Know what I got from Twitter? Assaulted, harassed, and insulted. The rage over there is so intense that every discussion about literally everything (even bread) quickly devolves into either racism, sexism, or insults.
You know what I get from Bluesky? Bread recipes, video game commentary, in-depth legal voyeurism. And my favorite, political discussions with a variety of nuanced takes about the merits of individual policies that doesn't devolve into name calling.
My experience has been the exact opposite. On Twitter I get all the nuanced discussion while Bluesky is filled with ranting since one political group decided to decamp to it. Ultimately, even when those people were still on Twitter I didn't really have an issue because I simply didn't engage with them. You get out of social networking services what you put into them. You're responsible for curating your own experience because the hucksters in charge aren't going to do it for you.
Which leads me to my second point: There is a cost for curation. If a given forum is filled with people I don't want to follow, and there's no easy way to sort them from the ones I do want to follow, one can easily say that the cost of curation is high, and insofar as I do not have an unlimited amount of time on my hands and that limited time is better disposed on other tasks, I'm unlikely to ever visit that forum. This is the problem that Mastodon/the Fediverse faces, and likewise Bluesky. On Twitter I can find people from just about any background I'd care to, and I already have a well-developed list of people I'm following. Bluesky and the Fediverse are filled with people who decamped from Twitter that I'd never follow in a million years, and even if there are others there I might be interested in, they're drowned out in the sea of what for me can accurately be categorized as spammers. Put simply: While the onus may be on me to set my own experience, there is a limit to how much effort I'm willing to put forward to accomplish that, and I think the same is true of others. Do not be surprised, therefore, when your particular choice of forum stalls out because a vocal demographic spams the crap out of it and turns others away in droves... because you set it up this way and it's working as designed.
My favorite feature of Bluesky so far are the Lists and Starter Packs which allow you to use other people's curation options as a jumping off point. Bluesky isn't 1:1 with Twitter for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that not everyone is there yet. But the ease of finding your niche is one of the better parts of it to me.
EDIT: Oh, and the simplicity of their blocklists is absolutely worth looking into. There are a few accounts who have automated scammer/spam blocklists you can subscribe to.
funny i get that too on twitter what you get on bluesky. if you seek out debate you will get it, has nothing to do with twitter. Bluesky will be very boring once upu realize that the reason you hate twitter is the reason you are going to hate bluesky. Its going to be very boring very soon or very toxic. Its still going to be relying on algorithms and. business logic
When I left Twitter I didn't replace it with anything. Just normal offline friends. I joined Bluesky when someone told me that the interesting things I was looking for were there.
> The short answer is, yes, of course it is. Because Bluesky’s core userbase is made up of those who are fed up with the weaponized anger of Twitter and the liminal space of Threads, they automatically have a unifying identity.
> Because Bluesky’s core userbase is made up of those who are fed up with the weaponized anger of Twitter...
There's no weaponized anger on Twitter. Twitter defends free speech. But you can't silence those who have views opposing your own echo chamber on X / Twitter anymore.
Those who want censorship to continue leave for Bluesky.
As someone who never used Twitter before, the first thing I saw signing up to X earlier this years was a continual feed of exclusively black people doing crimes that would make Fox News blush, and people in the replies calling them subhuman. How would you describe this if not hate?
That article also mentions Twitter banning users for linking their own Mastodon profiles: "As the furor over the account suspensions unfolded, some Twitter users reported the platform had begun intervening when they attempted to post links to their own profiles on alternative social networks, including Mastodon."
Although the policy was quickly reverted after backlash, Musk said explicitly, "Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288
Musk kicked off a bunch of Lfetist and progressive accounts when he took over. He rigged the platform to favor people with his political views. He sold check marks to put posts at the top of conversations to drown the platform in posts from his fan club. There’s nothing about free speech happening on twitter.
The people leaving for other platforms don’t want censorship. They want to get away from a toxic environment. Claiming otherwise is either ignorant or dishonest. (I have never had an account on twitter or any similar platform; I just pay attention to what people who used to like it and now hate it say.)
I mean the whole X thing is kinda ironic as X can mean No as in crossed out. So Now you can imagine the twitter bird behind an X and think "It's dead, Jim."
I don't think it violates someone's free speech[^1] to ban them or call them out for spewing slurs or hateful rhetoric towards minorities. Twitter has become unusable over the last 6-12 months since "free speech" to some people thinks that gives them the right to harass others for not aligning with their ideas of what is "normal" or "correct".
Bluesky, and in turn, other sites are full of people who've fled Twitter due to the shift in general "vibes" and rhetoric from its users. And personally, those people are much more of a joy to be around.
> I don't think it violates someone's free speech[^1] to ban them or call them out for spewing slurs or hateful rhetoric towards minorities.
It certainly doesn't violate someone's legal rights, in fact stopping Bluesky would be infringing on theirs.
I think the xkcd link is mostly mincing words, though. I think it does violate the general philosophical principle of freedom of speech to kick people out of a public place for having unpopular or offensive views. As long as social media companies hold most of the cards for political discussion (and represent themselves as where political discussion happens) it feels disingenuous to pretend that they're like a private household, who can kick people out for any reason. They are not. They're not just private get-togethers among friends, they're where politics happens in our societies.
