Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms
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The thing is, bluesky is just old twitter, it will become X eventually...Bluesky sucks, but jessus, mastodon sucks in terms of usability. Its only for technical people and experience on mastodon is fatal compared to bluesky, sad that mastodon won't take over, as it could...at least bluesky is not bad YET.
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But we did leave and if (or when) it becomes enshitified, we will move again. We don't need an idealised platform, we just want something easy to use which doesn't (yet) have the baggage and culture of twiXer
But we did leave
Who is we?
From what I can find Twitter has around 500 million users monthly, meanwhile Bluesky has less than 30 million total users... I've seen public figures who are outspoken against Trump and Musk, some who even called them Nazis, still using twitter but not Bluesky or Mastodon. And I even see people on Lemmy post screenshots from Twiiter posts.
So, clearly, the vast majority of people have not left, and those who did are just going for another centralized platform that is likely to suffer from the same problems as Twitter in the future. And all this about a decade too late, as another user said.
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I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
lol... "Feature complete" if you want terrible features.
Yeah. Another Linux mint user here, and when it comes to “feature” differences with Windows it’s usually for the better. I describe it to people as the difference between an OS trying to fulfill the diverse needs of all the stakeholders in a mega corporation, versus an OS that was made to serve the needs of only the users.
For a normal mainstream user that pretty much just needs a web browser and maybe a local document/spreadsheet editor it is faster and stays out of the way.
For a power user that fiddles with the system like a lot of people on Lemmy probably are, you learn different ways to fix different issues on the two. Linux allows you the control to do what you want with your machine, and that also means you can do bad stuff. So there’s always a tradeoff.
For people somewhere in the middle, maybe a normal user who has niche hardware for their hobby, it’s a toss up. I’m sure Windows comes out ahead due to its popularity, which means that’s where the vendor puts their effort.
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Would he better if it was Mastodon, but I suppose I shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, and good riddance to Twitter, indeed.
While there has been some onboarding QOL stuff for mastodon, Bluesky still has them beat on that.
The "People" segment in the explore menu is a nice start, but it's still dependent on the users picking a server that somewhat matches their interests.
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The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
Most people will not have any way to answer that without knowing what the downstream impact will be. Mastodon people are working on smoothing that down, but it's still a pretty fraught question. And if half a given community ends up on one server and half on another, they get fragmented and conversations and followers fizzle out.
Bluesky wants to tell people they're not a single-node lock-in to avoid the Twitter effect, but it turns out that's their key advantage.
The only thing that will guarantee they don't end up like Twitter is if they revamp their corporate governance mechanisms, but they had to take VC money and haven't come up with a long-term revenue model, so it's not clear how they can avoid it.
The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
This is such a cop out and makes no sense. A "server" is basically just a website. The only reason we call them servers/instances is because they are are running the same software in the background and can communicate with each other - that's it. So we put them all under common flags such as "Mastodon" for those who use the Mastodon "template", and "Fediverse" for all the "templates" that can communicate with each other.
This is literally just a problem with marketing and communication, people hear "instances"/"servers" and they shit themselves because they can't be bothered to do a bit of research. In reality they are just different websites that can communicate with each other. You have the "shakedown.social" website, the "dads.cool" website, the "bookwyrm.social" website, and plenty of others; they are all Twitter clones (Mastodon) and they all allow you to see the content posted on the others.
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At least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, so they at least have to consider the public good in their decision-making and not just profit. May not be much, but it's a start.
What like OpenAI?
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Good luck with you hotmail account... Or using Outlook... etc.
I use both Outlook and non-Outlook e-mail (the former forced by my school) and never had problems.
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The other issue is, nobody is trying to take on Facebook. Not really anything in the FLOSS community like it.
There's a couple contenders but they're not very good. I think most FOSS people don't WANT a facebook alternative; they'd prefer to keep their IRL identity separate from the internet. And the people who don't care also don't care enough to want to go federated.
There's spacehey as a myspace alternative though. That's pretty neat but it's full of teenagers unfortunately.
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It's a take that apparently requires a lack of reading comprehension on your part.
And absolute rudeness on yours.
I'm just a little sick of this attitude that everyone on here seems to have that everyone should be using Mastodon without consideration for the fact that it does have quite a large number of downsides. It's ridiculous not to accept that fact and not to want to improve the platform so that the downside aren't there and then people would use it.
You can't berate people for not using the product you want them to use if the product you want them to use is annoying to use
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Cause the name is hard to remember.. I was trying to yesterday and the closest I could get is megatron
The name should have been MinBB (Mastadon is not Blue Bird).
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That's not really a fair description of what's going on.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a recommendation algorithm, can you imagine trying to use Netflix if it didn't tell you about any of the shows and you just have to guess and type in a film in order to see if it existed?
The problem with algorithms is when they're the only option, or when they are invisible and you think you are getting a timeline of people you've subscribed to, but really you're getting an algorithm optimizing retention. As long as it's just recommending stuff there's nothing wrong with it, in fact as a lot of people point out, it's kind of necessary.
The world functioned before recommendation algorithms. Even the internet did. Once upon a time, when Goggle worked, it didn't modify its results based on your history.
Netflix could operate fine with classifications, ratings good tagging and search. It doesn't need to monitor your viewing habits and recommend something based on them.
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I'm just saying, because someone is a scientist absolutely does not absolve them of human fallibility. I just don't like the take of "because scientist, therefore smart or wise" and that's not true, they're just (hopefully) educated and credible in their one specific field and nothing else.
Right but Mastodon is irritating to use, isn't it? It has actual problems. I think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that it doesn't have problems and therefore anyone not using it is being ignorant.
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Took me like a day on bluesky to find all the funny people. Never saw any funny people on mastodon.
The comedians don't use it. Why would they, there isn't that much of an audience there. Also I don't think there's even particularly political people on it for pretty much the same reason. All of the political commentators I follow either post on bluesky or post on both platforms, somewhat eliminating the need for Masterdon at all (assuming that's the kind of content you want to follow).
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What like OpenAI?
OpenAI was always set up in a stupid way though. It was always for profit business that owned a charity, so there was always this potential to go into the "for-profit exclusively" direction.
If you look at news articles from a few years ago even back then there were people saying that the name isn't really appropriate. GPT has never been open source at any point.
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The other issue is, nobody is trying to take on Facebook. Not really anything in the FLOSS community like it.
Friendica aims at that. I'm not sure about the results as I haven't tried it.
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The world functioned before recommendation algorithms. Even the internet did. Once upon a time, when Goggle worked, it didn't modify its results based on your history.
Netflix could operate fine with classifications, ratings good tagging and search. It doesn't need to monitor your viewing habits and recommend something based on them.
Yes but it would be more irritating to use than without which is my point.
The world function perfectly well without electricity but I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that we go back to a pre-electrified age just because technically it's possible.
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We can avoid it ever becoming shit when a wannabe dictator buys it if we make it impossible to sell: like mastodon and other federated options.
Right, that's the sure-fire way. But if a platform is better in some way than another, I'm inclined to use it, as long as it's morally just to do so.
I like Bluesky because it's more like Twitter was. But I like Mastodon because of how liberated it is. So I'll use both, probably, until Bluesky turns to shit (or doesn't).
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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.
And when is the next circle jerk about how making an account on the Fediverse is too complicated for "normal people?"
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I would prefer any ActivityPub instance, but press media (and in general private entities), to which scientific institutes intend diffusion, is moving to bluesky...
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I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
lol... "Feature complete" if you want terrible features.
i just want it to work without having to fix it
