I’ve been on bluesky for a while (over a year). My (leftist) bubble was complaining about how boring it was for the longest time. Now I keep seeing people complaining about the influx of the “new” people joining. And here I am complaining about the complainers. Oh, to be a human on the internet.
The main problem with BLUESKY is that it’s the same regurgitated shit you find everywhere else. As a brand new user here’s the first 10 things in my feed:
- Someone trying and failing to make a clever joke about the US Presidential election.
- A picture of black hole (which is great!)
- Semi-clever joke involving Professor X and Alvin and the Chipmunks
- Self Described “transfem lesbian” screaming about how much they love women. I mean yikes it’s creepy AF.
- Boring US Political schlock about Lauren Boebert.
- Science / Astronomy content
- Video Game Post
- Self Described “#1 Gayest Lesbian” screaming about how much they love women. A copypasta of the other and still creepy AF.
- Another eye-roller “I am soooo depressed” meme.
- Boring US Political schlock defending Dr. Fauchi
So BLUESKY seems to be Twitter v2, primarily inhabited by the Pre-Elon Blue CheckMark types. Can I “fix” that with filtering? Probably but if I do then the feed will slow down so much that even checking in once per day will probably be too often.
I use 4 feeds:
- Following - full control over who I want to see
- Popular with friends - I use this to find new people since my mutuals are liking these posts
- Booksky - just everything reading related
- GameDev - speaks for itself
What I also like better than Twitter is whenever I reply to someone / quote tweet someone but block them after, other people won’t be able to see the post anymore. I’ve noticed (at least for now) that helps a fair bit against pile-ons and rage baiters. Hope it stays that way.
The main problem with bluesky is not posts that you don’t like, it’s whatever it’s centralized or not.
Well… Then… Just don’t follow those people. My personal feed is 100% artists and scientists. That’s the fun part of Bluesky; unlike Twatter, you’re not forced to see all the cringe and ragebait.
I registered and I felt the same as you. Not worth my time.
If you are wondering how bluesky is gaining so much traction that’s how. ADS.
I’m surprised that the article doesn’t mention Misskey. It’s a Federated platform that connects with Mastodon and the like, and has close to a million users. After Mastodon it’s the most active platform in the Fediverse, and owes most of its popularity to Japanese users.
Not surprising, they are trying to redirect people on bluesky not on the fediverse
Seems to be mainly because Bluesky is just a better user experience.
Changes in terms of service regarding AI (artificial intelligence), changes in the block feature and the presence of so many bot-like ‘impression zombie’ accounts are viewed negatively by Japanese users
But, X is still incredibly important in Japan and Bluesky isnt a serious threat to it culturally right now.
X is still a major, major news source for Japanese users, so it really won’t slow down anytime soon. Newer platforms like Threads or Bluesky really don’t have any meaningful adoption or use for brand marketing in Japan — yet
Subscriptionwall.
Same as in subscribe-to-download sites or create-account-to-see-link forums: Do they want dead accounts that much?
I’m curious to see what gets promoted in Japan. BlueSky’s discover feed in the US is fairly politics-heavy right now since a lot of the new users have been fleeing X’s MAGA swamp.
I have no problem with political posts, but I’m hungry for some more organic variety. If I want variety I have to put in a lot of manual work to find people and topics to follow.
