Bluesky: We need a Gab... of The Left!

[WALFTEAM]

I finally got a Bluesky invite so I can finally see what's going on in there. It was quite the shock.

The Musk buyout of Twitter created an opportunity for Jack, Twitter's original founder, to basically create a duplicate of his site as it existed in 2012, minus the character limit. He craftily leveraged a decade of resentment towards his own site's low-quality automoderation and all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Elong takeover to actively herd a certain category of Twitter user into signing up for it.

Until Bluesky there hasn't been a Twitter Alternative per se that specifically courted radlib users the same way that Gab, Parler and Truth courted rightwing users. Mastadon/Fediverse was a technology and not just a website; anyone could and did make their own independent instances. Cohost is more of a Tumblr/Livejournal mashup aimed at people who were too nutty even for 2012 Twitter. Pillowfort landed too early and at the wrong time to ride any kind of resentment wave and was doomed by constant outages. Bluesky in contrast is explicitly a direct Twitter clone in content, function, user experience and organization - but not userbase.

This is accomplished by the use of an invite system. It's been a rousing success due to the combination of Musk Derangement Syndrome and the fact that posts are hidden to those not logged in. It's also been discovered that the administration will not just ban problem users but the users who invited those problem users. This means that immediately, out of the gate, the site is tracking who is associated with who based on who invited who and this information is widely available internally to it's staff. Among other things this gets them a map of the LF/SA Goon/transactivist/ex-tumblr/anarchist/furry/etc. networks of users coming off Twitter (where the majority of the invites are spread) to track/send ads to/otherwise collect data on that has value to Interested Parties.

This reminds me of Parler a bit, though Parler was a lot more extreme and asked for a social security or tax ID number. They either wanted data on small business owners/certain types of boomers very badly or they were just a pure and cartoonishly obvious honeypot all along. Wonder what Bluesky will be in the end.

Gotta say though, after just 15 minutes into actually browsing around, what Bluesky reminds me of the most is Gab - just a complete ideological hellhole enforced from within and without, gatekept by and for the purest of the pure. The business sense behind it is the same - create a place for a specific political grifter ecosystem and space for a more extreme place in the social media economy. A containment site, in other words.

 

[eve]

would actually b worth checking out if it wasnt 4the invite system ...
i think rite now we r just sort of stuck inbetween --- eventually a twitter replacement will come up but rite now i dont think anything available izz fit 2 replace it XP

 

[Some_porcupine]

I finally got a Bluesky invite so I can finally see what's going on in there. It was quite the shock.

The Musk buyout of Twitter created an opportunity for Jack, Twitter's original founder, to basically create a duplicate of his site as it existed in 2012, minus the character limit. He craftily leveraged a decade of resentment towards his own site's low-quality automoderation and all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Elong takeover to actively herd a certain category of Twitter user into signing up for it.

Until Bluesky there hasn't been a Twitter Alternative per se that specifically courted radlib users the same way that Gab, Parler and Truth courted rightwing users. Mastadon/Fediverse was a technology and not just a website; anyone could and did make their own independent instances. Cohost is more of a Tumblr/Livejournal mashup aimed at people who were too nutty even for 2012 Twitter. Pillowfort landed too early and at the wrong time to ride any kind of resentment wave and was doomed by constant outages. Bluesky in contrast is explicitly a direct Twitter clone in content, function, user experience and organization - but not userbase.

This is accomplished by the use of an invite system. It's been a rousing success due to the combination of Musk Derangement Syndrome and the fact that posts are hidden to those not logged in. It's also been discovered that the administration will not just ban problem users but the users who invited those problem users. This means that immediately, out of the gate, the site is tracking who is associated with who based on who invited who and this information is widely available internally to it's staff. Among other things this gets them a map of the LF/SA Goon/transactivist/ex-tumblr/anarchist/furry/etc. networks of users coming off Twitter (where the majority of the invites are spread) to track/send ads to/otherwise collect data on that has value to Interested Parties.

This reminds me of Parler a bit, though Parler was a lot more extreme and asked for a social security or tax ID number. They either wanted data on small business owners/certain types of boomers very badly or they were just a pure and cartoonishly obvious honeypot all along. Wonder what Bluesky will be in the end.

