Checking in on whether #bluesky / #atproto has become any more like a communication medium, and... nope. almost unchanged since i looked at it last in June. Bluesky is a spectator platform where a small number of accounts receive most of the visibility and smaller accounts are effectively invisible. The introduction of new feed algorithms (to the degree that happened, there aren't really many that I can find in wide use) did not change that. This is a non-normative analysis: in some cases, it is good to have a medium that promotes some very small number of posts and accounts, eg. to surface singular events, etc.
From a 25h sample of the firehose... - 600k posts, 2.4m likes, 250k boosts, 350k follows - 40% of posts receive 0 likes, 70% receive <= 1 - accounts in the 99th percentile of likes received 44% of likes, accounts in the 95th percentile received 74% - 40% of posts were from accounts within the top 95th percentile of accounts by likes received. - the maximum number of likes for a post by an account not in the top 95% is 32.
The first plot below shows the cumulative sum of likes received on the y axis against each account in the sample on the x axis - this includes accounts that didnt' post during the sample (but would still have posts that could be liked, so this also shows the extreme recency bias). The second plot is a hockeystick showing the number of likes (*not* cumulative sum) received on the y axis per post on the x axis.
For background, the default algorithm only cares about likes, boosts don't matter, which is why i am calculating things by likes here - they are the primary algorithmic signal.
These are the same calculations that I did back in June, but this time i'm leaving the firehose open to do a longer sample to be able to parse momentary virality from persistent effects.
It seems that #Bluesky is getting some traction, so it's good to summarize the facts: - it's centralized (99% of users on one instance), - it has insufficient moderation, - it's not easily publicly browsable, - it has terrible terms of service (you grant them broad rights to all your content).
The only thing that makes it different from X in principle is that it's not run by a mad man (yet)... Ah, I forgot it's Jack Dorsey's project, nevermind.
Mám tu další pozvánku do sociální sítě #Bluesky od zakladatele Twitteru. 😊
ℹ️ Stačí si v Obchodě Play a Apple App Store stáhnout aplikaci a při registraci pozvánku vložit. Pokud pozvánka nefunguje, někdo byl rychlejší a použil ji před vámi.
An update on #BlueSky and #AI. They have answered to questions and revealed that their deal with hive.ai specifically forbids the latter from training their models on user data. BlueSky have also updated their TOS to be more clear.
See the linked toot from @growlbeast for more details.
I’d still avoid it personally, their “moderation” is nonexistent and I wouldn’t touch anything backed by cryptobros, but for now this is good news :)
Bsky does have say in how Hive uses the data Hive gets from Bsky as it's part of the agreement they have with Hive and It would have to be disclosed in our user end ToS.(The ToS states our data is NOT used beyond moderation models, meaning it does not go to the image gen model.)
BSky has been updating their ToS to be more clear about it apparently too.
here's an email sent from the team to my friend regarding some of this:
To anyone thinking about joining BlueSky, especially artists: everything you post is used to train generative AI models.
BlueSky uses AI to label content for moderation, and to do that they use a company called thehive.ai. If you look through their privacy policy, you will see that they use all content sent to them to train models for all their services, which include generative AI for both text and images.
Hive's APIs enable developers to integrate pre-trained AI models that address technically challenging content understanding needs into their applications.
An update on #BlueSky and #AI. They have answered to questions and revealed that their deal with hive.ai specifically forbids the latter from training their models on user data. BlueSky have also updated their TOS to be more clear.
See the linked toot from @growlbeast for more details.
I’d still avoid it personally, their “moderation” is nonexistent and I wouldn’t touch anything backed by cryptobros, but for now this is good news :)
Because #Bluesky requires an app and I won't install apps on my phone, I'm running it on an Android #emulator on my desktop. I refuse to get a Tiktok account, but I will view individual Tiktoks. I never got a Hive account because of the whole app thing and even more flimsy BS structure than most. I've had a FB account since the early days when it was for colleges only, but I only log in a couple times a year for work. NEVER used the app.
Right now the #Fediverse feels like a treehouse village full of ewok scientists, #Bluesky feels like the first week of senior year at a gifted college where everyone's doing amphetamines and no teachers are around, and #Twitter feels like a once-popular neighborhood playground where the tarmac is crumbling, it's always twilight, some of your friends are still clustered nervously near the edges, and crowds of bullies are moshing in the center.
> And then do a surprised picachu face when inevitably some surveillance capitalist robber baron enshittifies it to a point of complete unusefulness.
> It fascinates me how quickly people forget lessons from the whole Twitter kerfuffle, and just fall for another Silicon Valley silly con. Without even skipping a beat.
> In other words, “neutrality” and “speech” and “voice” and “protection from bans” is mentioned right there, front and center, in #BlueSky’s overview and FAQ. At the same time moderation and anti-harassment features are, at best, an afterthought.
(…)
> Of course the sad reality is that people will buy the hype, build communities under the everloving watchful eye of Jack “Musk is the singular solution I trust, likes are superficial if not paid for” Dorsey.
> In a pretty meaningful way, “speech and reach” is the model of #Twitter today. You just don’t get to choose your recommendation/discovery algorithm.
(…)
> The only way to effectively fight harassment in a social network is effective, contextual moderation. The Fediverse showed that having communities, which embody that context and whose admins and moderators focus on protecting their members, is pretty damn effective here. This is exactly what BS is not doing.
> Of course, fedi could also have some search and discovery algorithms built on top. Operators of such algorithms (there had been a few attempts already) would also benefit from being first and going big.
> But their potential power is balanced by the power fedi instance admins and moderators have (blocking and defederating) and by the fact that fedi is perfectly usable without such algorithms. And by strong hostility of a lot of people using fedi towards non-consensual indexing.
> #BlueSky’s decentralization is a similar kind of decentralization as with cryptocurrencies: sure, you can run your own node (in BS case: “personal data servers”), but that does not give you basically any meaningful agency in the system.
(...)
> The rule of thumb with search and recommendation algorithms is: the bigger, the better. The more data you have and the more compute you get to throw at it, the better your recommendations will be. So it’s a winner-takes-all system.
> Almost exactly six months after #Twitter got taken over by a petulant edge lord, people seem to be done with grieving the communities this disrupted and connections they lost, and are ready, eager even, to jump head-first into another toxic relationship. This time with BlueSky.
tl;dr: - #BlueSky seems designed to get secondarily centralized in the "reach" layer (as they call it) - moderation is an afterthought - Jack Dorsey
Almost exactly six months after Twitter got taken over by a petulant edge lord, people seem to be done with grieving the communities this disrupted and connections they lost, and are ready, eager even
So, it’s been quite a year for legacy, centralized social media — and all without any really big change to the laws that govern it (yet — the EU’s are coming into force shortly, but pos…
Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress and current owner of Tumblr) wants to know how you want Tumblr integrated into the #fediverse (or #bluesky). Those of you who have Twitter accounts should go voice your ideas directly cause this will probably happen in the not so distant future (they already had a job posting listed last year where they were looking for #ActivityPub people)
