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How is BlueSky any different from other major social media platforms? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/outoftheloop@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

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.
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In relation to the second point, I am assuming the policy is opposing intentional or willful sharing of data for AI usage, as there already datasets composed of BlueSky posts out in the wild[0].

    [0] https://www.404media.co/bluesky-posts-machine-learning-ai-datasets-hugging-face/

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Correct. They are clear in that link as well that BlueSky themselves will not do anything to harvest and/or monetize data for AI. But there’s really no way to stop bad faith actors from crawling any perceivable content for malicious purposes.

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