Gotta say though, after just 15 minutes into actually browsing around, what Bluesky reminds me of the most is Gab - just a complete ideological hellhole enforced from within and without, gatekept by and for the purest of the pure. The business sense behind it is the same - create a place for a specific political grifter ecosystem and space for a more extreme place in the social media economy. A containment site, in other words.

Reminds me somewhat if Clubhouse
Those get-together makes me scared.
What if those there can cook up MAPs and other fucked up propaganda, - things you never agreed to, but that got you at the end? Hate this happening.
I'd rather have schizos and sociopaths and all lovely weirdos co-living in Society, than to let them bathe in their own circlejerk - I'd listen to all of them, rather than to echo-chamber them "for their own good" (blatant lie).
"I will fight for your right to say that even when I disagree with it" and "Censorship is good" - I'd rather have first than second, and it makes me sad that is not widespread idea nowadays. We can maybe blame 9/11 or other revenge acts and shootings...

 

[eve]

I'd rather have schizos and sociopaths and all lovely weirdos co-living in Society, than to let them bathe in their own circlejerk - I'd listen to all of them, rather than to echo-chamber them "for their own good" (blatant lie).

yea tbh any echo chamber izz bad whether u agree with the politixx or not itz just a horribl idea 2 close ppl off and shut out any criticism

 

[llillilll]

I finally got a Bluesky invite so I can finally see what's going on in there. It was quite the shock.

The Musk buyout of Twitter created an opportunity for Jack, Twitter's original founder, to basically create a duplicate of his site as it existed in 2012, minus the character limit. He craftily leveraged a decade of resentment towards his own site's low-quality automoderation and all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Elong takeover to actively herd a certain category of Twitter user into signing up for it.

Until Bluesky there hasn't been a Twitter Alternative per se that specifically courted radlib users the same way that Gab, Parler and Truth courted rightwing users. Mastadon/Fediverse was a technology and not just a website; anyone could and did make their own independent instances. Cohost is more of a Tumblr/Livejournal mashup aimed at people who were too nutty even for 2012 Twitter. Pillowfort landed too early and at the wrong time to ride any kind of resentment wave and was doomed by constant outages. Bluesky in contrast is explicitly a direct Twitter clone in content, function, user experience and organization - but not userbase.

This is accomplished by the use of an invite system. It's been a rousing success due to the combination of Musk Derangement Syndrome and the fact that posts are hidden to those not logged in. It's also been discovered that the administration will not just ban problem users but the users who invited those problem users. This means that immediately, out of the gate, the site is tracking who is associated with who based on who invited who and this information is widely available internally to it's staff. Among other things this gets them a map of the LF/SA Goon/transactivist/ex-tumblr/anarchist/furry/etc. networks of users coming off Twitter (where the majority of the invites are spread) to track/send ads to/otherwise collect data on that has value to Interested Parties.

This reminds me of Parler a bit, though Parler was a lot more extreme and asked for a social security or tax ID number. They either wanted data on small business owners/certain types of boomers very badly or they were just a pure and cartoonishly obvious honeypot all along. Wonder what Bluesky will be in the end.

Gotta say though, after just 15 minutes into actually browsing around, what Bluesky reminds me of the most is Gab - just a complete ideological hellhole enforced from within and without, gatekept by and for the purest of the pure. The business sense behind it is the same - create a place for a specific political grifter ecosystem and space for a more extreme place in the social media economy. A containment site, in other words.

I think Jack just sucks and he is responsible for the horrible situation his website is in. This site will be just twitter but instead of bots it is people with minimal self expression and celf censor their speech. The moderation system encourages users to be compliant and aggressive to others.
I am sure there will be some alt-right people will post some dogshit opinion to garner victimhood as is the alt-right fashion soo there will be a culture clash between the wanted demographic and alt-rights that will satiate the users for a bit but after all the reactionaries leave they will eat each other because they will get used to fighting reactionaries.
If it ends up being good then cool, i still won't use it.

