Comment by the_mitsuhiko
2 days ago
So far my experience is that unless you subscribe to the general narrative of the platform, the discover algorithm punishes you with directing the mob your way.
I had two of my Bluesky posts on AI being attacked by all kinds of random people which in turn has also lead to some of those folks sending me emails and dragging some of my lobster and hackernews comments into online discourse. A not particularly enjoyable experience.
I’m sure one can have that same experience elsewhere, but really it’s Bluesky where I experienced this on a new level personally.
I saw that, and I'm sorry it happened. I thought both the response to your original post and the resulting backlash to both you and everyone who engaged with you sincerely were absurd. I think that because of atproto you have the flexibility to create a social media experience where that sort of thing cannot happen, but I also understand why you in particular would be put off from the whole thing.
I don’t think this is a technical problem but a social problem. I think the audience defines itself by being the antithesis to Twitter instead of being a well balanced one.
I was pretty optimistic in the beginning but Bluesky doesn’t have organic growth and those who hang out there, are the core audience that wants to be there because of what the platform represents. But that also means rejection of a lot of things such AI.
In many ways I agree with you. In particular the conglomeration of high percentages of atproto users onto Bluesky owned and moderated algorithms and feeds and the replication of Twitter-style dogpiling combined with the relative lack of ideological diversity on Bluesky has created the perfect environment for toxicity, even if it doesn't reach the depths that Twitter does.
But conversely, that's the only place I disagree with you. Everything that is bad about Bluesky is much worse on Twitter. It's a -- larger -- red mob instead of a blue one (or vice versa I guess depending on how one assigns colors to political alignment), and some of the mob members are actually getting paid to throw bricks!