So I thought that BlueSky was set up just like Lemmy in that it was fully decentralized into a sort of “terrorist cell” structure that wasn’t focused on profits, but then found out that BlueSky has a CEO. Since this is a business, what makes BlueSky fundamentally different from Twitter or Instagram?
I feel like so long as a social media platform exists through monetization (in some form or another private companies need to make money), we are ultimately replacing one dictator with another.
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It isn’t. It’s just the shiny new toy that twitter users who are desperate to leave the platform jumped to because everyone they know who already jumped ship moved there. They’re marketing themselves as “better” than twitter and supposedly have better guardrails, but only time will tell when they start to enshittify.
I enjoyed Twitter for a long time when it was smaller and ad free and didn’t suck, and now I’m enjoying Bluesky while it’s smaller and ad free and doesn’t suck.
It’s unlikely Bluesky could ever suck as much as Twitter and Reddit have come to suck, but if I have to leave Bluesky in a few years for the next one, then so be it.
Keep an eye on the interest rate of some relevant central banks. When interests are low, investors have money to spare, and they can even make large rocks float. Once inflation gets out of hand, interest rates respond accordingly, suddenly investors disappear, and rocks begin to sink. That’s exactly when the CEO of SinkingFast Inc. has to make some quick decisions about strategic enshittification.
It’s different because it’s the only one that’s called “BlueSky”
This to me is the only sensible answer.
Im my opinion, BlueSky is merely this year’s Threads.
Who knows, maybe next year we will have ‘X’ (pun intended) which would be the year’s BlueSky.
Rather than go over it again, here’s my speculative answer to why BS has grown so much quicker than Mastadon - which isn’t quite the question in the OP, but will cover much if the same ground (That whole thread is worth a read IMO.)
TL:DR - It’s different because it isn’t shit. Yet.
And it might not become shit. I think it’s a shame that people are so instantly cynical about the possibility that things might turn out alright , especially if the people using it go into it having learned some lessons from Twitter, and with a determination not to repeat the mistakes. At the moment BlueSky is fun and friendly, and I’m going to enjoy it that way for as long as it remains the case. If it goes to crap, then I’ll move on.
That’s a very pragmatic take
It isn’t. It’s another attempt to capture a lot of users for capitalism use.
They’re getting ready to release a subscription service.
Social media servers cost money. There are only three options.
1: (Lemmy, bsky now) - someone runs it for their own private reasons and users bemefit as side effect or charity.
2: (Twitter, facebook, reddit) - someone runs it as marketing, and sells user eyeballs or data.
3: (some MMOs, bsky future) - someone runs it and sells users things to keep it running.
Baky says they want to keep the current experience free, and are contemplating a freemium add-on subscription. Maybe they’ll stick to this and maybe they wont, but “they sell subs” isnt guaranteed enshittification they way that an IPO and ads are.
Technically it supports federation, similar to Lemmy. But there’s still only one instance. I don’t know if it’s due to the immaturity of software or something else. If someone want’s to try the code is there.
I think the presence of ActivityPub (basis of Lemmy) already attracted most people willing to bother with hosting an instance so the potential adopters are not very incentivized to experiment with another thing.
Better to ask how is BlueSky different from Mark Suckerbug’s ‘Threads’?
Bluesky was developed by twitter before musk took over. They spun it off and now we’re here.
It’s not. I’ve seen its ads on billboards along the highway. They call themselves “Truth social for liberals” or some shit like that. I won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole—regardless of my political leanings.
