Current Trending 'X'/twitter eXodus | Where to? Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon or alternative?

corkie

With the current trend, where have you gone. This thread is to discuss the alternatives and interesting content found on the platforms.

https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-exodus-could-bluesky-spike-spark-end-of-elon-musks-social-media-platform-13254722

People are leaving X for many reasons. Trump & Musk, No proper block function, Use of your data to train AI!

• Bluesky is available at bsky.app or in the app stores of your choosing. https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/bluesky-beginners-guide-everything-you-need-to-know
• Threads but requires an instagram account at present to join.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_%28social_network%29 ~~ Reports it is more complicated to setup?

Thread created because the 'X' thread was starting to have more discussion on the alternatives than 'X' itself.

"We are beginning to see this sort of fragmentation, this diaspora of what used to be a singular platform, into communities split into multiple places," says Mr Tinworth.

Because of the above fragmentation, decide on this thread title, than a specific one for Bluesky.

Thanks to Silicon Republic for the linked guide to Bluesky.

Regards.

John.

I still have my Twitter but I've opened a Bluesky account. I expect it to become as confrontational as Twitter - I don't think it's possible for any discussion platform to be a place where discourse is level-headed - but hopefully with far less personal abuse and lies permitted.

Black Swan

Bluesky.

dasdog

I setup a Bluesky account months ago but never really used it. In the past week most of the few people I followed on Twitter primarily for music content and art have moved over or now started posting regularly.

Among other things the inflammatory "Civil War" posts from it's owner in relation to what was going on in the UK were not sitting easy with me so the Twitter account I setup in 2009 was de-activated today,

corkie

@Feline Groovy Still have my 'Xitter' account. No intention of deactivating it. Don't want somebody else to start using it. What I will probably do after the GE, is to protect the account. Already downloaded my archive and used the followers list with it to find accounts on 'Threads' with X to Threads.

Another reason keep your account active is so you can find your followers on Bluesky from X

https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/ ~~ Create an app password on Bluesky when using it and not your main login.

I was way ahead of this trend and created both Bluesky and 'Threads' accounts around 21/08/2024. Did so because of fears of 'Xitter' been shut down by GDPR or EU DSA laws.

To any new user of BlueSky, check out the Starter Packs and feeds by other users. If you need to be pointed at good ones let us know here. I have bookmarked a good lot of them using 'pushpin' emoji method. 📌 It is a workaround at present because not built in to app/site yet.

corkie

Rather than posting in 'X' thread again. I will follow up on the theory below.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122854796#Comment_122854796

The Irish Examiner certainly seems to testing the waters on Bluesky. 125 posts today. Latest tonight and not on other platforms.

Screenshot of this: - https://bsky.app/profile/irishexaminer.bsky.social/post/3lbb7g4gizh2w

SchrodingersCat

I’m liking bluesky alot. The comments after posts actually work compared to twitter now. Very little obvious bot posts (for now). A lot less MAGA bs. It’s far more usable, like Twitter was three years ago.

Will boards.ie enable embedded posts for bsky links like they do for Twitter.com?

fits

I deactivated my Twitter account last year around the time of the purge of the Dublin office. I thought that was disgraceful. Probably should delete it. Bluesky sounds good. I don’t like threads. It’s very random what it shows up and no news content.

j62

Reddit, it’s even profitable now for first time

McFly85

Bluesky. I’m not a huge user of Twitter, use it to follow some accounts or subjects, but it’s nice to have a version of it that works as expected.

I think their solution for verified companies is nifty, using their domain as their Bluesky handle. And the fact that you can block someone and they’re completely gone from your feed and you can set it to automatically block new ones through block lists is fantastic and should ensure that your feed is kept clean with minimal maintenance.

