I would love to see a respectful debate starter pack on bluesy get started. Maybe controled by a bot that looks for words that are insults like “troll” “don’t melt snowflake”, etc and will boot you if you get caught. I like political debate, sharing of trustable sources, etc. I don’t like someone telling me I’m just a melting snowflake or cuck, when I bring in a link from a scientific journal to cite as part of my argument

Then you need to choose the safe space option. Under no circumstances should you opt to advertise removing content for others. Because your justification with "circular logic" could mean anything. This is the safe space option.

That more free platforms employ spam protection is no excuse.

Bluesky is a lot more like old, early algorithm twitter.

Reddit is a cluster of independently operated communities that occasionally get signal blasted onto the main feed. The top moderator of a subreddit owns it and sets any standard they like.

With Bluesky there are no defined communities outside of collective engagement with particular topics or hashtags or networks of follows. There is also a "Show me [more/less] of this" button every post, and so far it seems like the platform is pretty solid at respecting your preferences. They also seem to be actively moderating the really open bad behaviour off the platform.

I don't think Bluesky is as good as a well-moderated subreddit for long form discussion, but if you spend a little time curating your feed I think you might enjoy it.

The move to Bluesky encompasses much more than leftists and came as a result of increasing numbers of trolls and bots and decreasing quality of interaction, both of which hit an inflection point following the election. You don’t have to belong to a particular political leaning to get tired of those things.

As an example, a lot of artists moved because they wanted to post their work and talk with other artists in peace, which had become increasingly difficult on X.

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I think it’s also that some of them take pride in the harsh conditions. But this is a petulant stance and not really conducive to a healthy society. The adage goes “right wingers don’t have safe spaces” and it implies, for better or worse, that there is nowhere you can really hide.

Overt support or advocacy for known hate/supremacist groups should fall under the scope of “needs moderation” as well. That sort of content has seen a sharp uptick on X which is one of the reasons why people are now jumping ship.

In most ways they were far more social than modern social media, in that they were about socializing. The distinguishing characteristic that sets modern social media apart from the old school stuff is the performative aspect of it—where everyone is now encouraged to behave as a content producer optimizing for engagement—which is hardly social.

Not in the modern sense.

Those mediums do not have algorithms, feeds, followers, profiles, influencers, likes, or any features that many people point to as the toxic aspects of pretty much every commercial social media site of the last decade.

I’d say livejournal was the tipping point where the internet became very self-centered and your value in the platform was measured by how much engagement you were able to get.

Up until that point, in a world before blogs, social sites were mostly centered around shared interests and communities would aggressively police off topic content

> Usenet, BBSs, mailing lists etc. are social media

In a generic sense, yes. People did socialize.

But "social media" today really means: a proprietary platform controlled by a single corporation, where all the user interaction is ultimately just a ploy to keep the participation metrics up so the corporation can profile you better and sell more advertising.

So in that sense, the absolute opposite.

Those are very social places but I would classify them as not social media because real names / identities weren't attached.

They are social networks not social media, social media is when you scream in a void and the void screams back.

The latrinalia of our age if you will.

No matter how many times I choose "Show less like this" on furry manga art in the algorithmic feed, I still see it show up. :(

I think those things you’ve mentioned are what most people came to social media for originally, but it’s gotten lost in all the noise. The original point of social networks was to be social and connect with people in your industry or who share your interests or share a locality in common, and X especially has drifted far from that ideal — lots of users now log onto it to find something/somebody to be angry at and to argue/troll.

I’m still using an RSS reader for that very purpose. I want my trusted content displayed chronologically; miss me with the algorithm and the recommended influencers. I’ve been on the internet long enough to know what I want and how to find it.

I share the sentiment.

It seems some people got on the internet to argue and never learned to enjoy anything. I'm a bit sorry for them, to be honest.

HackerNews is an echo chamber. You're not even allowed to call people f*ggots or speculate about the Jews here!

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Your argument is in support of mine. Separate networks are an interesting legal and software engineering detail, but from the POV of the user, as long as they see what they want to see, they will stay with the network.

It's more a product of cheaper and easier content distribution. When TV is expensive to produce, there are only three channels, and it's heavily regulated, you target your content to be broadly appealing and inoffensive. The rise of cable TV, revocation of the fairness doctrine, rise of the internet, and fall of the USSR all led to more exposure to broader views. Like GP said, whether this is good or bad depends on your view.

You are correct, but my point was that it seems to me, that even though engagement algorithms aren't really a thing in the Fediverse, such filter bubbles still appear via self-sorting and de-federation. So yes, perhaps algorithms are to blame for filter bubbles in centralized social media, but removing algorithms doesn't remove filter bubbles, because people create it by themselves anyway.

TL;DR: Blaming the algorithm (correct or not) doesn't actually matter in the end, because filter bubbles happen with or without them.

Even with the context, rephrasing it like this:

> i.e. to look at accomplishing at the highest possibilities without the baggage of traditional limitations

Is much easier to understand. The other one I might have guessed correctly, but yours is quite clear to understand.

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It's not an enlightened take, it's a pretty basic observation.

I've had the fortune of working with many people a lot smarter than me, and one thing all the smartest ones can do is explain complex topics to people outside their field in a way they can understand.

Using intellectual language to address a non-intellectual audience like voters, or a forum with many non-native speakers, that they won't understand seems a dumb thing for an "intellectual" to do. It's not about intellect, enlightenment or education, it's about using language to communicate instead of using it for... something else, not sure what.

> Lack of education led us here.

There are a lot of intelligent people that just happen to be "uneducated".

Meanwhile I've met plenty of "educated" people that hold a wide variety of contradictory beliefs and lack the ability to critically think.

"Not educated" is just another convenient (and lazy) strawman outgroup. Liberty for me but not for thee, etc.

> Lack of education led us here.

No. Belittling people for their lack of education led us here. People don't follow those who consistently treat them as barely-human tally marks that we (their betters) tolerate as long as they vote the right way. Eventually they get sick of being treated as less-than, and eventually someone comes along that makes those people feel important.

There are only really two reasonable ways out of Trump's populism at this point: learn from him and recognize the importance of the less-educated, or reduce the franchise and prevent people from voting unless they pass a certain educational bar (which not is not actually an option for so many reasons).

Any other approach will either take generations or is doomed to failure.