🦋 Bluesky Social

In 2023, Bluesky's CTO Paul Frazee was asked what would happen if Bluesky ever turned against its users. His answer:

it would look something like this: bluesky has gone evil. there's a new alternative called freesky that people are rushing to. I'm switching to freesky

That's the same argument people made about Twitter. "If it goes bad, we'll just leave." We know how that played out.

I tried looking this up online, but couldn't find anything useful

This is pretty much the Dealbreaker, as I teetered between #BLUESKY and #Mastodon.

https://mastodon.social/deck/public
https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/58722581?key=a849fef4693a536c541776d7e9587920

@Mastodon @Mastodon@mstdn.social @staff @mastodonusercount @MastodonCloudAdmin@admins.town @bluesky@lemmy.ml @bsky.app @bluesky@lemm.ee

"This feed has been disabled by your server administrators." x2

Such's (media posts|manual exclusions) , dœs it exist ?

Can't seem find this feature with existing tꚙls from my searching , but been awhile since last checked

Bluesky falls below 5 million monthly active users, marking a 67% decline

Almost exactly one year after peaking at 15.12 million monthly active users, Bluesky’s long-running decline has pushed the platform below 5 million MAUs. The latest figures show a loss of about two-thirds of its peak user base.

Source stats: https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.dev/bsky/_users/_total.html

@bluesky #blueskystats #bluesky #opensocialweb #fediverse #statistics

I wanted to potentially share this.

Roomy is an (in-beta) AT-Proto Discord Alternative that uses your Bluesky Account to login.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37502603

For those seeking out a federated and open alternative to Tumblr, Wafrn is looking extremely promising. It can speak both ActivityPub and AT Protocol, offers a ton of interesting features and customization, and focuses on making an incredibly fun experience.

Bluesky has restricted access to 72 accounts and one post in Turkey, marking a shift for the decentralized social media platform that had previously resisted government censorship, according to a report by the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD).

According to İFÖD, Turkish court orders led to the blocking of 59 accounts at the internet service provider level. Separately, Bluesky voluntarily made 13 accounts and one post inaccessible in Turkey, likely in response to legal pressure.

Bluesky, known for its decentralized structure, which allows users to create and operate independent servers rather than relying on a central authority, had been seen as a free-speech-friendly alternative to mainstream platforms such as X.

Turkey has increased pressure on digital platforms in recent years, requiring companies to appoint local representatives and quickly comply with content removal requests or face fines and bandwidth throttling. In March Turkish authorities blocked access to 126 X accounts, including those of independent media outlets.

At the same time, press freedom in Turkey has sharply declined. Turkey, which is known as one of the top jailers of journalists in the world, ranks 158th among 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2024 World Press Freedom Index.

Independent outlets face financial and legal pressure, while pro-government media dominate the landscape. The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) and other regulatory bodies have been used to sanction dissenting voices, further curbing freedom of expression.

Bluesky has not publicly commented on the recent restrictions.

Here is the JSON for this:

      "and": [
        {
          "attribute_compare": [
            "embed.external.title",
            "!=",
            "x.com"
          ]
        },
        {
          "regex_negation_matches": [
            "text",
            "\\b(x\\.com|twitter\\.com)",
            true
          ]
        }
      ]
    }

On the Bluesky social network, you may notice a lot of drive-by responses from accounts that rarely or never post — they just reply to other accounts.

The reply pattern starts with a phrase like “I respectfully disagree” and follows it with a fatuous objection. Another pattern is to start by agreeing, then pivot to trying to start a fight.

These responses are clearly from LLMs. Some Bluesky users have even gotten the bots to post a haiku, spill their prompt, or argue with another bot.

Denise Paolucci (rahaeli on Bluesky) cofounded blog site Dreamwidth and previously worked in trust and safety at LiveJournal. She has a ton of experience with every possible form of social media bad actor and regularly posts on Bluesky about trust and safety. Lately, she’s been writing about our bot friends.

Paolucci thinks this particular wave of “reply guy as a service” bots are test runs by a spambot maker, who hopes to rent the bots out to other bad actors as a service: “It’s common for spamming software to be pitched as social media management.”

...

Bluesky are on the case and blocking the bots. You should report the bots as “unwanted replies” and use the word “bot” when the offender is clearly a bot.