Twitter won’t disappear any time soon but as long as it’s happy to be a right wing cesspit promoting views that benefit its owner then it’s going to keep bleeding users.

conorhal

Flouncing from the public square because the 'wrong people' also congregate there isn't just a poor option, it is in fact it's a dangerous one.
The mass banning of 'right wing' posters on Twitter led to their shift into the echo chamber of alternative social media platforms, and that in my opinion drove the right, further right and led to Trump's victory.
Nobody's banning the left from X in the manner that they tried to do to the right, so the left are in fact choosing to hive themselves off in an echo chamber like sulky children, which will only create further divisiveness, further extremism on the left, a further collapse of the centre and no doubt a great deal of surprise when the world fails to reflect the safe space they want to create for themselves.
The defining failure of the Harris campaign was a failure to listen and read the room, taking your ball and going home won't work out quite the way you imagine it will. The left's insistence that they hear no other voices, and no counter argument sank Harris and it is slowly dawning on advertisers for example that, as Michael Jordan famously said, 'Republicans buy sneakers too’, and thus they are unwinding their advertising boycott of X. That's because they recognise that there is no win in selling your product to only half the audience. There is also no win in listening to only half the audience either.

https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856601#Comment_122856601

Twitter isn’t a public square, no matter how much they like to brand themselves as one. It’s a private company that promotes viewpoints beneficial to its owner first and foremost, regardless of how true it might be.

If it were a public square, the first thing you’d hear are the views of Musk blasting from speakers at the entrance, along with a stall selling megaphones for $8. Any discussion will be drowned out by people with megaphones, while robots join in and people shilling porn. Anyone who you try not to interact with can still listen in. It doesn’t take long for you to realise that it’s a horrible place to be and you can’t have a real discussion there.

Bluesky, like Twitter before it, allows for right and left wing discussions, but it won’t tolerate hate speech or misinformation. And mercifully Bluesky does a great job of allowing a user to completely disassociate with any subject they don’t want to use social media for, because some people don’t want to see anything political in their feed which is fair enough. Having used it for a few days I’ve found it to be a much better experience.

ancapailldorcha

X is just a cesspit now. Any time I check a tweet by someone I follow, all the replies are from incel Nazi types spouting the same hateful drivel time and time again. It is not the internet's public square, it's a company owned by a racist f*ckwit and nothing more. The only reason that I don't open a BlueSky account is that I've become quite fed up with social media in general. I'm using X less and less. Same with Facebook except that Facebook is past it's time whereas Twitter was ruined by a pro-apartheid loon masquerading as some sort of innovator.

I hope BlueSky succeeds though. There shouldn't be a place for hate speech and I welcome any enterprise that attempts to create an open and inclusive environment for everyone.

eightieschewbaccy

It does read as if right wing posters are actively annoyed that people are leaving Twitter because of the abundance of Nazis and White Supremacists. If the loudest voices are that kind of person then it makes absolute sense why people are leaving.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856850#Comment_122856850

I’d love for us to get away from the idea that social media is in any way a critical component of everyday life, when it really isn’t. They could all disappear today and at best we’d be mildly inconvenienced.

I’ve long stopped using Facebook because practically everyone I’m connected with on it I talk to though WhatsApp. Twitter was mainly following football or gaming news. I would say 90% of the time I opened it it was to see the team sheet for a match that day. I have instagram mainly because the other half uses it and she sends me funny stuff through it.

Social media can be funny and it can be useful but it’s not nearly as important as we’re told it is.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856938#Comment_122856938

Couldn't agree more. The only things I use Facebook for are it's group messages and logging into sites like Ryanair. That's it. It's just all ads and memes now. I see the odd post by someone I vaguely recognise and that's it.

I've really noticed X deteriorating recently. People talked about jumping ship for a while but it's tangible now.

Yeah, we do not need social media. It has its uses like keeping up with specific news like sports, games and stuff but we had blogs before this and we still have YouTube and other sites. X is something we've hoodwinked ourselves into thinking we need. I'd happily see these morally bankrupt companies go bust tomorrow. We'd lose virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856601#Comment_122856601

If you stand in a "public square" and the owner of the square is shouting all sorts of mad BS from a pulpit, and the square is full of two types of people - those saying isn't he great and shouting down anyone who disagree with the owner, spreading hate and conspiracy alongside of it, and people selling magic beans, do you a. stay there or b. go to the next square

francois

ReaReally enjoying Bluesky, mass block lists are great, as are the follower packs. Loads now moving over. Twitter nazis crying about mass blocking is a plus!

