this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Bluesky will trap academics in the same way Twitter/X did (blogs.lse.ac.uk)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30464375

[...]

Bluesky is built on a protocol intended to mitigate this problem. The AT Protocol describes itself as “an open, decentralized network for building social applications”. The problem is that, [...] “A federatable service isn’t a federated one”. The intention to create a platform that users can leave at will, without losing their social connections, does not mean users can actually do this. It’s a technical possibility tied to an organisational promise, rather than a federated structure that enables people to move between services if they become frustrated by Bluesky.

[...]

The problem is that, as Doctorow observes, “The more effort we put into making Bluesky and Threads good, the more we tempt their managers to break their promises and never open up a federation”. If you were a venture capitalist putting millions into Bluesky in the hope of an eventual profit, how would you feel about designing the service in a way that reduces exit costs to near zero? This would mean that “An owner who makes a bad call – like removing the block function say, or opting every user into AI training – will lose a lot of users”. The developing social media landscape being tied in the Generative AI bubble means this example in particular is one we need to take extremely seriously.

[...]

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[–] p03locke 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I still don't understand why that's the barrier to entry for many people. It's like people want to be enslaved to a monopoly on purpose.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Because it has a huge impact on the user experience. You primarily see content from the home server.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

In case it helps you understand: barriers of entry to Mastodon, from my perspective as an ex-Twitter user and current Bluesky and Mastodon user (note it took me 4 tries over 5 years to actually "enjoy" Mastodon)

  • Lack of content discoverability: Bluesky has programmable feeds and starter packs (although the latter is pretty flawed), Twitter has The Algorithm. When you first create a Mastodon account, you're not given much.
    • The primary reason Mastodon "stuck" with me on the 4th go around was this. I manually imported a bunch of my connections from Bluesky.
  • Choosing the right server: on all my previous attempts, I was overwhelmed by server selection and went with generic all-purpose instances. Having a local timeline with things that might actually interest you is very helpful.
  • The network effect: I don't think I really have to elaborate on this one

Bonus things that probably don't serve as barriers to entry but are real issues for active users:

  • Lack of features: it's not possible to search for posts on ActivityPub at any reasonable scale. I don't know all my Mastodon lore and think I've heard that search was intentionally not made good in the past for privacy or something, but if you're posting something on the "blast my posts everywhere" protocol, well... it's still out there.
    • There's also no quote posts, which haven't been implemented for similar privacy/anti-harassment reasons. But instead, other software like Pleroma works around this by simply giving a link to the original post—the worst of both worlds, bad UX and not even an option to attempt to detach or prevent quotes.
  • Fedi meta / sudden defederations: If you picked the wrong server—or any of your friends did—and you end up with a tempermental admin, you could unexpectedly lose contact with each other due to defederation, and you might not even notice.

This is not to say other platforms are perfect. There are plenty of things I don't like about Bluesky. This comment is specifically about Mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

So first of all, the commercial platforms had a lot going for them that the Fediverse doesn't.

  • Ad campaigns that manipulated people's emotions into being excited and motivated to join. The Fediverse has the same insufferable neckbeards that Linux uses for its marketing team.
  • business opportunities, marketing or creating businesses, becoming an influencer. The Fediverse is anti-commercial
  • new capabilities or formats, new ways of doing things. Frendica, Mastodon, Lemmy and Pixelfed are just incomplete worse copies of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram.

People showed up to the commercial sites with enthusiasm and motivation. People show up to the Fediverse as reluctant emigrants, rats swimming away from a sinking ship.

Then you hit them with "Choose a server. Your choice doesn't matter because you can get to all content from them all, but you have to choose one." People don't like making pointless choices, being told "this choice doesn't matter. make it." doesn't grok. Feels frustrating and suspicious, especially when you're told it doesn't matter, and then they try to give you reasons to choose one over the other.

So when presented with a choice they're told doesn't matter, people are going to freeze and/or say "fuck this" and just go back to the thing they've already got set up. They don't have a lot of push to make this work and they just hit something they don't like before they've even gotten in the door.

I see two ways to fix that: Eliminate the choice and randomly assign newcomers to a server automatically, or make the choice meaningful and express that meaning to them.

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

People saw the servers and it reminded them of how world of warcraft worked