Bluesky

There's a very useful resource at www.blueskydirectory.com - in particular, it collects 'starter packs', which are curated lists of people that you can search for by keyword or interest.

For example, here's a starter pack of 'UK Theatre People' bsky.app/starter-pack/beccydsouza.bsky.social/3laobcux6jz2o

So far I've found Bluesky best for journalists and political thinkers rather than creatives, but I expect they will come...

(Oh, and I'm n1david there, but I don't say much)

This is also an interesting tool: bsky-follow-finder.theo.io
It will look at who people you follow are also following, to help you find people that you might have missed.

I thought Threads was the acknowledged alternative to the cesspit. What is Bluesky bringing? Is it just the fact that it’s not a Meta product?

I found Threads too Instagrammy - I don't use or like Instagram much, and I find it Threads too filled with influencers and Americans delivering homespun wisdom. (Also, I used the option on Threads to automatically follow the people I follow on Instagram, and I now realise there are quite a few people whose pictures I like but I definitely do not want to read their "thoughts"). So I'm on Threads, but don't find it satisfying.

Bluesky has the advantage (at the moment, at least) of not being owned by a social media empire, by not having advertising, and by not having an algorithm - so you see who you follow, posted in chronological order, rather than what Meta thinks you should see. Finally, there are many more sophisticated ways of managing what you see on Bluesky, so your posts can't be hijacked by someone famous so you get a pile-on and you can properly block people so that you are not part of their world.

Having said that, who is on there is an important part of social media, and it's true that many creatives who were on Instagram switched over to Threads. Bluesky is much better for journalists, politicos, etc which is what I missed most from Twitter when it went mad. I hope that more creatives will make it to Bluesky, bit it may be that it ends up being a different type of community. Which is fine.

I think it'll depend on the community that builds up. Right now I like bluesky. It's getting momentum.

One advantage of BlueSky is that it's decentralized. The content that's posted on BlueSky is held on different servers, which are not controlled by any single entity.  Right now, it's lacking some features (such as DMs and video) that other platforms have but that's because BlueSky has been built from the ground up in a decentralized way, which has been more challenging from a technical perspective.  

In the long run, I think BlueSky will be much more popular as, right now,  the average user probably assumes these platforms are all the same, but BlueSky is being built with more thought to protecting your privacy etc, and eventually the average user will realize Bluesky is a better platform because it's been built to address many of the issues that drive people crazy.

Yeah I must say it's much more user friendly than it was. I wish they wouldn't make the server addresses in your username visible (obviously required to have them but from an end user they serve little to no purpose and look like an email address). Other than that it's quite nice. 

What Jack Dorsey has done is interesting. I think he would probably only leave on the grounds of privacy or censorship - but what do I know. The Guardian from May >>

I've joined Bluesky too. Hoping for an ad and algorithm free experience...

I first joined Twitter when I used to blog back in the late 2000s as it was pitched as a microblogging site. Now there's only a small handful of people left that I used to chat to about theatre, hiking, photography and mountains, as the algorithms now don't show their posts.

'Social media' back when it was talking to people with common interests, not brands with money to make or products to sell, was much more fun!

I'm not interested in subscribing to any 'social media' platforms but I would be interested to know what measures are in place to stop something like Bluesky degenerating into something like Twitter/X has become.  Of course, staying small would probably help; but that would, to an extent, defeat the object.  Active and fairly strict moderation (such as exists, I presume, on boards like this) seems the most obvious answer; but, if the aim is to facilitate free expression in its widest possible/legal form, strict moderation would also seem counter effective.

Still, Bluesky should be popular in Welsh-speaking areas where, I presume, X is not available without using a foreign alphabet.

Judging by some of the “loud voices” (that’s the nice way of putting it)  I’ve seen announcing their departure from X to Bluesky it won’t stay like this for long.

Bluesky still needs a lot to happen to get anywhere near Twitter, at the moment its a left wing echo chamber populated by people who can't accept American democracy.