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Maybe Bluesky has "won"

(anderegg.ca)
461 points GavinAnderegg | 3 comments | 15 Nov 24 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.398s | source
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llm_nerd ◴[15 Nov 24 20:33 UTC] No.42150659[source]▶
Whatever one's feelings about these microblogging services, one truth that has become clear is that none of them -- X, Bluesky, Threads, or anything similar -- should be considered "the commons". They're private businesses with their own motives that are often in complete conflict with your own.

A lot of people made the mistake of treating Twitter like a commons and have been burned. My local police force posts all notices about traffic, missing people, foiled crimes, etc., on Twitter out of inertia. That is wholly inappropriate, and wasn't appropriate even when before it become some brain-worm infected oligarch's rhetoric megaphone. The same goes for many organizations, politicians, and so on. It was never the right choice. And the solution to one bad choice isn't to move to the same mistake on some other service. These people and orgs need absolute and complete ownership over their own platform.

Mastodon / ActivityPub seems like it might scratch that itch, but what a bloated sloppy mess that is. The right idea, with the wrong implementation.

Honestly would prefer all these people and places just published RSS feeds.

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jtbayly ◴[15 Nov 24 20:51 UTC] No.42150873[source]▶
One of the interesting benefits of Twitter splintering into multiple shards is that this problem becomes more clear. As Twitter alternatives have grown more relevant, there is no obvious single place to do this anymore as, say, a police department. Should we move to Bluesky? Threads? Mastodon? Stay on Twitter? Somehow publish to all of the above?

I’m hoping it will lead to something more like RSS, but that may be wishful thinking.

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palata ◴[15 Nov 24 20:57 UTC] No.42150938[source]▶
> I’m hoping it will lead to something more like RSS, but that may be wishful thinking.

Why not exactly RSS? Is it missing something?

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1. eduction ◴[15 Nov 24 22:41 UTC] No.42152091[source]▶
Unfortunately you are way more likely to get a blank stare when you say "add our RSS feed" than when you say "add us on Facebook" or similar, especially if you are an organization like a police department. Ordinary people do not tend to set up RSS readers or know how to handle feeds.

Picking a reader means making one or more choices (for your phone, laptop, tablet whatever), adding a feed is several steps, and it is easy to get overloaded with too many boring items (and too few interesting ones) because curation is left to the end user.

Centralized social networks require no choosing of readers, let you add an info source in one click, and ensure you have neither too few nor too many interesting items -- for some value of "interesting" -- regardless of how many entities you follow.

I love RSS and decentralization but creating a smooth, user friendly experience with such tools is a major unsolved challenge.

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2. palata ◴[16 Nov 24 00:08 UTC] No.42152839[source]▶
I'm not sure. People click on links all the time. Sometimes it opens a browser, sometimes it opens a social media app. Why wouldn't it work with an RSS feed?
3. johnnyanmac ◴[16 Nov 24 01:35 UTC] No.42153379[source]▶
I mean, there's plenty of clients for an RSS feed. It's kind of like saying "subscibe to our email list" but you never heard of gmail/yahoo/MSN. The user needs to put up some legwork to understand what's what.

But after that, it is at worst pasting a link into your client, or clicking a button if the site gives proper attention to it. Not that much more friction than following someone on any centralized platform.