I've been meaning to write about #BlueSky and then I saw this post about bluesky having an extortion problem, and while my thoughts aren't fully formed yet, I'd figure I would throw them out there anyway..
Which segues nicely into my first thought; BlueSky feels just like Twitter and any 'main' social network where it feels like the point is to get engagement, for engagement's sake. Maybe it's more like 'old Twitter', but I reckon that's only because of how new it is and major non-human entities haven't moved in yet.
I must emphasise that I haven't fully engaged with Bluesky yet, I still have the tutorial to add more than 7 people. But I'm already getting an algorithmic timeline with "hot posts". Can't deny I don't like a shitpost from time to time, but I just can't get over the fact that people are expertly crafting the right words to increase boostability.
So the latest drama is about moderation, either because toxic people are not getting moderated or because it's easy to impersonate someone. These are gonna be difficult problems for BlueSky to solve. I feel like this also ties into the 'popularity contest', because nobody in the fediverse is going to complain about "not getting my username", because there's no concept like that. Famous people just have names like "barny@hachyderm.io" or "xdesix@toot.lol" (these are fictional accounts, I hope, I haven't checked). Bottomline; it's not merely a technical problem to solve, it's mostly human.
Anyway, I do hope they succeed in a sense and that they keep working on the distributed nature (even though they really aren't). Maybe if bluesky.social fails itself, the AT Protocol can survive and other instances like BlackSky can still flourish.
On one hand I'm happy that bluesky.social is taking the brunt of X/Twitter refugees, on the other hand I wish people would choose the fediverse..
I'm trying something new, as part of the indieweb movement, I'm trying to have my 'social media' originate from my own site. I.e. own my own data. I'm using fed.brid.gy to have these notes (likes and reposts) bridged to the Fediverse and Bluesky.
I still have my @gerben@todon.nl account and I won't cross-post directly to there (maybe boost my other account's posts), but I'll be experimenting with this new approach.
However, because of the federated nature of this, and the fact that my bridged account is 'not real' (long story), it'd be helpful if you could follow @gerben.dev@gerben.dev from other servers than todon.nl, so it appears in more local timelines.