Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.
The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).
It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).
This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.
Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.
In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.
There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.
As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).
Opt out is such a shitty practice. Especially for AI generation
Bluesky is pretty great once you learn how to use it. I plan to slowly back off twitter.
Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.
Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.
There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides (however imperfectly). It is also full of “liberal” sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.
Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.
That type of social media just isn’t really for me. But why would one want to choose Bluesky over Mastadon?
When I did try Twitter I somehow ended up following and be followed by a bunch of folks from Ghana… that was pretty neat. Although I did miss out because my Akan/Pidgin is basically non existent. Although I was introduced to the word “bomboclaat” which was interesting… lol
1 reason for me, the algorithm. I can never find a lot of new thing to discover or new people to follow on Mastodon when I first started, which makes me not use it very much even now.
Social media like Twitter preys on people’s fear of missing out.
Manufactured Problem - not being up to date on internet bullshit. Marketed solution - be on twitter. Supply and demand died a long time ago. Now it’s all about manufactured problems, and conveniently marketed solutions.
This sort of psychological manipulation in marketing works. It’s why it’s so hard to get people to leave websites like Twitter, reddit, fb ect. They’ve made their brands synonymous with media trends.
It took long enough, but I’m genuinely happy to see folks wising up and realizing they don’t “need” Twitter. It’s like watching a bunch of people break up with a toxic ex all at the same time.
Not just Twitter. FOMO was what kept me on Reddit far longer than I should have been there.
These mfs will use literally anything except for open source, decentralised social meda
The masses yearn for the corporate boot
Just helpful to remember, as all this horseshit persists, Bluesky is Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is former head of Twitter and musk’s good buddy.
It’s all a losing proposition, whatever direction you move - except if you move… Away.
He left in May.
He left the board. As a “public benefit organization” it’s still a for-profit company and he still owns stock.
But he’s left seemingly under a cloud, so unless the leadership changes I doubt he’s influencing decision making.
Let’s be honest these social media platforms will be a rinse and repeat. Just enjoy it whilst it lasts. Move on when the ownership go full Elon.
lol
Just like a real girlfriend, but better. Apart from you having absolutely no sex life and apart from the fact that it has absolutely no emotional attachment or attraction to you whatsoever. And it will also never do anything like buy you dinner or a birthday present. Enjoy throwing money at your robot that you can’t even fuck like a fleshlight.
Do they drift back though. Bigger accounts seems to struggle to kick the Twitter high .
Is 500,000 actually a lot? Honest question, my sense of scale with these things is shaky.
For Twitter? No
For Bsky? Yes
Wait this whole article just baselessly assumes that 1 new bluesky account = 1 person leaving twitter. That is so obviously unrealistic. Sure some people were probably curious and wanted to check out something new but that doesn’t mean they will immediately switch platforms.
You can’t just make fun of Those Guys for endlessly believing fake bullshit while unquestionably parroting this garbage.
Twitter is for narcissists, and when they say Mastodon is not as good as twitter they really mean that there’s not as many people watching them as on Twitter. So Bluesky gaining 500,000 new accounts could help in making it “better”.
The headline directly says half a million users left twatter. As far as I can tell that is literally a lie.
even tho twitter is ruined by him people will still use it
How do you ruin something that was toxic garbage before.
oh yeah true you got me people say elon musck ruined twitter
Network effect is a hell of a drug
I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.
One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.
Neoliberal guano website is better than Nazi guano website
How does this blocking thing make sense?
Either the profile is public, which means you can still open it on another account, or it’s private, which means no one can see it anyways if they’re not an accepted follower.
I don’t see how anything changes from Musk’s change…
ive been enjoying bluesky more than twitter. i just wish more bug accounts would migrate. i post on both platforms with a script that i wrote and my engagement/followers ratio is far higher
I tried Bluesky but just couldn’t get into it. Same with Mastodon. I like Lemmy because long-form posts/comments are more interesting to me. I’m liking Threads a bit, too.
What would you say makes threads better than the other mikroblogging services?
I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of tech people on Twitter ended up on there. Mastodon originally filled that spot for me, but I found that a bunch of people that moved from Twitter to Mastodon ended up abandoning their accounts (or very rarely posting) a few months later.
It’s also probably the largest Fediverse instance, as users can opt in to sharing their posts to the Fediverse.
I still don’t use it often, though. I don’t spend a lot of time on any social networks (or similar services) any more.
Mastodon has shitty clients, the servers are slow and the communication across them is buggy. some things are still just broken.
typically I’ll open the android client and stare for 15 seconds at a spinning “wait” symbol, and then I’ll close it and not look at it for the rest of the day.
maybe it’s the instance that I’m on? or maybe it’s something else.
Yes, that might be your instance? I never had that problem. And I also think there are now some very good clients
Can you suggest a few.
