Use social media direct messages to establish a connection on a secure messenger designed for direct messaging, and for nothing else. When people try to initiate conversations with you in DMs, have a ready answer to pivot the conversation elsewhere.
Social platforms like BlueSky have radically different design constraints than direct messaging applications. The implications range from security to social dynamics to legal concerns.
E2E Encryption is on the road map for Bluesky as it requires some protocol changes. The devs are encouraging people to use the DMs to exchange Signal info, and reminding people to not use DMs for sensitive info.
It wouldn't matter if they implemented "E2E" encryption. "E2E" is necessary but insufficient for messaging security. It would still be a terrible idea to rely on Bluesky DM's, even if they met some floor of cryptographic quality, for the same reason that it's a bad idea to use Facebook DMs, despite their cryptography being close to the gold standard for large scale social apps.
It's important though because it allows you to communicate things that don't really belong in the open while remaining under your identity on that platform and avoiding the need to link that identity with your identity on a different service.
It would be useful if I could send people Signal link where they could login with their Facebook/Google/Instagram account (OIDC) to chat with me over Signal.
Signal no longer requires phone numbers as identifiers, so this might be feasible.
Nowadays it's chat, photos/videos, and online purchases thus forming an all-in-one app. Not quite popular here in the West, though that's Elon's eventual goal with X. But think WeChat in China.
The original law fails for too many programs to be useful in its own, but why do you need some law to replace the obvious expectation that a social media program is going to do messages?
Impressed by the rate new features are coming. During the first twitter takeover, many migrated to mastodon in my circles, but it didn't stick. Second wave to bsky has gained enough traction that the circle has sustained there for over half a year, with most disabling their account on X. But a few have remained on X mainly to be able to DM. So this fixes that.
What's lacking for me now is video. Having to share through YouTube and then embed for just small daily clips is a bit cumbersome.
Video is the killer because it's expensive. Don't they still have no ads and only one paid feature, buying a custom domain name through them directly? Which nobody actually has to pay them for because you can link a domain name registered anywhere else for free.
They could just charge for video. Inconcievable to have end-user usage pricing, I know, rather than just give away everything, but someone should try it.
True. And yeah, I'm also a bit concerned about the longevity of bsky. Hope they can figure something out, without stooping to twitter level stupid ads or lock in (like disabling api / the openness)
Disagreed - Mastodon has a major problem. The whole concept of server/instance is unnecessary and introduces extra complexity and hard problems.
Nostr has it right where servers/instances are completely interchangeable and all the hard work is done by the client.
I get why Mastodon had servers at the beginning - because browsers can't speak any other protocol than HTTP towards a single origin domain name. But this limitation fundamentally constrained the entire product into a corner that's very hard/impossible to back out of.
Mastodon should've been Nostr in the first place, with "instances" just being read-only views into the network (to satisfy browser's "demand" for an HTTP endpoint), but otherwise would be disposable and interchangeable - all write actions would be made by a client that doesn't have the constraints of a browser and can interact with the decentralized network over an appropriate protocol (and do the necessary cryptographic magic to ensure those peers are trustless and interchangeable).
The concept of "instances" not only introduces many user experience problems that makes it a non-starter for non-technical people (or even technical people who just don't have the time/willingness to deal with BS) but also open the door for politically-motivated feuds between instance admins to which the users are held hostage (instead of moderation being done on the client where the user is the only one in control of which "moderation feeds" they subscribe to, similar to an ad blocker list).
Decentralized just doesn't work in a centralized cyberspace.
You need to recreate your own centralized cyberspace and then build the underground path to the decentralized canyon.
Then provide a mothership allowing others to dock of their own standards and protocols. Yet allowing them to take off at their own accord with the data of the centralized hub.
> I had to switch servers because of subs political dispute between admins
That seems like a positive, not a negative. If you don't like the choices of the people running Twitter or BlueSky, you can't leave but still maintain your social graph.
I suspect that's why Twitter is still doing as well as it is participation-wise since the Musk acquisition: Twitter is still by and large where the people are, even if the owner is an insufferable jerk.
It's super american-centric too. For a "decentralized" platform that basically covers 2 small areas of the world is not a good sign. I feel like Bluesky had done nothing to address discoverability and sharing issues. Most engagement is centralized with 1% of shitposters.
From listening to a podcast with the founder it seems that's their goal too as they want to integrate bluesky with e-commerce which obviously doesn't work well globally.
The 3 main communities seem to be English speaking, Japanese, and Portuguese. The community is way smaller than Xitter for sure but are the percentages that off?
Having tried both BlueSky and Mastadon I found Bluesky pretty easy to use and Mastadon bewildering. There were so many Mastadon servers I didn't know where to start. I guess maybe it doesn't matter what server something is on because the app can connect to all of them, but then discussion topics would be repeated in multiple places and it all seemed so disjoint. Like the chaos of old IRC networks but amplified. All in all I felt like a babe in the woods on Mastadon while Bluesky is pretty shamelessly just "Twitter minus Nazis". One thing I like about Bluesky is when a thread starter mutes one of the posters, it mutes them for everybody in the thread, not just the original poster. While this might unfortunately facilitate creation of echo chambers it is a supremely powerful anti-troll tool.
The other big reason I went with Bluesky over Mastadon is that several of the people I used to follow on Twitter have moved over to Bluesky.
> One thing I like about Bluesky is when a thread starter mutes one of the posters, it mutes them for everybody in the thread, not just the original poster.
Oh interesting. This is a really cool feature. It kinda nudges it in the direction of being a private, self-run micro-blogging platform, where replies are essentially comments that you can moderate.
