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461 points GavinAnderegg | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.408s | source | bottom
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PaulHoule ◴[] No.42151244[source]
My take is that Bluesky is a nicer place than Mastodon.

Personally I think politics are terrible on microblogging platforms for the reason that you can't say very much in 140 characters or even 1400 characters.

A common kind of profile on that kind of platform is: "There are good people and bad people and I'm one of the good people"

It is very easy to other people and share memes that build group cohesion while driving other people away. Really making progress requires in politics a lot of "I agree with you about 90% but there is 10% that I don't" or "Well, I negotiated something in the backroom that you'd really hate but headed off a situation you would have thought was catastrophic but you won't appreciate that I did it so you and I are both better off if I don't tell you" and other sorts of nuance, you don't want to see how the sausage is made, etc.

To stand Mastodon (where you would have thought fascists were taking over the world a year ago if you believed what you read) I have to have about 20 or so block rules.

I see some people with the same kind of profiles on Bluesky but see a lot less othering in my feed because the "Discover" feed on Bluesky filters out a lot of angry content. My rough estimate is that it removes about 75% of the divisive political junk. That

(1) Immediately improves my feed, but also

(2) Reduces the amount of re-posted angry political content (it's like adding some boron to the coolant in a nuclear reactor) and

(3) Since angry political memes don't work anymore people find a different game to play

My guess is the X-odus folks are less agreeable than average for the same reason why people who "left California" to go to Colorado or someplace else are less agreeable. Those who go are less agreeable than those who stay. On the other hand, a certain amount of suppression of negativity could stop it from spreading and might not even be noticed as "censorship".

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1. Karrot_Kream ◴[] No.42151589[source]
I agree largely with what you wrote but have a small disagreement. I don't actually think the character count has that big of an effect. I've seen plenty of self-righteous posts on places like here (HN) and the LessWrong forums that just use more words to do the same thing.

I think the kind of person that's energized to comment online generally feels more strongly about the issue than most lurkers. This means that online conversations are dominated by the most passionate, most invested, and often least interested in impartiality. This post [1] comes to mind.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

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2. PaulHoule ◴[] No.42151600[source]
You’re right that people can write hateful, divisive and othering content with many words. The trouble with the short content platforms is that you can’t do anything else.
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3. Karrot_Kream ◴[] No.42151623[source]
Interesting point, I'm inclined to agree. I'm curious now about how many Likes and Reposts a thread on Bluesky gets vs a compact emotional response. I run a firehose ingester so maybe I'll test this out.

EDIT: I realize you specifically called out politics here and that makes me even more inclined to agree.

4. somethoughts ◴[] No.42151750[source]
I agree - short form content doesn't leave enough space to have a nuanced arguement and conversely it leaves a lot of space open for misinterpretation and encourages hot takes and mic drops over expression of cohesive thoughts.
5. WarOnPrivacy ◴[] No.42152384[source]
> The trouble with the short content platforms is that you can’t do anything else.

I'd agree MBP are poor media for nuanced debate but can work well for info broadcasting.

Pre-echochamber Twitter was an excellent venue for disseminating important news - news that actual news orgs were too distracted or deferential to publish.

6. jmye ◴[] No.42152633[source]
I think you can but you will get no interaction. No one (relatively, not literally) cares about “nice” or informative - they care about things that make them angry or otherwise emotive.

I’d also add that no one (again, relatively) reads anything, anymore. A couple of paragraphs and you’ll see your engagement drop off a cliff. But a quick, “witty” slap? A stupid pun thread on Reddit? Easy money.

I think your point is generally right - not trying to disagree, but I think these platforms are simply effective tools to mirror back their users and what their users want, rather than the inherent, specific problem themselves. That is, it’s not Twitter that’s the problem - it’s that Twitter users really like the behaviors Twitter rewards.

7. wruza ◴[] No.42152820[source]
You can 1/n but no one’s gonna read that. The “trouble” is not with the platform but with the reader selection it provides. The greater auditory doesn’t want to read you, because there’s too many you. That’s why it filters itself into short messaging. Too much of “hey listen to my thousand words”, all with varying depth, coherence and clariry, per reader perspective. It’s not your, platforms or readers failure, that’s how humans work. There’s a natural limit to every specific level of community. Expecting everyone to dive deep into each others thoughts at scale is too idealistic.