I'm no fan of Blue Sky's censorious air, but this is just a straight up lie. Twitter is now paid speech platform, where those with premium accounts receive better moderation and improved reach. The owner has banned scientific words that he has a personal issue with, specifically the term "cisgender". Elon increaed the amount of government censorship on Twitter, and additionally he bought it with Saudi backing and has cooperated with their requests for censorship. He did not make significant changes to the ToS, he just fired half the people enforcing it so it's easier to get away without being caught. Then he selected a few Nazis that he agrees with and gave them impunity from the rules of the platform. If Twitter was a totalitarian state before, it is now an absolute monarchy. It's regressing.
> Only human born with the XY chromosomes can get pregnant
Well as a man of science, I'm sure you'll be able to appreciate the causal relationship between people deciding to say this, and them being transphobic trolls who are trying to get people mad for attention.
Gender dysphoria is a recognised medical condition. Cisgender is the word for someone without that condition. It is scientific, a term derived through empirical observation of the world. You just happen to dislike that science. I have had my posts censored on X for using the word "cis". While I still used the site, posts containing that word were consistently flagged, deleted, and hidden. I think I still have some of the emails they sent me, warning me about the use of this word. I would occasionally try to avoid the censorship by writing "c*s" and my posts would still be hidden and I would still receive a warning. Perhaps he has since unbanned the word, but I don't use the site anymore so I wouldn't know.
Know what I got from Twitter? Assaulted, harassed, and insulted. The rage over there is so intense that every discussion about literally everything (even bread) quickly devolves into either racism, sexism, or insults.
You know what I get from Bluesky? Bread recipes, video game commentary, in-depth legal voyeurism. And my favorite, political discussions with a variety of nuanced takes about the merits of individual policies that doesn't devolve into name calling.
My experience has been the exact opposite. On Twitter I get all the nuanced discussion while Bluesky is filled with ranting since one political group decided to decamp to it. Ultimately, even when those people were still on Twitter I didn't really have an issue because I simply didn't engage with them. You get out of social networking services what you put into them. You're responsible for curating your own experience because the hucksters in charge aren't going to do it for you.
Sounds like you're following the wrong people on Bluesky.
Which leads me to my second point: There is a cost for curation. If a given forum is filled with people I don't want to follow, and there's no easy way to sort them from the ones I do want to follow, one can easily say that the cost of curation is high, and insofar as I do not have an unlimited amount of time on my hands and that limited time is better disposed on other tasks, I'm unlikely to ever visit that forum. This is the problem that Mastodon/the Fediverse faces, and likewise Bluesky. On Twitter I can find people from just about any background I'd care to, and I already have a well-developed list of people I'm following. Bluesky and the Fediverse are filled with people who decamped from Twitter that I'd never follow in a million years, and even if there are others there I might be interested in, they're drowned out in the sea of what for me can accurately be categorized as spammers. Put simply: While the onus may be on me to set my own experience, there is a limit to how much effort I'm willing to put forward to accomplish that, and I think the same is true of others. Do not be surprised, therefore, when your particular choice of forum stalls out because a vocal demographic spams the crap out of it and turns others away in droves... because you set it up this way and it's working as designed.
My favorite feature of Bluesky so far are the Lists and Starter Packs which allow you to use other people's curation options as a jumping off point. Bluesky isn't 1:1 with Twitter for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that not everyone is there yet. But the ease of finding your niche is one of the better parts of it to me.
EDIT: Oh, and the simplicity of their blocklists is absolutely worth looking into. There are a few accounts who have automated scammer/spam blocklists you can subscribe to.
funny i get that too on twitter what you get on bluesky. if you seek out debate you will get it, has nothing to do with twitter. Bluesky will be very boring once upu realize that the reason you hate twitter is the reason you are going to hate bluesky. Its going to be very boring very soon or very toxic. Its still going to be relying on algorithms and. business logic
When I left Twitter I didn't replace it with anything. Just normal offline friends. I joined Bluesky when someone told me that the interesting things I was looking for were there.
> So, is it an echo chamber?
> The short answer is, yes, of course it is. Because Bluesky’s core userbase is made up of those who are fed up with the weaponized anger of Twitter and the liminal space of Threads, they automatically have a unifying identity.
/thread
In other words tiktok is perfectly acceptable and good for you if it's Jack Dorsey who is backing it. Echo chambers amirite?
> Because Bluesky’s core userbase is made up of those who are fed up with the weaponized anger of Twitter...
There's no weaponized anger on Twitter. Twitter defends free speech. But you can't silence those who have views opposing your own echo chamber on X / Twitter anymore.
Those who want censorship to continue leave for Bluesky.
https://x.com/ElonJet
> Twitter defends free speech. Do you just take everything someone says at face value?
As someone who never used Twitter before, the first thing I saw signing up to X earlier this years was a continual feed of exclusively black people doing crimes that would make Fox News blush, and people in the replies calling them subhuman. How would you describe this if not hate?
In case you're not being sarcastic...