Mastodon core devs avoid discussion of server choices because it inevitably reveals that 1/3 to 1/2 of Twitter/Bluesky/Mastodon by volume and/or users are Japanese image posters incompatible with Western, especially European, languages/memes/values.
2/3 of top 3 and half of top 10-20 Mastodon instances(not including Misskey ActivityPub servers) are Japanese. They really don't like that.
I think the primary difference is in the communities. Every six months or so I log back into Mastodon and the discussion there is one hard 'Nope' for me. I don't understand why I'd voluntarily read a platform where every other post is a 'call out' of something 'problematic' according to the warped world view of '@CatMomLibrarian' or something similar.
Cutting out the Nazis from Twitter is a great start, but Mastodon has done this by simply doubling down on the other end of the horseshoe. It's Truth Social for the other fringe.
BlueSky seems somewhat richer in normal people, but that probably won't last if the platform is successful over time. It seems in the nature of social networks to be taken over by parasitic outrage grifters.
From discussions with security professional friends and folks on E2E encryption of protocols: I don't think it's that they can't figure it out, it's that they know it's hard to get right and harder to fix later, so they're taking their time to do it right in the first place. They don't want to end up like Telegram or Matrix with furries doing unflattering writeups on their security.
They have a product, but do they have a business? I haven't kept up with them lately; do they have anything approaching a revenue model that would sustain them and provide good returns to their investors?
All of bluesky is MIT licensed (unless there's a subset I'm missing), and developed pretty openly. Heck, you could use DMs much earlier if you logged into main.bsky.dev (with an app password, ideally) rather than bsky.app.
They don't have E2EE yet, and use a different system than posting does on the site. (ergo, I think they're not in the firehose)
Yeah, I wrote my own PDS from scratch[0], that was capable of federating with the sandbox network.
Now that federation is enabled in the public network, I've been working on a slightly more production-ready rewrite[1], although it's not yet in a usable state (haven't had much time to work on it lately)
Readit News
Social platforms like BlueSky have radically different design constraints than direct messaging applications. The implications range from security to social dynamics to legal concerns.
Social DMs are bad. Try not to use them!
Which are...?
https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3kt457v6aq72n
> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
I think nowadays we can substitute email with chat/DM.
What's lacking for me now is video. Having to share through YouTube and then embed for just small daily clips is a bit cumbersome.
Dead Comment
The people I interact with on BlueSky are nice, and the website is serviceable. But like Pebble / T2, I just don't see the momentum there.
Nostr has it right where servers/instances are completely interchangeable and all the hard work is done by the client.
I get why Mastodon had servers at the beginning - because browsers can't speak any other protocol than HTTP towards a single origin domain name. But this limitation fundamentally constrained the entire product into a corner that's very hard/impossible to back out of.
Mastodon should've been Nostr in the first place, with "instances" just being read-only views into the network (to satisfy browser's "demand" for an HTTP endpoint), but otherwise would be disposable and interchangeable - all write actions would be made by a client that doesn't have the constraints of a browser and can interact with the decentralized network over an appropriate protocol (and do the necessary cryptographic magic to ensure those peers are trustless and interchangeable).
The concept of "instances" not only introduces many user experience problems that makes it a non-starter for non-technical people (or even technical people who just don't have the time/willingness to deal with BS) but also open the door for politically-motivated feuds between instance admins to which the users are held hostage (instead of moderation being done on the client where the user is the only one in control of which "moderation feeds" they subscribe to, similar to an ad blocker list).
Plus realising that global search was something that many admins were fundamentally opposed to.
Oh and the array of UX issues that made me suspect that many demographics would never adopt it.
You need to recreate your own centralized cyberspace and then build the underground path to the decentralized canyon.
Then provide a mothership allowing others to dock of their own standards and protocols. Yet allowing them to take off at their own accord with the data of the centralized hub.
That seems like a positive, not a negative. If you don't like the choices of the people running Twitter or BlueSky, you can't leave but still maintain your social graph.
I suspect that's why Twitter is still doing as well as it is participation-wise since the Musk acquisition: Twitter is still by and large where the people are, even if the owner is an insufferable jerk.
From listening to a podcast with the founder it seems that's their goal too as they want to integrate bluesky with e-commerce which obviously doesn't work well globally.
The other big reason I went with Bluesky over Mastadon is that several of the people I used to follow on Twitter have moved over to Bluesky.
Oh interesting. This is a really cool feature. It kinda nudges it in the direction of being a private, self-run micro-blogging platform, where replies are essentially comments that you can moderate.
2/3 of top 3 and half of top 10-20 Mastodon instances(not including Misskey ActivityPub servers) are Japanese. They really don't like that.
Cutting out the Nazis from Twitter is a great start, but Mastodon has done this by simply doubling down on the other end of the horseshoe. It's Truth Social for the other fringe.
BlueSky seems somewhat richer in normal people, but that probably won't last if the platform is successful over time. It seems in the nature of social networks to be taken over by parasitic outrage grifters.
Slow clap for Bluesky.
They don't have E2EE yet, and use a different system than posting does on the site. (ergo, I think they're not in the firehose)
I'm not sure there are any non-bluesky Relays
I know folks are hosting their own labellers.
and I know folks are hosting their own appviews
I've seen repeated kerfuffles about people running mastodon-bluesky bridges
Now that federation is enabled in the public network, I've been working on a slightly more production-ready rewrite[1], although it's not yet in a usable state (haven't had much time to work on it lately)
[0] https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/picopds
[1] https://github.com/DavidBuchanan314/millipds