Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms

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• azalty@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What we need are good algorithms

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  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What does this mean? “Good” how?

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• deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I mean, I hate BlueSky too, but I think the reason it’s more popular than Mastodon is that it’s more centralized and in practical terms that means it’s easier to adopt and engage with.

  The biggest headache I have with Mastodon (and Lemmy, to a lesser extent) is defederation. I understand it’s the most practical thing to do sometimes, but it’s waaay overdone. Like, there needs to be a culture of only defederating as a last resort due to pratical concerns (e.g. bots I guess). Unfortunately the current culture is one where many instance admins treat defederation as a personal blocklist. I wish more admins would leave it to individual users to decide who to allow or not.

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  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    When you sign up with Bluesky, it gives you the choice to sign up with the big main server or with an auxiliary server. Just like Lemmy does.

    The problem is that when Lemmy got hit with a big influx of users, the main server couldn’t handle the load, so they quit accepting new users. This confused and upset a lot of people, because now they had to go shopping for another instance to apply to, and many of the bigger ones weren’t accepting new users, either, because of the same problem. This was a crucial moment for the adoption of the platform, and the infrastructure just wasn’t there to handle it.

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  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I haven’t used Mastodon, but if it’s anything like Lemmy, most people won’t want to bother learning what an instance is or what federation means.

    FOSS enthusiasts regularly overestimate how much hassle regular people are willing to put up with to do something, and how much they care about corporations.

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    • deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      To me the biggest issue with federated platforms is defederation: deliberately breaking interoperability.

      Like, imagine if email servers (the original federated network) blocked whole domains as aggressively Mastodon or even Lemmy servers do? It never would have worked.

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      most people won’t want to bother learning what an instance is or what federation means.

      What have you seen that convinced you of this? Has this been studied?

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  • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I never had a Xitter account so take what I say with a grain of salt, as I only interacted with the platform as a spectator.

    For me it was funny to watch as I slowly saw people dive into madness over the most irrelevant things.

    It didn’t matter if it was left or right people still lost all senses over unimportant things like Hunter Biden’s laptop or this week’s conspiracy theory.

    I opened Mastodon and as I scroll through I see the following order:

    1. republican bad post
    2. republican bad post
    3. republican bad post
    4. something linux related (usually hector martin)
    5. republican bad post

    And I get it, republican is bad, but after reading 3-4 republic bad posts my mental state needs a break or something different which is what Xitter was able to do. Some new music being announced/discussed, maybe a video game, maybe a joke.

    BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.

    I personally think that the problem is rooted in defederation, it’s being used willy-nilly like it doesn’t have effect on the people using the platform. But not becoming an echo chamber is essential to a platform’s long term health. If I know that a platform has the same message for me when I open the app I’ll just start using it less, which is what happened with Lemmy sadly, I open my feed and it’s full of dystopian and republican posts, I just don’t bother anymore.

    Incoherent rant over.

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    • deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Your rant is 100% sensible and/or valid and/or based or whatever one says these days.

      If a user wants their own echo chamber, let them cultivate it themselves. The hosts should not decide for them, and the choice to defederate should be based on practical/material/legal concerns only.

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think you need to curate your feeds better. My experience doesn’t match yours.

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    • boxfulloffoxes@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.

      Isn’t the whole thing about BlueSky that your feed is your feed though? You actively select and curate what you want. So if you want new music, games, comedy - follow new music, games, and comedy. Sure, those accounts might then post other things sometimes, but by and large, that’s my understanding of BSky.

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  • Dil@is.hardlywork.ing ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They planned ahead to make it popular, twitter developed it while losing money, my conspiracy theory is their goal was always to transition to bluesky since its model is more sustainable for long term control

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That isn’t a conspiracy theory. That was, in fact, the original plan. Jack Dorsey explicitly stated this from the outset. However, due to reasons (Wikipedia doesn’t go into specifics), the project lead decided to make Bluesky independent from Twitter. When Musk bought Twitter, he severed all ties.

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• MrMcGasion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  When I first got a Bluesky account, back when it was invite-only a whole bunch of the Physicists and Astronomers I used to follow on Twitter were already there. If anything it seemed like scientists were early adopters.

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• sircac@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I would prefer any ActivityPub instance, but press media (and in general private entities), to which scientific institutes intend diffusion, is moving to bluesky…

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• lemmus@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The thing is, bluesky is just old twitter, it will become X eventually…Bluesky sucks, but jessus, mastodon sucks in terms of usability. Its only for technical people and experience on mastodon is fatal compared to bluesky, sad that mastodon won’t take over, as it could…at least bluesky is not bad YET.

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  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bluesky is more popular because it has VC money behind it.

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• Mars2k21@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Going to play devil’s advocate here.

  Bluesky is just…better than any Fediverse microblogging platform. In terms of UI, discoverability, and keeping a balance of users in the community.