Aurelian

I just deleted Threads I just seemed to be stuck in some really, aggressively virtue signaling US, one side of the culture wars environment. Totally alien to me.

I logged out of Twitter years ago but I miss the academic/expert side of it where you could really get information about obscure things.

Penn

Still keeping Twitter for now mostly because I don't post anything so never contribute to anything or get involved in discussions, but the main functionality I'd miss would actually be the likes of here where someone might embed a tweet from a thread and unless you're logged in you can't get onto Twitter to read the whole thread.

But the more people move to Bluesky the more the same content of stuff that I'd want to read is just as likely to be posted there, so I can see myself jumping ship in the next few months or at least having them both for a while. Maybe just leave the Twitter account active and logged in.

McFly85

What I’ll be very interested to see is if the Bluesky model can survive enshittification.

There are a lot of posts already about people warning this, but the key difference between Twitter and Bluesky as I understand it, is that Bluesky is an open model that’s essentially a social layer to other data servers, and anyone can build their own instance/servers (while not being as convoluted as mastodon) that will all be available to view within the app. I assume the instances will have to follow a general terms of service but I’m not sure about that.

It sounds promising at least.

CliffHangeroner

Joined BlueSky last month but deleted it a couple of days ago found it just another echo chamber.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857423#Comment_122857423

If nothing else, Bluesky shows that alternatives to X are viable. Algorithm aside, I can't imagine that there's anything terrible sophisticated behind it at this point. All it really is is text along with video, music, images and gifs. If it gets terrible, people can move.

Thelonious Monk

Bluesky is great, most of the people I followed on Twitter seem to be on it now, but I don't have to scroll through my feed and see videos of a black person mugging someone in Italy or tweets about a "dangerous" looking foreign man minding his own business in a Dublin park, or scumbags harassing migrants in tents. That horrible platform was just making my life worse, I don't need that sh*t in my headspace any more.

iamstop

You've probably heard about Bluesky by now. It offers an alternative to the toxic environment of the place. A few articles and charts recently about the mass migration over to it.

I've signed up to give it a nose.

https://bsky.app/profile/freshestdj.bsky.social

Anyone else on it yet?

BorneTobyWilde

It's the new Woke Social Media, a protest to Musk

bluedex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857684#Comment_122857684

That's what I'd heard. Is it true?

Pauliedragon

Exactly what the world needs. More social media🙄

Genghis

Whi owns it. Could Musk buy it and merge it back into X 😁

McFly85

Having used it for the last week I have started following gaming, tech, and football accounts and my feed includes posts related to gaming, tech and football.

I assume the woke part is that I don’t have to suffer utter nonsense by its owner, bots or blue ticks throughout the app.

pgj2015

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857684#Comment_122857684

Musk is an awful person so I hope this takes off and X goes the way of my space.

iamstop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857799#Comment_122857799

This is the huge draw for people.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857799#Comment_122857799

apparently you're in an echo chamber if you're not on a platform that inundates you with posts about trans people and immigrants.

how many threads do we need on this by the way?

ELM327

Oh look, people are leaving a right wing echo chamber (twitter) for a left wing echo chamber (bluesky). Yeah that's great.

BorneTobyWilde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857714#Comment_122857714

Oh yea, so true. Anything can take traction, and this is getting traction since Musk has gone to the dark side, free speech, even if what your talking is disputed by facts and data, X is a place to post it and have like minded people agree, until it's believable by masses of people to be truth

jimmycrackcorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857883#Comment_122857883

Twitter is insufferable. I haven't seen any of the left wing stuff you allege, on Bluesky. It's actually kind of normal.

o1s1n

Arnie has moved over. I'm sold.

BailMeOut

The 'News' tab is really good.

awec

I actually installed this today as the quality of my twitter feed has seriously deteriorated over the past few months, to the point where at least 90% of the stuff is garbage.

I used to read twitter a lot for casual reading, didn't interact with it very much but it was useful for passing 5 minutes of time if I had it.

