The Twitter nazi problem is also real. Nobody wants to hang out at a pub where a bunch of nazis are doing their nazi thing. Ditto chatrooms, social media etc.

I think the “Don’t engage, just block” culture helps a lot. I don’t have much of a block list since the larger accounts I follow have been ruthless in with their block lists. There is a spam-bot “herd-immunity” developing in certain communities on Bluesky.

These are great. I'm working on something related, a hashtag tracker for Bluesky [1]. Japanese posts are often among the top hashtags.

[1] https://www.butterflystats.com/

There was an intermediate state on Twitter -- where the default experience was poo but one could make Twitter palatable by using third party clients and other tools.

The promise of Bluesky is that this intermediate state won't be yanked. There are some steps they've taken to fulfill this promise, but it's not fully realized.

I mean, if it just gets as bad as pre-Musk Twitter (which was basically financially stable, albeit certainly not printing money), then I think a lot of people would be okay with that. People were tolerant of a lot of shit from Twitter; there's a reason it was affectionately known as the hellsite.

What the hell am I looking at here!? This surely can't be ALL the messages right!? That would be amazing.

Someone want to do the math on bitrates?

Indeed! In particular in higher-education and research many people moved over to Bluesky in the past two weeks. In fact, the biggest "starter pack" on the platform is the French “#HelloESR” pack (ESR means "enseignement supérieure et recherche", literally "higher-education and research").

Did people stop having meltdown about politics?

When I installed few days ago every post was about politics it was suffocating.

Running a variation on the command [1] above shows that belter is not so much focused on BS, rather he has a bone to pick with Musk which most likely explains his interest in X-alternative BS:

    Top authors for posts mentioning 'musk':

    LAST 7 days

      2 "breadwinner"
      2 "cannibalXxx"
      2 "highcenburg"
      2 "mpweiher"
      2 "peutetre"
      2 "RobinHirst11"
      2 "thunderbong"
      3 "rntn"
      4 "belter"
      4 "JumpCrisscross"

    LAST 31 days

      4 "ivewonyoung"
      4 "marban"
      4 "paulpauper"
      4 "rbanffy"
      5 "mitchbob"
      6 "peutetre"
      7 "rntn"
      8 "2OEH8eoCRo0"
      8 "JumpCrisscross"
     15 "belter"

    LAST 365 days

     12 "howard941"
     12 "isaacfrond"
     12 "jrflowers"
     15 "bookofjoe"
     15 "rbanffy"
     17 "doener"
     19 "peutetre"
     27 "rntn"
     29 "JumpCrisscross"
     30 "belter"

    LAST 3650 days

     12 "howard941"
     12 "isaacfrond"
     12 "jrflowers"
     15 "bookofjoe"
     15 "rbanffy"
     17 "doener"
     19 "peutetre"
     27 "rntn"
     29 "JumpCrisscross"
     30 "belter"


 [1] Run this command:
    query="musk"; now=$(date +%s); echo -e "Top authors for posts mentioning '${query}':\n";for n in 7 31 365 3650;do echo -e "\nLAST $n days\n"; (curl -s -d '{"query":"'$query'","page":0,"hitsPerPage":1000,"minProximity":7,"numericFilters":["created_at_i>'$((now - (n*24*60*60)))'"],"restrictSearchableAttributes":["title","url"]}' 'https://uj5wyc0l7x-dsn.algolia.net/1/indexes/Item_dev_sort_date/query?x-algolia-agent=Algolia%20for%20JavaScript%20(4.13.1)%3B%20Browser%20(lite)&x-algolia-api-key=28f0e1ec37a5e792e6845e67da5f20dd&x-algolia-application-id=UJ5WYC0L7X'|jq '.["hits"].[].author'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n|tail -10) ;done

People post frequently on topics they like. There are plenty of folks on HN that are heavily engaged in just a few topics, from specific programming languages to certain political ideas.

I won't stop them.

> One of the shocking things CNN recently said. X is properly balanced politically. This is what's needed to cure the polarization.

Care to elaborate? I really don't see the logical steps for this to happen, those bubbles don't intermingle on platforms since they pigeon hole themselves, the only overlap is through slinging shit onto the other side.

Would really appreciate some elaboration on how exactly this statement could have any logic.

I didn’t see that CNN article, however I do see my feed on twitter. It’s a depressing flood of MAGA assholes that made it painful to see anything interesting. I’m sick of all the rage bait that’s pushed because it juices engagement numbers.

It’s been a joy to follow conversations on Bluesky and not have to worry about some chud interrupting with “cry more libtard” or some anti-trans bullshit.

From the article

> Active daily user numbers in Japan of Facebook-owner Meta's Threads have picked up from about 500,000 to 1.5 million, while for Bluesky it has gone from about 50,000 to about 500,000.