Yesterday I read on mastodon that leaving Twitter to go to Bluesky is like quitting smoking to start vaping. Changing a centralized place that lives off your data for another one. Right now Bluesky does not have hate speech like Twitter just because it does not suit the current accounts of its shareholders
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Switching to vaping is less bad, and for me, it lead to me quitting all together. So to me, this is still a small win, and I like to celebrate small wins these days.
I would say quitting twitter to join bluesky is more like quitting menthols to smoke regular cigarettes, and switching to a decentralized platform would be more analogous to a switch to vaping. Quitting social media entirely would equate better to 'quitting smoking' in my mind, as i dont think any platform is mentally healthful (yes i am fully aware of the hypocrisy of posting this comment as a lemmy user).
I would say quitting twitter to join bluesky is more like quitting ~~menthols~~ PCP to smoke regular cigarettes
Fixed that for you.
For those who are unfamiliar,
PCP may cause hallucinations, distorted perceptions of sounds, and violent behavior.
Since Twitter is currently really really toxic, dangerous, and run by a maniac; and Bluesky currently is not (it's actually been amazingly non-toxic)...I strongly disagree.
Even shittier anaology, but it's more like moving from a house that has an active gas leak to a house that has gas pipes in the house. Has potential for leaks, but there aren't any right now. And it currently has working gas leak detectors.
Ok, if it's good for you I'm glad, maybe over time it will happen to you like vaping and you can completely switch to decentralized networks
You misunderstand. I'm not using any centralized social media. Lemmy is my one and only. I'm saying It's worth celebrating the small wins and encouraging companies to continue moving to models like this. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
Not a great analogy considering Vaping is infinitely healtheri than Smoking, but.. yeah.. they need to go to Mastodon.
I'm not going to discuss it with you, because I'm not a doctor nor is it the issue, but the health authorities (at least the European ones) do not agree with your statement.
Twitter started dying when they closed the API
Bluesky’s is perfectly operational
Things never change, companies never break promises, shareholders never hold power over decision, people can not be bought
Those would all have to be true in order for anyone to have a reason to put trust into Bluesky.
Ok, if for you the API is the most important thing, go ahead, I'm worried about more companies doing "things" with my data, everyone has their priorities.
P.S. Unlike in BlueSky in Mastodon you can be 100% sure that the API will never be closed, in Bluesky it will depend on variable business interests
Mastodon has protocol level issues that prevent it from being fully mainstream though.
As long as people move out of Twitter, I count it as a win. Especially when we get official government stuff out of there - which won’t happen for the US, but the rest of us have a chance
I will count it as a victory when my government's communication channels with me are not private property. A government-owned Mastodon server for official accounts would be logical (the EU already has it even though it barely uses it)
Isn't it decentralized?
Not really. You can host your own data but you still rely on Bluesky’s services to access it. And there is no realistic way to migrate your content or audience to another platform outside their control
Which services? isn't it similar to matrix?
So ATProto that bluesky is built on has 3 core aspects. PDS’s (personal data server, stores your account content and data), Relays (transmits your actions such as likes, favorites, replies etc), and Appviews (basically the front end that you use to convert the data to a human readable front end like the bluesky app)
PDS’s are allowed to be hosted by others right now but Relays are not. So even if you host your own PDS on the bluesky network, you rely on the bluesky controlled relay to be able to interact with the network.
In theory there is a future where other people can host relays on the network but it’s not that way right now and is likely going to be too cost prohibiting for the people hosting to ever be realistic.
How is mastodon not just a bunch of centralized platforms?
Sure the servers communicate with each other but the content is still just on one of them. Goes the server, so goes the content.
Or am I mistaking?
If it is like I say I feel it is more trading Hitler in for, potentially, a bunch of smaller Hitlers.
a bunch of centralized platforms?
This is what decentralized means. If your home instance goes to shit, you can just move your account to another one.
But you can't really? If I remember correctly you still lose all the posts, followers and pretty much everything that you would expect to keep.
Technically you keep your account but let's be honest, you don't in the sense people want.
Maybe my knowledge is dated but that is what I recall about moving accounts.
If something has hundreds of "centralised" platforms owned and run by a diversity of different people and spread all over the world geographically, then that's "decentralised".
I can't really think of another way in which something could be decentralised.
With ActivityPub, there's nothing stopping you hosting a server literally just for yourself. It wouldn't get much more decentralised than that.
I think the question arose from a scenario I was imaging in which a instance goes down and all or some of the content is lost.
Decentralization, I thought would be if all the content gets posted to one instance and then every other instance is just a mirror of that one. In other words, every Lemmy instance has all the content all the time.
IIRC the content is on multiple. If there's a single user on lemmy.world subscribing to content from somewhere.else's foo community, then foo will be synced to lemmy.world and if somewhere.else is taken down it will remain on lemmy.world.
But someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, it isn't just about servers going offline. If a single server does something bad, you can just switch to a different one and enjoy the same content you've been seeing.
Well, I am not a systems engineer to answer your question, in any case smaller Hitlers equals Hitlers with less power. Dividing power is not the definitive solution to authoritarianism, but it usually helps a lot, especially if the agents are also competitive. "If you are too Hitler, I'll go to this other server that is a little less so" is a valid incentive to avoid the Hitlerization of the admins.
I don't think I've ever used the name Hitler so much.
I think we just need to adopt the 2000s mindset again of dropping a platform when it gets shit. No one gave a fuck about the loss of Digg and Myspace.
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I don’t know if hate speech will be able to flourish on Bluesky like on twitter simply because of the moderation tools.
There’s already a giant blocklist of maga idiots who have tried to move over, and if you follow that list you’ll never see their posts. And the unwritten rule of the place is to block anyone who is trying to start stuff or that you simply don’t like. On twitter that felt taboo for some reason, but on Bluesky that’s normal - as it should be, really.
This gives me hope. It's like we're all finally learning how to moderate forums in this ridiculous climate.
If they're still allowed on the platform to speak their mind amongst their ilk, doesn't that just create an echo chamber of idiots? Assuming they stay instead of leaving after their fe-fes get hurt, of course.
There will always be echo chambers of idiots. Twitter is more or less that already.
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