 

[№56]

When are people going to realize that the microblog format in general is just a machine for making people stupid? It doesn't matter what someone's politics are - they'll turn into an idiot if you force them to type in soundbites, encourage them to repost other people's posts, and make the whole thing about getting reactions. The whole medium is fucked and no amount of filtering out the people who can apply is going to fix it.

 

[zalaz alaza]

When are people going to realize that the microblog format in general is just a machine for making people stupid? It doesn't matter what someone's politics are - they'll turn into an idiot if you force them to type in soundbites, encourage them to repost other people's posts, and make the whole thing about getting reactions. The whole medium is fucked and no amount of filtering out the people who can apply is going to fix it.

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

Sounds shitty, but smart business move by Jack at least. Who are the big names/power users on Bluesky?

 

[WALFTEAM]

I think Jack just sucks and he is responsible for the horrible situation his website is in. This site will be just twitter but instead of bots it is people with minimal self expression and celf censor their speech. The moderation system encourages users to be compliant and aggressive to others.
I am sure there will be some alt-right people will post some dogshit opinion to garner victimhood as is the alt-right fashion soo there will be a culture clash between the wanted demographic and alt-rights that will satiate the users for a bit but after all the reactionaries leave they will eat each other because they will get used to fighting reactionaries.
If it ends up being good then cool, i still won't use it.

Apparently that already happened, like a year ago. What I am running into now looks like the purity spirals and infighting phase has already started. It's not like snouts.online where the owner will just pull the plug so the carnage could go on for a while.

 

[RisingThumb]

would actually b worth checking out if it wasnt 4the invite system ...

Invite system isn't inherently bad. Federated systems do this, as you need to be invited. Additionally email systems like cock.li do this too.
IMO, these problems are all just symptoms that stem from the cause: advertising to a particular audience. If your audience is mentally deranged idealists, then your symptoms will match the problems of these folks.

I say deranged because they think ideals can be realised, even though ideals either break, or ring hollow to the reality that no ideal exists. Besides... Americans and Westerners whine about minor issues like this too damn much

 

[№56]

What does this face mean?

 

[eve]

What does this face mean?

 

[スーパー Meidoメイド]

Jack

I swear to god, i didn't do anything this time.

 

[Deleted member 6638]

Apparently that already happened, like a year ago. What I am running into now looks like the purity spirals and infighting phase has already started. It's not like snouts.online where the owner will just pull the plug so the carnage could go on for a while.

Well, you have mentally deranged bullies closed in the same room. It was expected.

 

[brentw]

We need a Gab... of The Left!​

Ok, first of all, that already exists ... it's called THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INTERNET.

And if the entire rest of the internet isn't quite retard far left for you, then there's Mastodon.

Personally, I think they should all just be rounded up and air dropped into North Korea.
Then they won't need social media at all!

 

[jaedaen]

When are people going to realize that the microblog format in general is just a machine for making people stupid? It doesn't matter what someone's politics are - they'll turn into an idiot if you force them to type in soundbites, encourage them to repost other people's posts, and make the whole thing about getting reactions. The whole medium is fucked and no amount of filtering out the people who can apply is going to fix it.

no56 is on point here, but there is more to it. I hate this aspect of modern internet culture. It's not just this format technologically, it's the emergent property of the internet including *everyone* now. It also has to do with the fact that, like an embryo, the culture of the internet has rapidly changed based upon what came before, like music. It's also why I would prefer this forum to be reactionless. If you liked what I said or hated what I said in a post, say something about it. Bring a different perspective, and then, maybe we could debate about it. The goal should be interesting discussion above all else, but all of these modern aspects of social media do everything possible to try to undermine this concept. Additionally, back in the day (I'm thinking of the usenet era, so early 90s maybe) everyone was a nerd on the internet. Generally, even if you were getting trolled, people put a lot of thought in to what they were saying and you got the impression there were at least a few rewrites. Above all else, since EVERYONE else was a nerd like you (or rich early adopters pretending to be nerds), you didn't want to appear stupid, so you made sure you put a lot of effort in to everything that you posted.

If you didn't, you were just simply kind of looked down upon or even worse, completely ignored. I don't remember many stupid one line retorts. You didn't have people spouting nonsense and dumb kids lapping it up, feeding the encouragement of such things.