But my feed is now pure scutter. Mindless political posts from right wing dopes, stupid "viral" videos from accounts that just regurgitate the same content over and over again, if you see a video once and you're guaranteed to see it posted about 10 more times from different accounts, and they'll all show up on your feed. Most of these videos are obviously staged, outputs of low quality social media content creator types who think this stuff is interesting. A lot of videos advertising for drop shippers selling tat. It did not used to be like this.

No matter how many times you tell it you aren't interested in something it'll still come up, part of me thinks the algorithm has changed to try show you stuff you don't like in the hopes it'll annoy you enough to engage, that's how bad it is right now.

"ThE pOiSonOuS vAcCiNE indusTry is in foR a SHock WitH RFK heRE to Save us!!!!!!!!!1111one" followed my loads of replies from what are obviously very, very stupid people talking about how great this is. This is not the sort of thing I am interested in, I just feel stupid myself for reading this stuff.

It's hard to see it survive at this stage because if what I've seen is anything to go by 90% of the people who post on it are lunatics or bots and there's only so long sane people will tolerate this muck.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857883#Comment_122857883

A middle ground is simply not possible as long as humans are humans though.

Donald Trump

Truth Social is where it's at losers

thegame983

or do the sensible thing..

and just don't use any of them.

magicbastarder

i've been on it a while now (not an active poster there by any measure). the amount of activity has probably tripled or quadrupled in the last couple of weeks. so far, so good. no ads too.

corkie

@SchrodingersCat Will boards.ie enable embedded posts for bsky links like they do for Twitter.com?

The way they haven't sorted out posting of 'X' urls yet! So maybe we can live and hope? But let me gently request from @Boards.ie: Mike to kindly look at doing so?

The api required I believe https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/oembed

Maybe you could create a support account on it for boards.ie downtimes?

PJ Coogan of Cork's 96FM was discussing the trend of the 'eXodus' today, only caught bits of it and yet to have a stream of it available online. If it comes available, I might share it here.

https://twitter.com/pjcoogan/status/1858776478197960710

Sky Followers Bridge normally was around the 70 Mark yesterday today:-

Some new accounts I have come across: -

• michealmartintd.bsky.social
• eamonryan.bsky.social
• gardainfo.bsky.social

Clearsky is not functioning so couldn't check when they joined.

highpitcheric

This new platforms arrival is exactly what I said would happen, in response to the clowns who think that social media equates to free speech, the same clowns who randomly, unilaterally declared with all authority that twitter was the 'neW TowN sQuaRe'.

Platforms will multiply just like tv channels, websites and newspapers. It was never a u.s. constitutional issue. Social media isnt a constitutional right over there, or here, or anywhere.

That said I saw one tweet on x, where someone went on bluesky and sent out a message 'there are only two genders and was summarily banned on the spot.

So its the other end of the spectrum, with both ends being infantile and low quality.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122857902#Comment_122857902

I haven't (and won't) go on to another social network. There's too many as it is. But if you look at who is posting about moving to blue sky it's the super woke leftists. (note: I said who is posting about moving, not who is moving)

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122858066#Comment_122858066

Saw that too, but unsurprisingly, it was bullshít. It’s a troll account that lives off negative engagement.

The whole ethos of Bluesky is block & forget. If there’s an account that posts something you don’t like by all means report it, but block the account and you’ll never see or hear from them again.

Hyperbollix

Just signed up. Was never a big Twitter user but it was handy for news and putting in 5 minutes when you were in a queue or waiting room! It has turned to utter shíte since Musk took over. This reminds me of Twitter 10 plus years ago.

corkie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058381366/bluesky-social-network-all-hype-or-a-fresh-alternative

Gave you a follow. corkiejp.bsky.social ~ Your handle is a domain. Which can form a link when posted like I did.

I started a thread on the eXodus last night. Wonder will the Mods @Beasty merge the threads?

Or should I have tagged @Leg End Reject as the new mod member on CA?

iamstop

Apparently it's not driven by a heavily curated algorithm either so it shouldn't be force feeding you a ton of bs you have no interest in and never clicked or liked.

looksee

Various twittery family members have migrated and are so far happy enough. I'm not on either but might be more inclined to engage with bluesky than X.