Bluesky is ready to open up

I think I'll just stick with Mastodon and Lemmy.

Anyone used it? I’m mostly on mastodon, but I really only post dev updates

Yea I have. It's more twitter-like in its vibe. But people seem happy there.

I'm not really a twitter person ... so it's not really my jam. But the AT Proto as an idea interests me and I'm interested to see what happens on it. Big question for is still whether a second (or third etc) relay will every be run.
- What are the advantages of AT Proto over ActivityPub?
I was a Twitter user and had been for a while; Bluesky replaced it for me and I rather like it. It feels very old-school Twitter, but is lacking some niceties such as videos and DMs.
I use it sometimes, there can be a bit of drama at times, but it's pretty nice.

Don't see the appeal of it. If you value your privacy use Mastodon or else you use Threads that has 130M users and not 3M.

Mastodon has no privacy at all. Even if you host your own instance. People use Mastodon for freedom and to get away from manipulation by corporate social media.
That's not quite right. Mastodon does not have any privacy at all and it's not safe to treat it as privacy platform.

What makes Mastodon worth using is the federated model and lack of commercial engagement algorithms.
Threads is garbage. You get one page of the people you subscribed to and then the next one is random promoted accounts that might be popular or whatever. The algorithm has more of a chokehold than it does even on Twitter. They can inflate their numbers by saying everyone with an Instagram account has Threads, but I'm not so sure people are actually using it.

Whatever one might say of BlueSky, it shows me the posts of the people I chose to follow, which is the whole point. Mastodon would be better in principle, but most people I follow don't use it so it doesn't do much for me.

Well I'm back from Bluesky. Lots of furries over there.

Oh, really? Are the, uh, fandom artists there too?
- Yes

Well, I've been on it for a while and it's kind of nice. The last time I was there I could notice that some of Twitter's toxicity was starting to take root because lots of people came from Twitter. But other than that, I am not comfortable using something that is not open source nowadays.

I'm done with this shit. I don't want proprietary stuff in my life anymore. I still have some, but the less I do the better, and especially when it comes to things like this. I don't want to sit around waiting for inevitable, greedy, shitty money-driven decision to run this thing into a fucking wall.

Blusky is decentralized-ish, but it's not open. And eventually money is going to be an issue and it's eventually going to be filled with ads or be an algorithmic nightmare or whatever, like everything else before it.

I am sticking with Masterdawn and I barely go there. I don't post regularly there, I don't have anyone or anything interesting to follow there. It's mostly a tool for me to follow software and everything. But I won't have it any other way. I'm done. I'm not moving anymore. I am done following and getting invested in the latest proprietary bullshit website or app that is cool right now, but is inevitably going to try and suck out as much money as it can from its users.

Look at BeReal. I love the idea. It's great. It's what social media should be. But now, there are allowing celebrities and companies on it. Sucking the life out of it. And I loved the idea but I never used the app. Why? Because they didn't have a way to make money! Of course this was going to happen.

Anyway. Is it open-source? No? Then I'll pass.

Thanks for the summary. I signed up for it just in case, but don't think I'll end up using it. I have a similar experience with Mastodon, but then I was never really into Twitter, either.

I share your feelings on the importance of open platforms. While reddit may have been shitty for a while, the whole third-party apps thing was an eye-opener for me, and started me thinking about (and moving toward) open source.

My next big challenge will be to de-Google, but I'm increasingly up for it. Problem is I have a ton of site identities associated with my email address there, so we'll see how that works out.

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Now, the conversation about what comes after the platform-now-called-X has largely shifted to ActivityPub, the decentralized protocol powering Mastodon, a budding ecosystem of other services, and eventually, Meta’s Threads.

In an interview with The Verge, CEO Jay Graber says that the team needed to build out more of its moderation features and get its infrastructure in a stable state before finally moving out of closed beta.

She says the app has seen over 3 million sign-ups since it launched a year ago and that there have been “a lot more downloads.” The hope is that some of those people will convert into active users now that they don’t need an invite to join, and that Bluesky can play a role as a conversation platform for a more general audience.

Graber says the Bluesky app has 1.6 million monthly users and 25,000 custom feeds — a unique feature of the AT Protocol powering it — for people to choose from.

While the AT Protocol is being opened up soon, the Bluesky company plans to make money via a variety of ways, including charging users for additional features in its app.

Companies like Meta “are making moves that were unthinkable a few years ago” by embracing decentralization, and even though ActivityPub has captured the zeitgeist now, Bluesky thinks there’s still room for another take on what is increasingly looking like the next phase of social networking.

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