Yeah, sad but true. In https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/ I wrote

"It's a stark contrast from November 2022, when millions of people dismayed by Apartheid Clyde's acquisition of Twitter flocked to Mastodon looking for a Twitter alternative.

And a good thing too!

For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn't have good experiences ... so didn't stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn't addressed the reasons why.

Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities"

It's hard for so many people here to accept that it can be a very rational decision to go to a venture-funded platform even knowing that they'll almost certainly wind up exploiting their users at some point. Of course it can also be a rational decision not to do that, either because you can easily get a good experience somewhere else or because you decide it's worth accepting something that doesn't give you as much as what you want that (for many people) requires a lot more effort. But, different people make different tradeoffs, and all the sneering or disparaging peple who for whatever reasons prefer Bluesky ... isn't helpful.


@[email protected] @[email protected]

Yeah, sad but true. In https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/ I wrote

"It's a stark contrast from November 2022, when millions of people dismayed by Apartheid Clyde's acquisition of Twitter flocked to Mastodon looking for a Twitter alternative.

And a good thing too!

For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn't have good experiences ... so didn't stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn't addressed the reasons why.

Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities"

It's hard for so many people here to accept that it can be a very rational decision to go to a venture-funded platform even knowing that they'll almost certainly wind up exploiting their users at some point. Of course it can also be a rational decision not to do that, either because you can easily get a good experience somewhere else or because you decide it's worth accepting something that doesn't give you as much as what you want that (for many people) requires a lot more effort. But, different people make different tradeoffs, and all the sneering or disparaging peple who for whatever reasons prefer Bluesky ... isn't helpful.


@[email protected] @[email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnysTqwUVfc

Last week's was great, really looking forward to this! #uspol #wfp

@[email protected] fair enough, "wrong" is too strong ... "imprecise" is a better word for how i see the term being used in this context.

@[email protected] Yes I'm aware -- and Moxie worked for Dorsey for a while too back in the day. But I'm pretty sure that the people @[email protected] is referring to in this post are primarily anarcho-capitalists rather than non-anarcho-capitalist anarchists.

@[email protected] good point, that could be what’s going on. Also sparking disagreement in a subthread works well as an amplification technique on Twitter so people often tend not to worry that much about getting contentiod stuff wrong if they don’t see it as undercutting their main point https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113478068372194895

A thread on Bluesky funding and origins that's well worth reading. None of this is news but I don't know how widely known it is, and this thread does a good job of putting it together. I've got some thoughts in the replies at https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113477787132333873 and https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113477862518931487

Note that the first post in the thread talks about "anarchists", where I think "anarcho-captialists" would be more accurate. There's a lot of discussion of that in the replies, quite rightly pushing back. But that's not the only important thing here!

RE: https://toad.social/users/davetroy/statuses/113476788536250587

@[email protected] it might be worth clarifying the original post by changing it anarchocapitalist (or something like that). Otherwise it's easy for people who aren't aware of anarchocapitalist perspectives -- or who don't think of it as anarchists -- to misinterpret.

@[email protected] you don't have to -- the bridge will let people there follow you.. but, it's somewhat clunky. so dpeending on how much you're going to be focusing on Bluesky, you might want to also create an account there -- I've done that both for myself and for Nexus of Privacy.

@[email protected] yeah really. very well said, that captures how we're feeling as well as anything else i've read.

@[email protected] although, just a few months ago a grocery store employee that egg cartons have enough structural integrity that they actually can go at the bottom. on the one hand they're the trained professional ... on the other hand, nah, i'm continuing to put my eggs on top of the heavier stuff

@[email protected] I do agree with your point that starter packs aren't the only mechanism that makes sense. Conceptually there are several things rolled into a starter pack:

- each account can have multiple named lists of recommended accounts and feeds on each profile (they're o the 'starter page' tab of the profile), basically along the lines of the old Mastodon functionality (or indieweb's blogrolls etc etc)

- a follow all button

- signing up with a starter pack (i'm not sure whether or not it automatically does a follow all)

@[email protected]

yeah, 100%. I was talking about that in https://blahaj.zone/notes/a0hsqvt7a1gs019y

@[email protected] @[email protected]

@[email protected] welcome ... great perspectives, glad to have you here!

Yeah, details TBD, but something does seem generally workable.

The analogy to Bridgy Fed is a good one. One of @[email protected]'s challenges is that he basically had to roll his own consent mechanism (while respecting existing signals), since there isn't any general framework to plug into. Here's another example that's going to require a consent mechanism. Is this a good opportunity to think about a general framework that can support these and other applicaations?

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

@[email protected] "We should root for human rights, so Brazil was wrong to force a fascist to comply with their laws" is not as airtight an argument as he seems to think it is.

Great to hear there's so much energy around this, it's certainly useful functionality. Unfortunately the existing Mastodon privacy settings aren't quite right for this:

- "Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithm" ... but is it an algorithm? The text here is okay though:

"Your public posts and profile may be featured or recommended in various areas of Mastodon and your profile may be suggested to other users."

- "Include profile page in search engines" ... a starter pack isn't a search engine, but what if a starter pack winds up in a search engine?

Messy. But probably solvable!

Another area for improvement on Bluesky is that you don't get notified if you're put in a starter pack -- and I'm not sure there's a way to see what starter packs you're in.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

@[email protected] hi! i'm also in the Seattle area.

A thread from @[email protected] that's well worth reading.

#uspol #election2024

RE: https://kolektiva.social/users/tom_nomad/statuses/113454893879331561

@[email protected] Signal of course. Is this a trick question?