this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Yesterday I read on mastodon that leaving Twitter to go to Bluesky is like quitting smoking to start vaping. Changing a centralized place that lives off your data for another one. Right now Bluesky does not have hate speech like Twitter just because it does not suit the current accounts of its shareholders
Not a great analogy considering Vaping is infinitely healtheri than Smoking, but.. yeah.. they need to go to Mastodon.
I'm not going to discuss it with you, because I'm not a doctor nor is it the issue, but the health authorities (at least the European ones) do not agree with your statement.
Switching to vaping is less bad, and for me, it lead to me quitting all together. So to me, this is still a small win, and I like to celebrate small wins these days.
I would say quitting twitter to join bluesky is more like quitting menthols to smoke regular cigarettes, and switching to a decentralized platform would be more analogous to a switch to vaping. Quitting social media entirely would equate better to 'quitting smoking' in my mind, as i dont think any platform is mentally healthful (yes i am fully aware of the hypocrisy of posting this comment as a lemmy user).
Since Twitter is currently really really toxic, dangerous, and run by a maniac; and Bluesky currently is not (it's actually been amazingly non-toxic)...I strongly disagree.
Even shittier anaology, but it's more like moving from a house that has an active gas leak to a house that has gas pipes in the house. Has potential for leaks, but there aren't any. And it currently has working gas leak detectors.
Fixed that for you.
For those who are unfamiliar,
Ok, if it's good for you I'm glad, maybe over time it will happen to you like vaping and you can completely switch to decentralized networks
You misunderstand. I'm not using any centralized social media. Lemmy is my one and only. I'm saying It's worth celebrating the small wins and encouraging companies to continue moving to models like this. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
I think we just need to adopt the 2000s mindset again of dropping a platform when it gets shit. No one gave a fuck about the loss of Digg and Myspace.
Normies don't do change
Apparently they just become fascist
When did this become the default?
I had a really good friend on MySpace that I lost touch with. I think he was a little paranoid, we didn't speak much and he was always looking over his shoulder. His name was Tom.
But now I have nostalgia for MySpace lol. Digg… not so much
I don’t know if hate speech will be able to flourish on Bluesky like on twitter simply because of the moderation tools.
There’s already a giant blocklist of maga idiots who have tried to move over, and if you follow that list you’ll never see their posts. And the unwritten rule of the place is to block anyone who is trying to start stuff or that you simply don’t like. On twitter that felt taboo for some reason, but on Bluesky that’s normal - as it should be, really.
This gives me hope. It's like we're all finally learning how to moderate forums in this ridiculous climate.
Where can I get this list?
Here is one. I'm sure there are several.
https://bsky.app/profile/skywatch.blue/lists/3l53cjwlt4o2s
Edit: Just came across a post with several useful block lists for maga, nazis, other shitheads:
https://bsky.app/profile/azalben.bsky.social/post/3lawjdxpick2l
If they're still allowed on the platform to speak their mind amongst their ilk, doesn't that just create an echo chamber of idiots? Assuming they stay instead of leaving after their fe-fes get hurt, of course.
There will always be echo chambers of idiots. Twitter is more or less that already.
I left Twitter years ago, but I think you could also block whoever you want, whether people do it more or less is independent of the site, the moderation tools are the same. 3
What's more, I am 100% sure that if in a few years Bluesky considers it economically beneficial for its shareholders that these tools "have occasional failures" this will happen without a doubt. This is something that if happens in Mastodon, changing the node you are done
Bluesky also lets you unpin your quotes from others posts so no quote dunking and they have a nuclear block. If you’re blocked, you can’t see their posts anywhere in quotes or otherwise (excepting screenshots) and that interaction is broken completely even to third parties that may have neither blocked.
Twitter didn't have block lists. You could block people individually, but not as a group.
Are these details really that important? Is it really that difficult to manually block 50-100 users? I don't know, everything you are telling me are, at best, marginal improvements that do not justify selling all your personal data to a private company seeking profit from those data/contributions.
CC @[email protected]
It is literally night and day for queer people. Large accounts can’t post about queer subjects on Twitter without harassment anymore due to how the algorithm works, but if you subscribe to a couple of block lists on Bluesky that is GONE. You might run into the odd freak, but community run block lists will keep the tide at bay.
When Mastodon takes user safety practices as seriously as Bluesky does I’ll consider switching.
Ok. You are in a situation of harassment and you believe that giving your data and delegating your security to a private company that responds to economic interests is a viable long-term solution.
There are things that one cannot argue against
I’m not talking about targeted harassment specifically, I mean dozens of accounts leaving bigoted remarks on any post about queer subjects that gets traction (more than a few thousand likes). Melon certainly made the problem worse on Twitter, but there’s a reason prior to that they had an entire department dedicated to dealing with that shit: plenty of people see no problem with it, and it makes social media a nightmare for queer people.