The game switched from 'let me display my intellectual superiority to this person in an argument to show every nerd watching how large my internet penis is' to 'let's find a way to get the most reactions from as many people as possible, even if it's a large chunk of a bunch of really dumb people'.

At least with the intellectual superiority thing, you would get some really interesting arguments. They were heated, and it's not that people still couldn't sometimes be cruel, but they usually went on for a while (no one wanted to back down ever), and usually there was some meat on those bones of those threads for the lurkers like me in those days. Still, usually they would devolve in to something dumb at the end, which is how things like Godwin's law came about: an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches (this was before Nazis actually became a non-fringe thing again though, and everyone considered them evil).

One thing I really miss is how people did not sequester themselves in to echo chambers as much as they do now.

 

[Deleted member 6638]

Ok, first of all, that already exists ... it's called THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INTERNET.

And if the entire rest of the internet isn't quite retard far left for you, then there's Mastodon.

Well, you see it will only be the real deal when my homies are in charge. The other ones are posers and sheeit.

Typical for movements/groups without any actual power or incentive structures, they just do infighting and purity spiraling about BS to secure a bigger chunk of the decreasing resource pie. If it was a thing of vitality, they would be busy actually doing politics.

But yeah, they really overran the Internet, because it was built on old school tolerance. It was the victory of the retarded ideologue, who literally destroyed cyberspace by appealing to the outside authority of the current thing. Meh.

 

[スーパー Meidoメイド]

I don't know whot his Jack fella is, but he has a handsome name.

 

[WALFTEAM]

Ok, first of all, that already exists ... it's called THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INTERNET.

And if the entire rest of the internet isn't quite retard far left for you, then there's Mastodon.

Personally, I think they should all just be rounded up and air dropped into North Korea.
Then they won't need social media at all!

View attachment 74754

do you have any other dank /pol/ memes from 2015 to drop in this thread or are you done

 

[WALFTEAM]

no56 is on point here, but there is more to it. I hate this aspect of modern internet culture. It's not just this format technologically, it's the emergent property of the internet including *everyone* now. It also has to do with the fact that, like an embryo, the culture of the internet has rapidly changed based upon what came before, like music. It's also why I would prefer this forum to be reactionless. If you liked what I said or hated what I said in a post, say something about it. Bring a different perspective, and then, maybe we could debate about it. The goal should be interesting discussion above all else, but all of these modern aspects of social media do everything possible to try to undermine this concept. Additionally, back in the day (I'm thinking of the usenet era, so early 90s maybe) everyone was a nerd on the internet. Generally, even if you were getting trolled, people put a lot of thought in to what they were saying and you got the impression there were at least a few rewrites. Above all else, since EVERYONE else was a nerd like you (or rich early adopters pretending to be nerds), you didn't want to appear stupid, so you made sure you put a lot of effort in to everything that you posted.

If you didn't, you were just simply kind of looked down upon or even worse, completely ignored. I don't remember many stupid one line retorts. You didn't have people spouting nonsense and dumb kids lapping it up, feeding the encouragement of such things.

The game switched from 'let me display my intellectual superiority to this person in an argument to show every nerd watching how large my internet penis is' to 'let's find a way to get the most reactions from as many people as possible, even if it's a large chunk of a bunch of really dumb people'.

At least with the intellectual superiority thing, you would get some really interesting arguments. They were heated, and it's not that people still couldn't sometimes be cruel, but they usually went on for a while (no one wanted to back down ever), and usually there was some meat on those bones of those threads for the lurkers like me in those days. Still, usually they would devolve in to something dumb at the end, which is how things like Godwin's law came about: an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches (this was before Nazis actually became a non-fringe thing again though, and everyone considered them evil).

One thing I really miss is how people did not sequester themselves in to echo chambers as much as they do now.

One quick thought that comes to mind here is that there were places on the net in years past where people had tedius full-form political arguments and over time entire communities built up with the express and fanatical purpose of undermining those places and their participants. We're kind of seeing the 3rd or 4th generation of those anti-community communities today and since they achieved their intended goals long ago they continue to have these churning monosyllabic forever wars that now serve as today's discourse.