Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms
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And it's ridiculous because the difference between Mastodon and Twitter is minuscule.
I remember following some popular Twitter Head. Someone made a fake account on Mastodon and started getting followers but only posted once. Since then, his followers have grown to around 11k without any content at all! Imagine if it had been a real account. But the Twitter Head would rather switch to Bluesky instead. Such bullshit.
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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There is at least some (admittedly subpar) federation possible. So if the need is great enough, someone may take up the challenge.
From what I understand, Bsky didn't actually provide much (if any) OSS code to create the federated apps, just the protocol. So there would need to be tons of work done to create it. Some people were (rightly) pointing out that time might be better spent improving existing solutions like Mastodon, rather than freely providing more value to a for-profit company.
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I feel like scientists should move towards open source solutions ... I feel like most scientists are smart enough to launch a mastodon server, but well.
Some of us have. There are a few science focused servers.
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Most scientists aren't allowed to do stuff like that, or purely just don't have the time.
What.. Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.
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I think there's a fairly serious problem for large accounts on mastodon but I will never have one so I can't quite understand it myself.
Something like dealing with replies / scolds without spending all day blocking is too hard.
It doesn't help that "no algorithm" means "show first reply at the top" so quick replies can dominate comments.The but I don't understand is why this is fine on blue sky. Is it just different users? I can't quite believe that but I can't see why blue sky would be less annoying.
It's not that it's less annoying, it's that it was in the right place at the right time to capture sufficient network effect..
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Haha, thanks! I know it's quite important for a good bunch of people here (on a federated site), but I guess I'll stick with Bluesky then. Thanks for the insights! : )
It's important because, along with the ability to migrate accounts, it prevents/deters enshittification. In betting Bluesky will hit that wall in the next few years (I'm guessing they'll never properly implement federation).
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Bluesky also has the option of doing this, or not.
Do you refer to the "Following" Vs "Discover" feed?
Apparently it's very noticeable when a post hits the discover feed. The quality of responses dives off a cliff.
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Why is it a problem? If a tool is good now, I'll use it now.
I don't stop myself from buying a new axe just because it'll break eventually, you know what I mean?
Although obviously if there was an axe that never would break, I'd buy that! But maybe there are trade-offs. Maybe the never-breaking axe has a complicated handle or something. I don't know, I'm trying my best with the axe analogy to describe Bluesky vs Mastodon.
Hopefully it's clear enough!It's a problem for the same reason twitter dying sucks.. The network effect is important, and maintaining yours during a slow, piecemeal mass migration is hard. Which is why I'm sticking with mastodon now, despite more of my relevant network being on BS.
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Cause the name is hard to remember.. I was trying to yesterday and the closest I could get is megatron
It's a big elephant and you send "Toots!".
How do you confused that with a cynical robot and a giant shark? You'd post "Quips!" or "Bites!". Wouldn't work at all.
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Thanks for the update. Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It's optional. The main feed has no algorithm,, just who you follow.
Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It's optional. The main feed has no algorithm,, just who you follow.
The thing is, a lot of social media sites have or had this. YouTube has the subscriptions feed. Twitter has (I don't know anymore) a following feed. Reddit used to keep posts on your homepage only being from subscribed subreddits.
Thing is, people don't use them. They see maintaining subscriptions as work and so want to be fed posts by algorithm.
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It's a big elephant and you send "Toots!".
How do you confused that with a cynical robot and a giant shark? You'd post "Quips!" or "Bites!". Wouldn't work at all.
"Bites" is so cool...
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Now all governments around the globe and other public services and we.are getting somewhere.
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What.. Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.
I'd reckon that managing a social media server is more involved than just using social media.
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- No "starter kits" which are just positive-feedback loops for popular accounts
- No "algorithm" which promotes popularity or engagement over quality or relevance
Bluesky's main feed is totally algorithm free, it's just the people you follow's posts in chronological order, same as mastodon.
Starter kits are optional, but they allow you to get started in hours rather than months. For me, they made the difference between a vibrant and interesting feed well tailored towards my interests, and a very sparse feed that I didn't use on Mastodon. For me they were the difference between a useful social network and a non-useful one.
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Thanks for the update. Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It's optional. The main feed has no algorithm,, just who you follow.
The tagging sounds great. One of the problems with masto is showing the hashtags in the body making posts that use them look awful, and of course being entirely set by the author
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It's not that it's less annoying, it's that it was in the right place at the right time to capture sufficient network effect..
There's plenty of people on masto saying they have accounts on both but prefer bsky due to difficulty managing replies.
As I say I don't really understand it but it's a real thing big accounts experience.
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Why is ActivityPub "the" Fediverse? "Fediverse" is very broad and encompasses multiple protocols, a lot of which predate ActivityPub becoming commonplace.
The original Fediverse apps are still around and don't use ActivityPub. For example, StatusNet / GNU Social use OStatus and Identica uses Activity Streams / ActivityPump (which was the protocol before ActivityPub). diaspora (if it's still around) used its own protocol too.
Because a fediverse is any group of technologies that talk to each other via a common protocol. In 2025 that’s ActivityPub and has been for awhile. It would be one hell of a stretch to assert that a single platform with its own home made protocol that doesn’t talk to any other technology in the entire fediverse as part of that fediverse. So at best you can say Bluesky has its own fediverse. And if one fediverse is going to be “the fediverse” it’s going to be the one that actually connects all the most common platforms people use today, including Diaspora.
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First time seeing HTTP code 451
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Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It's optional. The main feed has no algorithm,, just who you follow.
The thing is, a lot of social media sites have or had this. YouTube has the subscriptions feed. Twitter has (I don't know anymore) a following feed. Reddit used to keep posts on your homepage only being from subscribed subreddits.
Thing is, people don't use them. They see maintaining subscriptions as work and so want to be fed posts by algorithm.
Been watching @TechConnectify 's latest?! He has some interesting stats on the subscriptions feed on YT in there - and yes, it's shockingly low.
I think people want plug and play. Maintaining subs isn't work as such after you've set it up, but it does take that initial setup. https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA -
First time seeing HTTP code 451
because I needed an explanation of what that means, and I wanted it to be cute and funny.