If you don’t have a strong trust and safety team, then you need blocking tools that do the heavy lifting. And having to block 50k bigots manually is why I left Twitter. As long as Mastodon doesn’t have anything that can compete with block lists, it’s going to struggle to attract people who need those features.
All I'm saying is that the moderation tools are NOT the same.
Manually blocking hundreds of people (where those people can still see your posts [how twitter does it]) instead of subscribing to one list isn't the same, and being able to remove your quoted posts from some troll is not the same.
There is an argument to be had about who funding the app and what that means, but there's no denying that Bluesky's moderation tools from the user level are streets ahead of anything twitter has ever done.
Ok, I haven't denied that, the tools are different (I don't even know Twitter's tools very well), I debate whether that is worth enough to accept that it is centralized. If over time they consider that something else is more profitable, they will change the moderation tools, have no doubt.
Coincidentally, the CEO of bluesky posted this infographic today. Maybe some of these things will not hold up in the long run, but we'll see.
https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/113/478/385/983/255/387/original/47310b3e334f918c.jpeg
They have recently said that they are going to have a subscription model for some extra features to curb the need to throw in ads and whatnot. We'll definitely see how that all works. But I do feel like they might be at least trying to set up a business model that doesn't totally suck. All to be determined at this point.
Personally I think that financing a platform like this with premium subscriptions is illusory. I could be wrong but what are they going to offer as a premium?
I think it may be interesting to note that Spotify is closing its first green year in its history this year, for reference.
I think they described some basic-ish stuff you'd get if you subbed, like longer video uploads. There were a couple of perks that I don't remember off the top of my head.
And that may not be the only revenue stream in the end. They may still get financing from somewhere else, which certainly has its issues. But at least trying to figure out something while they are relatively small is probably a better approach than waiting until the walls are falling down and then scrambling.
https://atproto.com/guides/self-hosting it’s not so bad; they’re a lot more open than people giving them credit for. it’s just not as federated - yet
It has a single owner who makes the decisions and makes profitable the contributions of the users. It is a social media model that has been over for me for some time now, if they are open the better for them, I am not going to join anyway.
Isn't it decentralized?
Not really. You can host your own data but you still rely on Bluesky’s services to access it. And there is no realistic way to migrate your content or audience to another platform outside their control
Which services? isn't it similar to matrix?
So ATProto that bluesky is built on has 3 core aspects. PDS’s (personal data server, stores your account content and data), Relays (transmits your actions such as likes, favorites, replies etc), and Appviews (basically the front end that you use to convert the data to a human readable front end like the bluesky app)
PDS’s are allowed to be hosted by others right now but Relays are not. So even if you host your own PDS on the bluesky network, you rely on the bluesky controlled relay to be able to interact with the network.
In theory there is a future where other people can host relays on the network but it’s not that way right now and is likely going to be too cost prohibiting for the people hosting to ever be realistic.
How is mastodon not just a bunch of centralized platforms?
Sure the servers communicate with each other but the content is still just on one of them. Goes the server, so goes the content.
Or am I mistaking?
If it is like I say I feel it is more trading Hitler in for, potentially, a bunch of smaller Hitlers.
If something has hundreds of "centralised" platforms owned and run by a diversity of different people and spread all over the world geographically, then that's "decentralised".
I can't really think of another way in which something could be decentralised.
With ActivityPub, there's nothing stopping you hosting a server literally just for yourself. It wouldn't get much more decentralised than that.
IIRC the content is on multiple. If there's a single user on lemmy.world subscribing to content from somewhere.else's foo community, then foo will be synced to lemmy.world and if somewhere.else is taken down it will remain on lemmy.world.
But someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, it isn't just about servers going offline. If a single server does something bad, you can just switch to a different one and enjoy the same content you've been seeing.
Well, I am not a systems engineer to answer your question, in any case smaller Hitlers equals Hitlers with less power. Dividing power is not the definitive solution to authoritarianism, but it usually helps a lot, especially if the agents are also competitive. "If you are too Hitler, I'll go to this other server that is a little less so" is a valid incentive to avoid the Hitlerization of the admins.
I don't think I've ever used the name Hitler so much.
This is what decentralized means. If your home instance goes to shit, you can just move your account to another one.
Twitter started dying when they closed the API
Bluesky’s is perfectly operational
Those would all have to be true in order for anyone to have a reason to put trust into Bluesky.
Ok, if for you the API is the most important thing, go ahead, I'm worried about more companies doing "things" with my data, everyone has their priorities.
P.S. Unlike in BlueSky in Mastodon you can be 100% sure that the API will never be closed, in Bluesky it will depend on variable business interests
Mastodon has protocol level issues that prevent it from being fully mainstream though.
As long as people move out of Twitter, I count it as a win. Especially when we get official government stuff out of there - which won’t happen for the US, but the rest of us have a chance
I will count it as a victory when my government's communication channels with me are not private property. A government-owned Mastodon server for official accounts would be logical (the EU already has it even though it barely uses it)