this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).

It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.

Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.

In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.

There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I just go where the japanese artists go, and they are going to either blue sky or misskey, mostly blue sky since it has a bigger reach, misskey closed account creation for outsiders, and the way mastodon works I bet it's defederated from a lot of the popular instances like baraag.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Misskey is like mastodon so you can just go to another misskey instance.

But if you're talking about the misskey.io instance, it's not that defederated from my experience (the 3 instances I'm on aren't defederated from it).

The instance simply follows Japanese law so whatever Japan allows they allow and whatever Japan forbids they forbid (which is why censoring genitals is also mandatory in that instance lol). It's not like it's some nazi cesspool or anything like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Japan is weird as fuck. I just saw a Japanese disc store collaborate with an incest sleep rape game.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I don't know how to see how much an instance is defederated, I just concluded it must be in the same rate of baraag because both misskey.io and it allows loli art. I know that baraag is on some default block list for administrators for example.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (5 children)

How do we know this bluesky isn't just the same shit run by different assholes?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We know that it is run by the same assholes. Bluesky is VC backed and Twitter was also. There is no way that Bluesky won't go the same route as every other VC backed social network. Sometime in the future they will start to meddle with your feed to push ads and sell your data to everyone.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

This makes me wonder so hard why people don't switch to Mastodon instead. Like... You have literally seen this before! Why are you doing it again?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago

I've been on the platform for about a year, it's more community driven than other sites.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 23 hours ago

We can't, but at least there is a chance it is not.

With Xitter, we know for certain.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

We don't. It probably is. Mastodon is the way, but they need to fix a few things themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

we already know bluesky is run by former twitter assholes. but it's the same with everything. people disappointed in new facebook policies move to band...

there are better alternatives, guaranteed not to turn into a heap of shit because of designed safeguards - but people don't like those things; they always opt for the devil they already know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Although it also helps that places like BlueSky have less of a barrier to entry.

Alternatives like Mastodon are a bit more confusing, compared to a centralised site, where everything is linked in through the one interface.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 40 minutes ago

i disagree. the only barrier of entry is when people are pushing the fediverse concept as a whole. for the vast majority of people; all they need to know is to go to mastodon.social and sign up, done. they'll get the wider picture on their own terms and at their own pace if left alone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Most of the coolest places have barriers to entry

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago

Opt out is such a shitty practice. Especially for AI generation

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Social media like Twitter preys on people's fear of missing out.

Manufactured Problem - not being up to date on internet bullshit. Marketed solution - be on twitter. Supply and demand died a long time ago. Now it's all about manufactured problems, and conveniently marketed solutions.

This sort of psychological manipulation in marketing works. It's why it's so hard to get people to leave websites like Twitter, reddit, fb ect. They've made their brands synonymous with media trends.

It took long enough, but I'm genuinely happy to see folks wising up and realizing they don't "need" Twitter. It's like watching a bunch of people break up with a toxic ex all at the same time.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago (4 children)

These mfs will use literally anything except for open source, decentralised social meda

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago

The masses yearn for the corporate boot

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Pussy. Ass. Bitch.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Just helpful to remember, as all this horseshit persists, Bluesky is Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is former head of Twitter and musk's good buddy.

It's all a losing proposition, whatever direction you move - except if you move... Away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

im not sure people wont consider mastodon tbh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

i know. but its our responsability to understand why the corporate shitty options are always preferred by the layman public.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Bluesky is pretty great once you learn how to use it. I plan to slowly back off twitter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

Bluesky is the promise of Mastodon with none of the failsafes of Mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.

Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.

There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides (however imperfectly). It is also full of "liberal" sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.

Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

That type of social media just isn't really for me. But why would one want to choose Bluesky over Mastadon?

When I did try Twitter I somehow ended up following and be followed by a bunch of folks from Ghana... that was pretty neat. Although I did miss out because my Akan/Pidgin is basically non existent. Although I was introduced to the word "bomboclaat" which was interesting... lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Because users value usability over privacy.

The major thing that make Mastodon unusable is lack of users. That and lack of algorithmic feeds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

I'm mostly still on Twitter because I follow a lot of Japanese artists and bands. Now plenty of them are jumping out BlueSky so off I go.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That’s how Facebook went for me the last time I tried to use it with a new account… I was immediately swamped with friend requests from people in western and central Africa. I accepted some out of curiosity so of course FB decided that’s what I was really into. I’m not sure if these people just send out random requests or why they want to add Americans… I didn’t get hit up for scams or anything, it was just people posting and sharing photos of their lives as normal FB users.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Wait this whole article just baselessly assumes that 1 new bluesky account = 1 person leaving twitter. That is so obviously unrealistic. Sure some people were probably curious and wanted to check out something new but that doesn't mean they will immediately switch platforms.

You can’t just make fun of Those Guys for endlessly believing fake bullshit while unquestionably parroting this garbage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Getting a 100000 new users when Twitter loses roughly the same amount is a pretty significant correlation.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 118 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Dude, that’s gonna be one hell of a racist AI just based on the dataset it’s gonna receive

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[–] [email protected] 171 points 2 days ago (13 children)

What a garbage dataset to train off. The majority of everything there is all bots and AI anyway lol

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[–] [email protected] 144 points 2 days ago (30 children)

Come on over to Mastodon, the water's nice

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