  Mastodon sucks for regular people. And none of the other better platforms like Firefish ever gain enough steam to beat Mastodon because of existing issues in the structure of the Fediverse and ActivityPub (this also includes Mastodon itself to an extent).

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  • Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Because Bluesky keeps to what made Twitter popular in the first place. The UX. You make a post and its syndicated to a federated feed that anyone can search for, and you can tag content using hashtags.

    It’s a great concept. There’s a reason a lot of people use it.

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  • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Mastodon is great.

    The only reason why it doesn’t get as much traction is because it doesn’t manipulate your dopamine and serotonin receptors like other networks do with their black box algorithms that are designed to steal as much of your attention as possible, while almost certainly throwing you into an unhealthy filterbubble/echochamber.

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    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That is also true to Bluesky, and to a lesser extent, even for the Lemmy-Reddit divide. I’ve seen people leaving the alternative platforms for the mainstream ones, because the alternative ones “didn’t made them stay as long”. For me, being less addictive was part of the reason why I prefer the alt platforms, although with reddit, I had to browse through a lot of garbage already, long before the API drama.

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  • oni@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    what are those?

    existing issues in the structure of the Fediverse and ActivityPub

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  • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The other issue is, nobody is trying to take on Facebook. Not really anything in the FLOSS community like it.

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    • Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head, the only people I’ve noticed that really want such a social media account are generally people who were older than millennial, out of Millennials gen Z and gen A, I don’t really see much interest in a social media account that is directly linked to your actual identity. Most of them are more interested in a pseuado-anonymous style account that only asks for a username and doesn’t actually link you to a real world identity.

      Facebook was great in principle, it was intended as like a college student community and evolved from there, it was never meant to fill the goal of what the platform is doing today.

      As such as Facebook deteriorates, there isn’t a huge demand for a Facebook alternative, because the people who are leaving the platform aren’t actively seeking to replace what is lost.

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    • gheesh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Friendica aims at that. I’m not sure about the results as I haven’t tried it.

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    • shortrounddev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There’s a couple contenders but they’re not very good. I think most FOSS people don’t WANT a facebook alternative; they’d prefer to keep their IRL identity separate from the internet. And the people who don’t care also don’t care enough to want to go federated.

      There’s spacehey as a myspace alternative though. That’s pretty neat but it’s full of teenagers unfortunately.

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• pls@lemmy.plaureano.nohost.me ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I have no clue on the reasons people like Bluesky (or threads). None at all.

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  • anachronology@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    At least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, so they at least have to consider the public good in their decision-making and not just profit. May not be much, but it’s a start.

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How is that regulated?

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    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      May not be much, but it’s a start.

      Actually, when you tell people something is a start but it is actually a false start that doesn’t deliver on the fundamental promises at all, it is much worse than having a much slower start…

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    • tomjuggler@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What like OpenAI?

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  • shortrounddev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bluesky has a lot more normies on it while mastodon is mostly early-adopter types. Mastodon, in my experience, is either very technical people (software engineers and other tech people) or very political people. Bluesky has normal people on it

    I checked out threads for a day and I liked it because the algorithm wasn’t jamming a bunch of outrage content down my throat but that’s the only thing I can say about it. Haven’t used it since then (deleted my entire meta account)

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    • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Took me like a day on bluesky to find all the funny people. Never saw any funny people on mastodon. :-(

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• ZombieMantis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Would he better if it was Mastodon, but I suppose I shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and good riddance to Twitter, indeed.

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  • Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Same here, well said. Bluesky’s not perfect, at least it’s not Twitter. I wish more people would use it though

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  • shininghero@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    While there has been some onboarding QOL stuff for mastodon, Bluesky still has them beat on that.

    The “People” segment in the explore menu is a nice start, but it’s still dependent on the users picking a server that somewhat matches their interests.

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    • grepe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      thing is lot of that is on purpose. mastodon and fediverse are more of an attempt to come back to the state where there is no algorithm picking for you… but too many people nowdays are simply too lazy to search and actively choose what they want to see.

      what we really need is to separate content (keep that in fediverse) and content access and presentation (the interface people use to access the content). if you want a bot feeding you content whole day and for your internet to become a tv you nobody can stop you. but if you want to think amd search nobody should stop you either

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• DSTGU@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  First time seeing HTTP code 451

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  • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    “Sorry, it’s literally impossible for us not to sell your data!”

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  • glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    http.cat/status/451

    because I needed an explanation of what that means, and I wanted it to be cute and funny.

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• resetbypeer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Now all governments around the globe and other public services and we.are getting somewhere.

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• index@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  See you can be a really good scientist and not smart at the same time. Move to mastodon.

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• Genius@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There’s no excuse for using Xittter in 2025.

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• Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I feel like scientists should move towards open source solutions … I feel like most scientists are smart enough to launch a mastodon server, but well.

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  • moe93@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It costs time and money. The handful of times I published articles in an open access journal, I had to pay close to $5K USD per publication.

