Over a year following its post-election surge, Bluesky’s mobile app is seeing a continued decline in active users, though its remaining community is still relatively engaged.
The brutal truth of social networks: people don’t stay for protocols, decentralization, or good intentions. They stay because everyone else is there. Building better infrastructure is impressive. Building a habit people refuse to leave is harder.
Bluesky amplified their problems by retaining old Twitter’s dogshit discoverability/search. If you have fewer users, it’s important to make those users count, yet somehow it feels even harder to search than other social networks
Everyone I know who’s tried it tells me that big corporate brands and their slop / astroturfed content is why Bluesky is less enjoyable. Haven’t myself, as I’m perfectly content on Mastodon and Lemmy, so I understand that’s anecdotal.
I use Bluesky all the time, and I barely ever see corporate brand stuff.
My actual gripe about Bluesky is that somehow they haven’t dropped an iPad app after four years. Or at the very least fixed issues with their iPhone app while using an iPad.
bsky is just another VC-funded corpo platform. The initial wave of Libs who moved over gave it some gas, but ultimately, it’s just another toxic, bland platform like all the others.
I have found Bluesky to be less toxic than Twitter, but that’s not exactly a huge improvement.
I remember that on Twitter, if somebody decided to reply to you and to be a jerk, not only would you get a notification of that reply, you would get a notification if people liked that reply. Bluesky by default allows you to only view the feeds of people you follow or are mutuals with. These are all good things.
But since there is VC funding, and because they are looking for ways to expand, at any moment that rug can basically be pulled out from under people’s feet. It’s technically decentralized, but in practice, it’s probably 90%+ controlled by one company.
I tend to agree. I simply don’t like the short form content. I never did. When twitter launched, I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t. It doesn’t facilitate conversation whatsoever. It’s just shitposting and one-liners and toxicity. We really lost something special when we moved from forums to shorter and shorter content platforms.
I think the worst aspect is being able to take someones very short post and then put your own post above it and boost it out to your followers. It leads to context being stripped and an influencer induced dogpile.
I agree. I initially moved over and just never really enjoyed opening the app for more than a couple minutes tops… I only keep it cuz some of the artists that I followed on Twitter moved over to Bluesky so I’m able to continue enjoying their content without the Nazis
I don’t really use Bluesky I just bridged my Mastodon Account to bluesky and all I can say: There are more users bridging their Mastodon to Bluesky then Bluesky Users bridging to Mastodon.
Europe COULD push the Fediverse and show the Middlefinger to US Datahording Social Networks like Facebook, X/Twitter and Reddit but Some European Countries are not even close to the Digital Age.
The brutal truth of social networks: people don’t stay for protocols, decentralization, or good intentions. They stay because everyone else is there. Building better infrastructure is impressive. Building a habit people refuse to leave is harder.
I stay for protocols :|
Bluesky amplified their problems by retaining old Twitter’s dogshit discoverability/search. If you have fewer users, it’s important to make those users count, yet somehow it feels even harder to search than other social networks
Everyone I know who’s tried it tells me that big corporate brands and their slop / astroturfed content is why Bluesky is less enjoyable. Haven’t myself, as I’m perfectly content on Mastodon and Lemmy, so I understand that’s anecdotal.
I use Bluesky all the time, and I barely ever see corporate brand stuff.
My actual gripe about Bluesky is that somehow they haven’t dropped an iPad app after four years. Or at the very least fixed issues with their iPhone app while using an iPad.
Many apps seem to have that problem on the iPad. It wasn’t until last year that Instagram was properly sized for it, as an example.
bsky is just another VC-funded corpo platform. The initial wave of Libs who moved over gave it some gas, but ultimately, it’s just another toxic, bland platform like all the others.
I have found Bluesky to be less toxic than Twitter, but that’s not exactly a huge improvement.
I remember that on Twitter, if somebody decided to reply to you and to be a jerk, not only would you get a notification of that reply, you would get a notification if people liked that reply. Bluesky by default allows you to only view the feeds of people you follow or are mutuals with. These are all good things.
But since there is VC funding, and because they are looking for ways to expand, at any moment that rug can basically be pulled out from under people’s feet. It’s technically decentralized, but in practice, it’s probably 90%+ controlled by one company.
Mastodon is the same, its a cesspit. Its the microblogging format that attracts the worst people and fosters the worst interactions.
I tend to agree. I simply don’t like the short form content. I never did. When twitter launched, I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t. It doesn’t facilitate conversation whatsoever. It’s just shitposting and one-liners and toxicity. We really lost something special when we moved from forums to shorter and shorter content platforms.
I think the worst aspect is being able to take someones very short post and then put your own post above it and boost it out to your followers. It leads to context being stripped and an influencer induced dogpile.
I agree. I initially moved over and just never really enjoyed opening the app for more than a couple minutes tops… I only keep it cuz some of the artists that I followed on Twitter moved over to Bluesky so I’m able to continue enjoying their content without the Nazis
It was kind of inevitable.
I didn’t even know there were corpos on bluesky lol.
I don’t really use Bluesky I just bridged my Mastodon Account to bluesky and all I can say: There are more users bridging their Mastodon to Bluesky then Bluesky Users bridging to Mastodon.
Europe COULD push the Fediverse and show the Middlefinger to US Datahording Social Networks like Facebook, X/Twitter and Reddit but Some European Countries are not even close to the Digital Age.
And cocaine is better than caffeine