Nov 2022, Musk promises not to ban ElonJet, a bot tracker that uses publicly available flight info: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
A month later, Twitter under Musk bans ElonJet, claiming it's tracking his "real time location"?: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/elonjet...
Followed by bans of Mastodon for tweeting a link to ElonJet's Mastodon: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23511894/twitter-suspend...
And bans of journalists for covering it (perhaps for linking the Mastodon?): https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/media/twitter-musk-journalist...
That article also mentions Twitter banning users for linking their own Mastodon profiles: "As the furor over the account suspensions unfolded, some Twitter users reported the platform had begun intervening when they attempted to post links to their own profiles on alternative social networks, including Mastodon."
Twitter then bans all usage of Twitter to share links to competing social networks: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/23515221/twitter-bans-li...
Although the policy was quickly reverted after backlash, Musk said explicitly, "Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288
April 2023, Twitter blocks engagement on Substack link tweets, coincidentally after Substack announced a Twitter competitor: https://www.engadget.com/twitter-blocks-interactions-on-twee...
Twitter folds to a demand by the Indian government, for the first time censoring a tweet globally, not just in India: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/twitter-takes-down-po...
September 2024, Twitter finally releases a transparency report after skipping for 2 years (and the data for 2022-2023 are still missing btw): https://www.wired.com/story/x-twitter-first-transparency-rep...
That transparency report shows nearly 71% compliance with legal takedown requests, compared to ~50% max across previous reports.
Musk kicked off a bunch of Lfetist and progressive accounts when he took over. He rigged the platform to favor people with his political views. He sold check marks to put posts at the top of conversations to drown the platform in posts from his fan club. There’s nothing about free speech happening on twitter.
The people leaving for other platforms don’t want censorship. They want to get away from a toxic environment. Claiming otherwise is either ignorant or dishonest. (I have never had an account on twitter or any similar platform; I just pay attention to what people who used to like it and now hate it say.)
> There’s nothing about free speech happening on twitter.
At this point I think it should just be called X and reserve Twitter to be used in the past tense and in mourning.
I really like Xitter pronounced "Shitter"
I mean the whole X thing is kinda ironic as X can mean No as in crossed out. So Now you can imagine the twitter bird behind an X and think "It's dead, Jim."
no he didnt
I don't think it violates someone's free speech[^1] to ban them or call them out for spewing slurs or hateful rhetoric towards minorities. Twitter has become unusable over the last 6-12 months since "free speech" to some people thinks that gives them the right to harass others for not aligning with their ideas of what is "normal" or "correct".
Bluesky, and in turn, other sites are full of people who've fled Twitter due to the shift in general "vibes" and rhetoric from its users. And personally, those people are much more of a joy to be around.
[^1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/
> I don't think it violates someone's free speech[^1] to ban them or call them out for spewing slurs or hateful rhetoric towards minorities.
It certainly doesn't violate someone's legal rights, in fact stopping Bluesky would be infringing on theirs.
I think the xkcd link is mostly mincing words, though. I think it does violate the general philosophical principle of freedom of speech to kick people out of a public place for having unpopular or offensive views. As long as social media companies hold most of the cards for political discussion (and represent themselves as where political discussion happens) it feels disingenuous to pretend that they're like a private household, who can kick people out for any reason. They are not. They're not just private get-togethers among friends, they're where politics happens in our societies.
[flagged]
That will get you banned on one platform, while "there are only two genders" will get you banned on another.
[flagged]
[flagged]
The vast majority of people with XY sex chromosomes cannot get pregnant; I think you mixed it up with XX.
> there are an infinity of genders
I'm no fan of Blue Sky's censorious air, but this is just a straight up lie. Twitter is now paid speech platform, where those with premium accounts receive better moderation and improved reach. The owner has banned scientific words that he has a personal issue with, specifically the term "cisgender". Elon increaed the amount of government censorship on Twitter, and additionally he bought it with Saudi backing and has cooperated with their requests for censorship. He did not make significant changes to the ToS, he just fired half the people enforcing it so it's easier to get away without being caught. Then he selected a few Nazis that he agrees with and gave them impunity from the rules of the platform. If Twitter was a totalitarian state before, it is now an absolute monarchy. It's regressing.
> Only human born with the XY chromosomes can get pregnant
Well as a man of science, I'm sure you'll be able to appreciate the causal relationship between people deciding to say this, and them being transphobic trolls who are trying to get people mad for attention.
this is flat out wrong. cisgender is not a scientific term and its not banned. Postmodernism and critical theory or even neuro science is not science.
Gender dysphoria is a recognised medical condition. Cisgender is the word for someone without that condition. It is scientific, a term derived through empirical observation of the world. You just happen to dislike that science. I have had my posts censored on X for using the word "cis". While I still used the site, posts containing that word were consistently flagged, deleted, and hidden. I think I still have some of the emails they sent me, warning me about the use of this word. I would occasionally try to avoid the censorship by writing "c*s" and my posts would still be hidden and I would still receive a warning. Perhaps he has since unbanned the word, but I don't use the site anymore so I wouldn't know.
Gender dysphoria is, cisgender is not.