    Theoretically, researchers can publish on Mastodon or something similar but that unfortunately won’t give us the reach we need. That might be fine with well established names, but for dumb-dumbs like myself who are still trying to make a name for ourselves in our field, we want the highest impact publisher we can find. Those typically come with a price tag.

    Sometimes the grant also dictates acceptable publishers were you can submit your manuscript.

    Sadly, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

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  • Miaou@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Never worked in academia eh? Plenty of dumb (and, more importantly here, computer illiterate) people there too.

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  • earphone843@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Being a scientist doesn’t mean you have the technical knowledge to run a public facing server.

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    • Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Being a scientist kinda means to me you’re able to follow a very easy to understand guide to install mastodon on …

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Most people who work as “scientists” aren’t actually scientists.

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    • Arkouda@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Define “Scientist”.

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  • Natanael@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bluesky is open source though

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    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No, aspects of the Bluesky system are open source. The moderation and filtering layer is effectively centralized, is specifically not clarified to leave open the possibility for monetization such as forcing as on users, and even if you could theoretically run your own Bluesky network… it would never be a useful alternative to the Official Bubble maintained by the Bluesky corporation that you must submit to or be left out in the cold interacting with users only on alternate, small personal networks.

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  • glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.

    I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).

    I use lemmy because I hate u/spez, not because it’s more feature complete than reddit (it isn’t).

    I use blender because it’s free and it’s actually kinda great, if all free and open source software was like blender, then it would be a no-brainer to use FOSS all of the time, and it would be easy to convince the normies to do the same.

    ---

    also also

    I’m using linux mint, i have minor complaints about it, but nothing worse than what microsoft is currently doing with windows. It’s just different, and that bothers me. middle click paste is the bane of my existence, but other people swear by it. Just before I switched over, I learned about windows 10’s built in emoji keyboard, and I really liked that. A year later (literally last week) I discovered a program that does most of what the windows emoji thingy did, and I can manually edit a keybind for the function to accomplish amost the same thing. FOSS, yay, it’s free if you don’t value your time in currency amounts. FOSS could be so good if only it were good.

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).

      lol… “Feature complete” if you want terrible features.

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  • naught101@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Some of us have. There are a few science focused servers.

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  • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Never meet your heroes. If a scientist is human, they’re as fallible as any other.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Just because they know using Mastodon they are bad people? What the hell kind of take is that?

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  • ubergeek@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Most scientists aren’t allowed to do stuff like that, or purely just don’t have the time.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Oh know how. Just because that scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I won’t have to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.

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    • naught101@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What… Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.

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• giacomo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  from one monoplatform to another? OK cool, what could go wrong?

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• smeg@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  How many times can people keep making the same mistake without us concluding they’re stupid? Closed corporate social networks ALWAYS go to shit. Enshitification is inevitable. And you’ll have the sunk cost fallacy stopping them from leaving, until they all finally get fed up and switch again. Own your network - stop swapping.

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  • Tiger@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They gotta get their news out to the masses, at least they choose something besides twitter.

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• jsomae@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  nothing makes me more skeptical that seeing the word “scientists” in a headline.

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  • TheEschatonSucks@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    At least they weren’t baffled

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    • qisope@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Surely there was at least some kind of breakthrough

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• gi1242@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  oof. blue sky was created by the guy who made twitter wasn’t it? if he sells to the next bond villain, blue sky will just become twitter 2.0.

  open source, decentralized.

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  • acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    i have accepted that most of the internet will be a vicious cycle of enshittification. go to cool new site, site gets too popular for its own good, monetization kicks in, site now sucks, rinse and repeat.

    FOSS stuff like lemmy and mastodon just will never get past the first step, which is fine. they will just occupy a separate niche.

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    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      FOSS is the final destination after people get sick of capitalism ruining every other app/site.

      People usually don’t go back to shitty products unless they have no choice. Linux users don’t go back to Windows. I’ll never use an Adobe product again. Etc.

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    • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Look at Linux’s popularity over the years. It is absolutely climbing. FOSS hasn’t even peaked yet lol

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    • TacoSocks@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      FOSS stuff like lemmy and mastodon will never get past the first step, which is fine. they will just occupy a separate niche.

      I wouldn’t say never, but fedverse projects will need to find ways to smooth off the rough edges. Also the more enshittifcation happens the more I think people will be willing and able to get past the rough edges. If any one of the services breaks through and becomes mainstream, it’ll provide a roadmap to success for other services and people will be more comfortable with the concepts.

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes but it’s also a good sign that he left the project some time ago. He’s all about NOSTR now.

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• hulfpa@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why are they selecting BlueSky over the Fediverse?

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  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    B/c people are indoctrinated under capitalism to need some kinda daddy.

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  • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I would assume the same reason anyone chooses it over the fediverse, because they want their content to be be easily discoverable.

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    • whiteleopard@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What’s blocking Mastodon’s posts to be discoverable?

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• Telorand@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Good. Sucks that it took open fascism to get that to happen, but at least it happened.

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