Bug accounts, or big? Bug as in programming?
no like giant bugs
Dude, that’s gonna be one hell of a racist AI just based on the dataset it’s gonna receive
It’s gonna train the little robot dog, which they’re gonna put a gun on. And drones. It’s gonna train drones, he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.
he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.
And if they will not buy it musk will sue them until they buy it.
This is why when we give vacuum robots AI powers, they run around your house shouting racist pejoratives
Welcome to the future
Come on over to Mastodon, the water’s nice
I’ve stopped recommending it. The discovery and trending post mechanisms are either garbage or non-existent, and it’s really hard to get a feed that’s remotely entertaining. Devs also seem ideologically opposed to adding any features like that. It’ll just give normal people who aren’t willing to deal with all this crap a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to the fediverse. I do recommend lemmy to people tho.
I know what you mean. I’m self-hosting and use https://relay.fedi.buzz/ to subscribe to hashtags from all over the fedimicroblogosphere. It’s literally too much interesting content, I kept scrolling new stuff for hours and had to cut down on what tags I subscribed to. It’s like that Lemmy explorer but for microblogging.
I think a reasonable admin should be open to using the service to populate the federated timeline with niché content users ask for.
The only downside is “catch all”-tags and people abusing tags. “Hey #fediverse, check out my XYZ!”. No, I want fediverse news dang it!
But the dev stuff? Yeah.
I feel like its the opposite.
Mastodon’s hashtag following is by far the best discovery method out there.
I’ve stopped using Bluesky because I can’t find any content and there’s just too much “screaming into the void” making it impossible to find anything of substance.
I’ve stopped using Threads because it’s just engagement bait.Yeah Threads has nothing of substance, just engagement bait as you said. X is similar now that users can make ad revenue
I disagree, I just think some kind of engagement algorithm would be better. I haven’t used bluesky or threads so I can’t speak to them. I’m just saying that back in the day on twitter, I had no problem finding a bunch of very funny and clever posts, and posts were catered to me well. Through both me following people and I assume through the engagement algorithm. I’ve tried adding a bunch of hashtags, but I’m not finding a bunch of hilarious stuff to send to my friends like I did back then on twitter.
Bunch of spam too, because bots use the hashtags, so I’m often scrolling through a bunch of auto-posted stuff. Idk. Maybe I’m using it wrong. I just feel like your average person isn’t going to go through all that crap so they’ll cling to twitter until it dies.
And I’ve tried switching instances around, which is just confusing honestly, and didn’t really help with finding lots of content that I want to see. I used mastodon more when I was able to mirror people I know are funny on twitter to my mastodon feed lol. I want to like it, I just find I’m never tempted to go on it. Can’t figure it out.
While I agree that it makes Mastodon less entertaining I also think that it makes it a lot more fair, representative and trustworthy as a lens through which to observe & participate in social discourse and share information and opinions. That in itself will probably mean that it remains less popular but I think it’s also what makes it more valuable IMO. We need to calm down from the urgency of the digital dopamine cycle, for many reasons. If social media is a truly human media then it should be boring at times because that is a human reality that we are adapted to.
I agree. I love Mastodon’s calm columnar UI with lists and hashtags where I feel I’m in control of my experience, and that I can just stop whenever and come back in three days.
Yeah fair points. I will say this implosion of the social media I used to use has pushed me towards doing other things than scrolling on my phone lol, and that is a positive thing.
I wonder if they’re afraid of Eternal September’ing the service. A lot of people on Lemmy were upset when a bunch of people on Reddit joined. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have millions join in one day. I doubt it would be good for the culture of the community!
A lot of people on Lemmy were upset when a bunch of people on Reddit joined
How many active users were there pre API fisaco? Fedidb graph doesn’t go back that far.
Lemmy had around 1000 active users for the first half of 2023.
How did you view earlier in the chart? I figured it was low since maybe five instances existed before summer '23.
I didn’t; I made the chart almost a year ago, click on the link above it to see the 11-month-old comment.
Most of the people upset when redditors joined were former redditors.
Yeah but they left before us so clearly they’re superior.
That’s fair I suppose.
Exactly, their official app is just pure garabage and they aren’t even trying to fix it
Wdym they aren’t trying to fix it, their GitHub repo is very much active.
Though as for pure garbage, the app ain’t that bad IMO apart from the fact it’s made with React Native.
Yeah, once we have mastodon-wide full text search, it’ll be useful.
Lemmy and Bluesky are what I use, atproto is just much more promising for microblogging than activitypub and Mastodon proves that. Lemmy is perfect for it though.
Another issue I had was hundreds of saved toots having had awesome pictures, important data or things to do.
I saved them hoping to use some later, but it all remained an unorganized glop: unusable unless I looked at each one again, in order, to find the 75th one back, about a cat
It’s not perfect? Interesting. I’m sure that will be a deal-breaker for people exiting a failing platform run by a megalomaniacal MAGA asshole actively harming working people…
Or just use neither, like I’ve ended up doing.
