"Decentralised social media is more than just a technical shift; it's a step toward restoring autonomy and trust in our digital lives, empowering individuals and communities to connect without compromising their values or privacy."

A study by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford finds that decentralised social media leads to citizen empowerment.

oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/dec…

#SocialMedia #Fediverse #Decentralised #Decentralized #Mastodon #Bluesky #Threads #X #Empowerment

Decentralised social media ‘increases citizen empowerment’, says Oxford study

Researchers from the Oxford Martin School find decentralised social media such as Mastodon offer potential for increased citizen empowerment

^{Oxford Martin School}

I feel the fact that #Bluesky is connected to Steve Bannon and Russian state media and cryptobros should be bigger news.

But it's not.

If you search "Bluesky" using a search engine like DuckDuckGo, you'll come across results like "Here's What To Know About Bluesky" (NBC) or "X users jump to Bluesky - but what is it and who owns it" (BBC). One would think the aforementioned connections would be relevant info in a piece like that.

The omission is glaring.

#SocialMedia #TwitterMigration

#Fediverse is roughly analogous to how mutual aid groups organize. We should look to meatspace and figure out how to translate it.

So, instead of telling new #Mastodon users to “just follow some hashtags and people you find interesting”, we need to rebuild people’s community-building skills and translate those into the digital realm.

#Twitter, #Bluesky, #Threads, #instagram, etc are all about mass culture delivery. Let’s figure out how to do distributed cultural development.

We’re getting it wrong when we tell folks that #Mastodon is just like “Old #Twitter”. If you want that, that’s #Bluesky. Mastodon is a different kind of place.

This is a more intimate community that discourages “influencing” because there’s no profit motive for eyeballs. The microblogging approach may look similar to Twitter but the way the communities form and conversations evolve is fundamentally different.

It’s no uptopia; we’ve got a shitload of work to do to make it safer.

#Fediverse

Thanks for the thread. I agree with your recommendations: Bluesky needs to publish a clear and convincing "trust story"; and peopel should be very skeptical about the long-term possibilities of Bluesky.

Also, on the moderation front, Dorsey was replaced on #Bluesky board by Mike Masnick, who's also very libertarian. Masnick's a lot smarter than Dorsey, and does understand the importance of content moderation. Still, one of the examples Masnick's "Protocols not platforms" paper that inspired Bluesky (and Nostr) uses to discuss about why the protocol approach is better is that it allows Alex Jones fan to still reach his audience: "those who don’t wish to be bothered with his nonsense need not deal with it; those who do wish to see it still have access to it."

knightcolumbia.org/content/pro…

I still see Bluesky as a useful short-term Twitter alternative (Meta and Threads are already doing all the things that Bluesky is likely do in the future, it's a lot easier to get up and going on Bluesky than Mastodon, and Blacksky is the only thing I know of in the decentralized world that's a good path for Black Twitter. Still, even without all the important points you make, and the "we don't have to ban Alex Jones" factor , they're a venture-funded startup, so once they need to monetize they're very likely to turn to an exploitative business model. So while it's situationally useful, it's not a promising long-term base.

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

^{knightcolumbia.org}

IMHO: #BlueSky isn't decentralised or federated. The outage on 2024-11-14 is obvious proof. It may *look* decentralised and they definitely love to outsource traffic/storage costs by claiming that running your own PDS (Personal Data Server) is somehow something federated, but that's all smoke and mirrors. You have to go deep on [1] to find "networking through Relays instead of server-to-server" as their current implementation choice. THEY run the relays. No one else.

[1] bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-202…

For really no reason at all 😇 here's why I find the user experience on #Mastodon better than in that Nazi Chatroom when it was still called "Twitter":

- 500+ characters
- post editing
- follow hashtags
- better s/n ratio
- no ads

Plus, quintsns.pianeta.uno/ does a pretty good job at replacing paper.li

So I wouldn't go back, even if someone resurrected Twitter. Now, FriendFeed on the other hand... 😆

@pluralistic says it best, why #BlueSky is no alternative:

pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…

For some reason people fleeing the sinking #Twitter / #X ship for #BlueSky don't seem to be aware of the fact that crypto bros at #BlockchainCapital bought a huge stake in the company just a few weeks ago. Like these are basically the same crypto bros who just helped #ElonMusk buy Twitter. They might even be literally the same people (I strongly suspect they are but I'm too lazy to check). Either way #BlockchainCapital was co-founded by #BrockPierce, who also brought you #Tether, AKA the company that Trump's transition team chairman manages $120 billion for. Pierce is also a friend of the #Netanyahu family.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here's the official press release: bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2…

Moving to BlueSky is not an escape. Growing a base there is just putting in a bunch of work to create a platform that will be co-opted by crypto bros as soon as X breaks in half.

p.s. crypto bros (#a16z) also own #Substack

#crypto #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #USDT #Trump #DonaldTrump

The week is over, here are some charts:
For two weeks in a row, #Mastodon brought more #traffic than #X / #Twitter to heise.de.
But I forgot, that's not just via @heiseonline, but also @heisec, @ct_Magazin, @heiseautos, @iX_Magazin etc. (but for Twitter its the same).

#Bluesky is way behind, #Threads even more. Only Twitter is clearly falling.

(🧵 1/3)

#SocialMedia
#TwitterExodus
#TwitterMigration
#MastodonMigration
#Fediverse

1/ After #ElonMusk has started to heavily promote #Trump in the past months, #Bluesky has seen a large surge of new users while #Mastodon has not. Yet I am more convinced than ever that focusing my social media efforts on the latter was the right choice. Why?

Because Bluesky is not Trump-proof.

Pluralistic: #Bluesky and enshittification

"I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will." —Cory Doctorow 2024-11-02

+1

pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…

People rejoicing that Bluesky is feeling like early Twitter seem to be forgetting that Twitter also used to feel like early Twitter...

#Bluesky

Great piece on BlueSky and enshittification by @pluralistic. “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.”

Read more: mollywhite.net/micro/entry/blu…

Cory’s piece: pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/uly…

#enshittification #bluesky

Molly White

Great piece on BlueSky and enshittification by Cory Doctorow . “I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.

^{Molly White}

Y'ALL KNOW #COPILOT IS BULLSHIT, RIGHT?

you do not invest 13 BILLION IN EQUITY nor gift some scripty kids another $2 billion, give or take, so you can have your own separate and much inferior #AI product, right?!?!?!

"#Microsoft Discloses Equity Investment in #OpenAI for First Time: Filing"
businessinsider.com/microsoft-…

CoPilot is to #ChatGPT what #Bluesky is to #Xitter and it should be damn obvious #techbros been doing shit like this to skirt regulations, not so much in the US but EU.

Microsoft discloses equity investment in OpenAI for first time: filing

Microsoft previously described its relationship with OpenAI as a partnership. Now, it's disclosed an equity investment in the startup.

^{Ashley Stewart (Business Insider)}

This is why I have been trying to warn about #BlueSky.

BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board:

bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2…

The board member is a bitcoin researcher involved with NFT analytics.

BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation".

(via @jwz)

Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users - Bluesky

Bluesky now exceeds 13 million users, the AT Protocol developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped highly requested features like direct messages and video.

^Bluesky

“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse

this is why they focus on blockchains, a technology basically always used at the expense of its users”

#Bluesky