Graber is “optimistic about human potential, even though I’m realistic about human nature.” When Bluesky launched last year, it filled a gap that was desperately needed by people who were looking for alternatives to X, as it seemed like the ship formerly known as Twitter was possibly sinking. (Against all odds, it hasn’t yet.)
Bluesky wasn’t as confusing as Mastodon and wasn’t owned by Meta like Threads. Bluesky looks and feels much like Old Twitter.
There was only one snag: It was available as a beta launch, only with an invite code, which was initially so hard to obtain that even Joe Biden couldn’t get one. Starting Tuesday, Bluesky is finally out of “beta” and will be open to anyone — no codes needed.
Like Mastodon and Threads, Bluesky is an experiment in a new, “decentralized” way of running a social app, where users can create their own communities and moderation rules. (Bluesky also has its own moderation team.)
Jack Dorsey was involved in creating Bluesky while he was still at Twitter and now sits on its board. It’s organized as a public benefit corporation.
Ultimately, it may not be a winner-takes-all competition between these X alternatives; the new approach to social may be to exist happily in smaller pockets without needing massive scale to survive. (Although Meta certainly would love to win the battle with Threads.)
More here - https://www.businessinsider.nl/bluesky-is-finally-open-to-everyone-but-will-anyone-come-we-ask-its-ceo/
Federation of a service is confusing because it is a difficult problem to conceptualize. There’s no way to easily explain how to use federated services to non techies.
For me? That’s fine. I can use federated stuff.
For my mom? Nope. But she needs to get off the internet in general so that’s probably a bad example.
It’s true. And people try to jump on to similar things. “It’s just like how email works!”, or “It’s just like how international phone calls work!”
Yeah, nobody has any clue how those two things work, either.
I mean, that’s fair, but it’s not relevant to usage. I go to mastodon.social, I sign up, I use. At no point is the concept of federation necessary in that process, that’s for the owners/operators/maintainers to figure out.
If people want to know more, they will seek out that arcane knowledge, but it’s not something someone who’s just there to satisfy their FOMO ever needs to know.