this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Threads? I completely forgot about Threads because this is the first time I've seen news about it since the week it launched. And I doom scroll Lemmy Everything every night.

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

I've never heard of the expression "doom scroll"! It's awesome! With your permission, I'll start using it.

I also doom scroll Lemmy every night (which is bad, since I should sleep, but good because I stopped going to Reddit)

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where were you doing COVID? That was when the phrase really was at its peak, as everyone was doing that to keep up with the news.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I was lucky enough to be working regularly during covid, but I didn't say I've never doom scrolled!

I just never heard the expression on Reddit (which is where I was at the time when wasting... I mean, investing my free time) :)

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The problem is that the painfully earnest people went to Mastodon, the funny people went to BlueSky, the celebs went to Threads, and the mid-tier YouTubers and Streamers and Podcasters who have to be Internet Famous every damned day or they don't get to eat stayed on Twitter.

Personally I'm pulling for Mastodon because I'm a painfully earnest person.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

That explains why I like Mastodon! Painfully earnest individual here.

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

If there was only some way for people on different microblog websites to talk to each other...

Maybe some kind of open, decentralized protocol?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

As far as I’m concerned it’s still just Facebook

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They want a social network designed in a way that single company have all control that would be abused after gaining enough users and advertisers?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Trust me, we'll do the exact same thing again, having learned nothing and with the same exact person on top. Literally the same exact thing that enabled all the fascists some months ago.

It's going to be great this time around!!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Bluesky is literally just old Twitter but better. Why do people insist on hurting themselves with Threads?

Edit: for those more technically inclined, it looks like there are now instructions on how to host your own Bluesky instance. It sounds like you may need a developer account before you can federate with the official instance though.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Yeah the only problem with bluesky is that it still has such strict limits on who can join, and even who can see the content. Can't exactly make it your online home for announcements and such if most people can't see them there even if they wanted to.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I'll never understand why people are so excited for something that is proprietary and invite-only...

Oh yeah, they're idiots. I suspect bluesky is paying for a lot of viral marketing.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bluesky might be better Twitter, but if people doesn't hear about it, or does not want to try it out, they'll stay on Twitter. Or if they can't stand Musk they go to Threads. Simply because those platforms are the biggest there.

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

Bluesky is spreading like wildfire in academia at least.

And much like wildfire, it's going to be a fucking disaster. I don't understand why people who are paid to be critical thinkers would jump to another platform owned by a centralised actor. It'll be the same shit all over again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because centralization is safe and the majority of users really don’t care about using services owned by major corps.

The fediverse is extremely uninviting if you’re a non-technical user. Not impossible, but it’s not a great experience. Centralized social media removes a lot of choices users need to make, which counterintuitively is what tends to make a better UX for the average user. It comes at the expense of the power user, but the power users aren’t the target audience most of the time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, it's an unfortunate reality that the ecosystem just isn't very mature yet. Like technically it's got all the power to run a social media site, but all the onboarding processes and little conveniences that would make it a pleasant move aren't there.

One thing activitypub is missing right now is a built-in way to discover the network, discover instances and understand the shape of the network in terms of federation status. Right now there are outside tools you can discover and peer in from the outside, but they're clunky, break intermittently, and they're not easy to find.

Activitypub only does one half of its job right now: making posts happen. Because it is built on federation it needs to also intrinsically allow users to discover and learn about that process of federation. That's not something any other social media platform has ever had to do, so it's understandable that it was missed, but I think it's key to both differentiating itself from those other networks and becoming more legible.

With centralisation, the posts, networks, onboarding, discovery, all of it is handled by one actor, so they can do all of that however they want.

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

Maybe BECAUSE I HAVEN'T RECEIVED THE DAMN CODE!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Although with their proprietary solution, there's a significant chance that Bluesky is going to be Twitter 2.0 if it ever gains traction. I'm rooting for fediverse to take off because my social media activity has shrunk to a couple of group chats with close friends and family plus occasional comments on Mastodon and Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Idk bro, sounds kind of emotionally healthy.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You know what would be hilarious? Eventually blue sky buys the leftovers of twitter and renames itself twitter. Although by that time it may not be a prudent move. So maybe not.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even funnier would be to buy x.com in the liquidation sale.

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

I can see it now

"The site formerly known as 'X formerly known as Twitter'"

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

I've been under the impression that part of the reason for bluesky's invite system is to help keep out bad actors. It makes it easier to ban someone and keep them from coming back. Buying Twitter would just open the floodgates.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just buy twitter the brand but keep none of the user lists or tech stack, just the name. Honestly though I've been sick of twitter for years at this point and I would rather it be reduced to a footnote in history, an emblem of the bad times when a handful of billionaire assholes controlled all of our information ecosystems.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because the majority of people don’t even know what bluesky is, and those who do can’t get an invite

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're a lot more common than you think; you get an invite to give out every 10 days. It's just that you gotta ask around for them. If you're looking for an invite, try asking a furry. I think most of the furry community who wants to be on Bluesky is already there at this point, so there are probably a number of furries who have tons of unused invites.

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

This explains why I was seeing so many Furries at first. Dialed in the Feeds and don't see them anymore but I was confused at first

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

Yup. The furry community is very tight-knit. If you pick any two humans at random, there will be six degrees of separation between them on average. I'd be willing to bet there's a maximum of six degrees of separation between furries, with the average probably being 2~3 degrees. If you pick people with related interests, the maximum probably drops to 3~4 degrees, with the average being around 1~2. The result is that Bluesky spread like wildfire through the community.

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

I think the invite system slows people joining vs Threads easy sign up. I agree that it is straight up old Twitter and enjoying myself on it. I just started getting invites , they go fast but definitely give them out. Seems like every time I see a post about it I don't have a code to give out. Definitely need to just keep one on deck for the Lemmy comment section.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The detritus at X quickly bubbled over to the rest of the internet — some of it promoted by Elon Musk himself — to the point that the European Union threatened to ban the app over the Israel-Hamas misinformation problem.

Last month, for example, the Washington Post reported that Threads had blocked users from searching for a variety of terms related to the news, including “Covid.”

The company made a number of desperate changes across its family of apps over the last year or so to try and make users have a more pleasant experience online, tamping down news among them.

Since then, Twitter never approached Facebook or Instagram’s numbers, but in terms of cultural relevance, it’s always been one of Zuck’s only real social media competitors

Today, the prevailing model comes from TikTok, a platform that looks more like TV, with content made by people you’re only connected to as a fan or consumer.

Bluesky and Mastodon, the hippest Twitter replacements, are happy to embrace news, but they’re comparatively tiny platforms, and the fun comes from the network effects of a large user base.


The original article contains 823 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

wait, people still use threads?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Lol, good luck at trying to get meta to listen to what users really want.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What will they thread next to mastodon mastodon is the old Twitter, people were brainwashed by these two stinkers

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

Be careful what you wish for, folks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

People leaving twitter for instawords deserve to be let down

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

Not to overly focus on aesthetics, but maybe Zuckerberg could take a few minutes away from his daily groping of paid-friends, and instead work with an acting coach to develop a look for photos that isn’t best described as Robot Rictus.

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