Bubble Tea?
If this was such a huge problem I'm sure we would have heard of it before.
Are they just disproportionately powerful then? Because the US does definitely have consistent far left trends and movements that overtake the mainstream. The OK hand gesture hysteria is maybe an evident example, but land acknowledgments? DEI statements? Fatphobia? Defund the police? All of these originate from far left positions.
I can moderate my own feed -- the majority of people don't need, want, or enjoy an overtly paternalistic hugbox, and especially if moderation tends to be unidirectionally skewed in one political direction. It's not surprising that growth is slow.
I'm not sure about that. I'd rather decide for myself what I want to read and what I do not. I'd love to not delegate this important decision to corporate overlords.
i find it’s pretty toxic, in a militant way… that doesn’t get moderated of course.
That’s “free expression” when it’s about topics blueskyers all agree on.
waits to be called a nazi
Which is fine -- build what you want to be a part of -- but don't pretend it's the neutral position.
And no, I'm not talking about "1939 Germany" views.
Pretty shitty that ones choice of social media is so politicized but if you must pick a side... I will pick the non-nazi side, thank you very much!
But I remember the early days of MySpace and Facebook with a certain nostalgia, and I'm pained to see the current state of all these tools. Such a thorough report as this gives me a little hope that perhaps an acceptable middle ground can be found for Internet communities at large scales.
I don't think I'll be hopping back in any time soon, but perhaps the research and positive advancements in social media aren't over yet.
They also perform age checks because they are evil and complicit with obviously detrimental local laws, not because they want to protect the children.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...
Now in 2026, their transparency report says nothing about stackable moderation or moderation services. I guess nobody is using them, at least not in significant enough volumes that it would have a meaningful effect on the at least not enough for them to have a meaningful effect on the Trust & Safety team's job.
Likewise, they tout "thousands of Personal Data Servers operated by people across the federated AT Protocol network", but that's out of "41.41M users".
It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.
It’s spread out over subgroups and niches. I imagine the biggest independent moderation service is blacksky’s, and they’re not exactly best friends with bluesky.
I use about five different moderation services, and a handful of independent blocklists.
> It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.
It’s better than the situation on X.
I’m growing tired of those bans on legal content that isn’t inherently harmful (we are talking about fictional humanized animals here) but considered “icky” by platforms and payment processors.
So I don’t care if the AT protocol is technologically superior to ActivityPub (?) – the Mastodon community has a healthier moderation and mindset than Bluesky, in my opinion.
Furry art, including quite explicit furry art, is very common on bluesky and doesn’t seem be especially restricted by policy. I mean, unless they also happen to be depicting nonconsensual sexual interactions, an orthogonal concern to the furry aspect.
> I’m growing tired of those bans on legal content that isn’t inherently harmful (we are talking about fictional humanized animals here) but considered “icky” by platforms and payment processors.
Well, you are free to avail yourself of the forums that lack those policies. Now, I know you’ve complained that they are “harmful”, but... Maybe there is a reason that other forums choose to put bans in place.
It would be nice to see some more transparency around the decisions of whether an account gets verified or not. So far it’s feeling like a “cool club” with little rhyme or reason with regards to certain verification decisions.
Related to that is also the need to add more trusted verifiers. Are there any plans to allow third parties to provide verification services or is it always only going to be journalistic and educational institutions?
That's how Twitter started, and when the policy changed, the "cool club" members threw public tantrums (some of which still seethe to this day).
It's all very high-school cafeteria clique to me.
Anyone can put together a moderation service that labels accounts that they’ve vetted or blacklisted. It wouldn’t be that taxing to host one, but the labor to maintain it is a different story.
But Twitter felt cringe to me long before it was consumed by Musk and politics. Messing with the feed has backfired all of the big platforms. First Facebook then Twitter and most recently Instagram.
They all became a closed loop of content that is force fed. Injecting an ad in the a feed we control wasn't ever enough.
midius•1h ago
so it's _not_ that hard.
jajuuka•1h ago