When Bluesky does open up and/or federates there will no doubt be an "eternal September"-equivalent rush of folks who won't know/won't care about the standards and practices. The good news is that blocking here is unusually powerful natively and the moderating toolset is increasingly robust.
Andrew D. Girth
The dunking thing is a human curse though. If this place grows to be anywhere near as big as its predecessor, I'm convinced we will see that here too. The limited audience plus that's its largely attracting Twitter refugees is what holds that at bay for now.
Dec 26, 2023 at 8:11 PM
Bluesky trust and safety is too important to be left to Bluesky
Bluesky is open about almost everything, except setting and enforcing their community guidelines. They have an opportunity to lead the Internet forward, but they need to start now.
Is Bluesky dying?
An attempt to untangle a few different arguments around the future of Bluesky – if it has one
What You Should Know When Joining Bluesky
Bluesky promises to rethink social media by focusing on openness and user control. But what does this actually mean for the millions of people joining the site?November was a good month for
Bluesky 2023 Moderation Report - Bluesky
We have hired and trained a full-time team of moderators, launched and iterated on several community and individual moderation features, developed and refined policies both public and internal, designed and redesigned product features to reduce abuse, and built several infrastructure components from scratch to support our Trust and Safety work.
About
Bluesky and the ATmosphere give large organisations a unique opportunity: enjoy troll-free conversations and convene engaged communities on both Bluesky and your own site, all while respecting your users' privacy.
Guide to Bluesky: Getting Started and Best Practices
With over 20 million users and growing, Bluesky offers transparency, control, and a breath of fresh air in the social media world. Are you ready to escape the toxicity and censorship of other platforms? Sign up now! #Bluesky 🚀🌐
What is Bluesky when it’s not the underdog? | TechCrunch
Bluesky is having a moment — a moment that’s already stretched on for nearly three months. Over the summer, the social media app saw a wave of new
This is a really insightful thread that points out some of the fundamental issues with the Bluesky community vs Bluesky as a decentralized protocol. This thread is also why I think it's a really smart move for Bluesky to appeal to fandoms... (cont.)
B. Prendergast
One of the Atmosphere’s big bets is that the next 100m users will be won by making decentralised tech + data sovereignty more compelling. I’m less than convinced. We may be solving problems only builders care about, while overlooking problems that actually make ordinary people choose a network.
A new paper examines blocking on Bluesky: "…blocking does not decrease the popularity and activity of the blocked users and has a limited effect on the social graph." There is a lot more nuance in here. h/t @index.internet.exchangepoint.tech.ap.brid.gy openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/36822/
City Research Online - Open or Blocked Skies? Community Moderation Practices in Bluesky
openaccess.city.ac.ukTo be honest, I think this is more the ruling class in America manifesting that bluesky fails, rather than bluesky actually failing because they know they can't control it just by buying it out.
Mary Gillis
"But, two years since its launch, the site has around just 10% of X’s estimated global users." This is presented as a failure. At 2yo, having 10% of the users of its biggest rival, which is 20yo, is a failure. No tech is allowed to just be a success, it has to be a blockbuster or it doesn't count.
i think, end of the day, the real problem with Bluesky is that most of its users are here *because* they want to be in a bubble. and they can tell themselves that it’s just about not being around Nazis it supporting Musk, and that’s part of it, but also there’s a palpable desire to be ensconced.
A new paper examines blocking on Bluesky: "…blocking does not decrease the popularity and activity of the blocked users and has a limited effect on the social graph." There is a lot more nuance in here. h/t @index.internet.exchangepoint.tech.ap.brid.gy openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/36822/
City Research Online - Open or Blocked Skies? Community Moderation Practices in Bluesky
openaccess.city.ac.ukWhen @bsky.app pulls this kind of crap often, whilst also expecting the community to do the heavy-lifting in actually convincing people to try out the AT Protocol... it's really difficult to feel hopeful about the future of Bluesky and its constituents. I imagine many agree with this stance.
Rude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂
Bluesky’s statement deriding Threads users as “guinea pigs” is not representative of Blacksky Algorithms, the atproto ecosystem or the open social web more broadly. Communities form around communication networks. And communities should never be trolled for whatever tool helps them find each other.
Current platforms are trying to be the only place you hangout. In the real world, we call that a trap. Bluesky is a distribution engine — we send people to off platform experiences. Go read that blog on @beehiiv.com or watch the livestream on @stream.place.
Bluesky should go back to invites, continue aggressive bot bans, create a Craigslist-style marketplace (since you’re more likely to buy/get services from a educated or good person on here than any other social network), and market this place like a walled garden protected from enshittification.
