BlueSky invites and requests

[ghostrunner]

I just wish we could embed posts here. So far I don’t see that anyone’s done that but if this keeps up maybe that’ll come.

[ghostrunner]

Threads had a huge advantage - came out first, and if you had an Instagram account, you could easily make it a Threads account as well

[CardsofSTL]

Post election twitter exodus is making bluesky flush.

[ghostrunner]

Somewhat technical explainer that elaborates on what I was talking about above:

I took a couple links out for clarity, but i think you should be able to see all of it here:
https://skyview.social/?url=https%3A%2F ... ype=unroll

If you're curious why everybody's username is a domain, it's because every user is essentially a website
A common thought by devs is "couldn't you make a social network using RSS" and we basically went... yeah let's try that premise with some tweaks

Apps like Bluesky are aggregators. They crawl around the atmosphere like a search engine would the crawl the web, but instead of making a search app it makes a social app
When you post something, like something, make a reply, you're just publishing json on your site, and then that gets synced out in an event stream too

It's pretty weird that you can do it that way -- but you can!

The post I'm replying to now has a URL under my site. It's:

at://pfrazee.com/app.bsky.feed.post/3l6xwohhgax2x


When you post something, like something, make a reply, you're just publishing json on your site, and then that gets synced out in an event stream too

This is how Bluesky is decentralized. In the same way that you can switch search engines and see the same web, you can switch social apps and see the same atmosphere.

It's because everybody's got their own site

We decided not to just use HTTP & RSS because we needed a couple of specific features

1, we wanted everybody's data to be signed at-rest. That way you can prove authenticity even when talking to an aggregator. So the JSON actually gets stored as CBOR and stuffed into a signed merkle tree

2, we didn't want people's accounts to be permanently attached to a domain, because you need to migrate hosts sometimes.

So your domain handle actually maps to a DID which then maps to your current host. A little more complex, but ensures you can change hosts w/o breaking links

If you read this tutorial (atproto.com/guides/appli...) you'll see the whole model for building apps like this

The aggregating apps will use OAuth to sign into your personal site, and then they can tell your site what json to publish so your site really becomes your personal data locker that you take with you to different apps

This article is another interesting way to look at it. We were trying to figure out how to build for high scales while being decentralized, and gradually just turned the data center inside-out

Jay did a really good interview about the identity system with the @mmccue.bsky.social if you're interested in a good listen

[Arthur Dent]

Threads had a huge advantage - came out first, and if you had an Instagram account, you could easily make it a Threads account as well

But aren't both still way behind Twitter?

[ghostrunner]

Threads had a huge advantage - came out first, and if you had an Instagram account, you could easily make it a Threads account as well

But aren't both still way behind Twitter?

By a long way, but it’s ~16 years old.

Though what I’ve been reading several larger accounts is that they’re seeing more/higher quality “engagement” and in several cases even more followers. I’ve got about 3x what I had on Twitter - more than I want - mostly because I made a few starter packs in the last 2 weeks and they’re made so that the creator has to be included. They’re topic based lists of accounts to help people find who they’re looking for and they’ve really helped this increase I think. I made one for Indianapolis and another for filmmakers just because it hadn’t been made at the time.

Not that surprised though because Twitter elevates paying trolls, bots and now AI accounts to the top of every thread and it’s useless for seeing interesting conversations in the way it used to be. Not even just news and politics, but big movie news accounts.

[ghostrunner]

Several PD writers are on there now, btw. Goold, Worthy, Hochman and some non-sports I don’t follow.

Miklasz too.

[sighyoung]

Threads had a huge advantage - came out first, and if you had an Instagram account, you could easily make it a Threads account as well

But aren't both still way behind Twitter?

By a long way, but it’s ~16 years old.

Though what I’ve been reading several larger accounts is that they’re seeing more/higher quality “engagement” and in several cases even more followers. I’ve got about 3x what I had on Twitter - more than I want - mostly because I made a few starter packs in the last 2 weeks and they’re made so that the creator has to be included. They’re topic based lists of accounts to help people find who they’re looking for and they’ve really helped this increase I think. I made one for Indianapolis and another for filmmakers just because it hadn’t been made at the time.

Not that surprised though because Twitter elevates paying trolls, bots and now AI accounts to the top of every thread and it’s useless for seeing interesting conversations in the way it used to be. Not even just news and politics, but big movie news accounts.

This has been my experience with Twitter/X. I joined rather late--2018 or so?--but when I first started, it wasn't unusual to interact, even in passing, with major accounts and to grow one's account steadily. After Musk bought the company and changed its algorithms, few things I post received much attention, and the app buried accounts that I followed and liked to read. I also received several follows from AI bots every single day. The quality of my feeds was terrible.

Engagement is different on Bluesky (you have to repost to get attention, and I don't like to do that), but I like the quality of interaction a lot, as well as the quality of my feed. Additionally, on Bluesky it's common to block or hide accounts that you don't want to be bothered with--something that I did long ago on Facebook post-Ferguson which really improved the quality of my experience there, too.

[ghostrunner]

Threads had a huge advantage - came out first, and if you had an Instagram account, you could easily make it a Threads account as well

But aren't both still way behind Twitter?

By a long way, but it’s ~16 years old.

Though what I’ve been reading several larger accounts is that they’re seeing more/higher quality “engagement” and in several cases even more followers. I’ve got about 3x what I had on Twitter - more than I want - mostly because I made a few starter packs in the last 2 weeks and they’re made so that the creator has to be included. They’re topic based lists of accounts to help people find who they’re looking for and they’ve really helped this increase I think. I made one for Indianapolis and another for filmmakers just because it hadn’t been made at the time.

Not that surprised though because Twitter elevates paying trolls, bots and now AI accounts to the top of every thread and it’s useless for seeing interesting conversations in the way it used to be. Not even just news and politics, but big movie news accounts.

This has been my experience with Twitter/X. I joined rather late--2018 or so?--but when I first started, it wasn't unusual to interact, even in passing, with major accounts and to grow one's account steadily. After Musk bought the company and changed its algorithms, few things I post received much attention, and the app buried accounts that I followed and liked to read. I also received several follows from AI bots every single day. The quality of my feeds was terrible.

Engagement is different on Bluesky (you have to repost to get attention, and I don't like to do that), but I like the quality of interaction a lot, as well as the quality of my feed. Additionally, on Bluesky it's common to block or hide accounts that you don't want to be bothered with--something that I did long ago on Facebook post-Ferguson which really improved the quality of my experience there, too.

I like that if you want to avoid politics altogether and just follow scientists or nature photographers or whatever, you can do that without being pushed into the algorithmic feed when you login. Or do the same thing in feeds. Twitter still has lists but even in those there’s still a good chance of [expletive] being at the top of replies.

The nuclear block is pretty nice. Seems like they’ve put some thought into discouraging the nastiness and trolling from Twitter, even pre-Elon.