The other day, a friend said, "I'm surprised you're not on Bluesky Pete." If anything, I'm looking to downsize my Social Media presence, not increase it. One of the key features for any self-respecting Geek is the ability to use your Domain Name as your handle. I'm not going to go into details here; to be honest, for the average Joe Public, it's a bit of a faff and probably unnecessary.
I haven't bothered to change mine mainly because I already have a Federated "Instance" castlecannon.house The beauty of a Federated service is YOU are in control (Unless you sign up for someone's "Instance"). Nobody can tell you what to do or how to behave; FREEDOM! Anyway, less of the Mel Gibson. Personally, I can't see any difference between Bluesky, Mastodon, Friendica or Plemora; they all effectively use the same backend protocol.
Bluesky is being promoted (yet again) as an alternative to 𝕏 (formerly Twitter). What I find interesting is the same reasons for joining Mastodon are being promoted by the Press and media for joining Bluesky "Ooh! You've got to get away from that evil Elon Musk and that horrible Donald Trump!" Over on the Fediverse (Mastodon), we saw two mass migrations from what was then Twitter. Yet, after two or three months, people sloped back, supposedly because Mastodon was too difficult to use. It's not! I think what most people didn't like was the fact that there are no algorithms on the Fediverse, no code that says: "Oh, so they like Lady Gaga, do they? Let's show them posts by other Lady Gaga fans and related content." On the Fediverse, you have to go old school and make an effort to make friends and find interesting people to follow.
There's an article on Forbes about Bluesky https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/11/14/what-to-know-about-bluesky-the-buzzy-social-media-app-siphoning-users-from-elon-musks-x/ that basically trots out the same old reasons why you should leave 𝕏 or be labelled a social pariah for staying in Elon's evil lair. One paragraph that the journalist feels is the main reason to join Bluesky depressed me unutterably.
Celebrities with large followings this week, including journalist Don Lemon and actress Jamie Lee Curtis, announced they would leave X. Other celebrities left after Musk took over the platform in 2022, including Elton John, Whoopi Goldberg, Gigi Hadid and Shonda Rhimes.
It's a sad indictment of our times that people join something just because Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift is on there; these are entertainers! They're not diplomats, politicians, or professors; they sing for money. Think about that.
I'll keep the Bluesky account for a while, but I doubt I'll post much on it. I'll add it to my "Excuses" list of "I would love to delete my account, but there are two or three friends on there who refuse to join other platforms I'm on, and if I closed the account, I would lose touch with them."
Image created by irisworld
My actual name is Pete. Here is why I have the username dickturpin.
You can also find me on Social Media
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"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
I deleted my Twtr account after mostly neglecting it since Musk took over. I could see he would be bad news and he got worse. Now I can't even see what goes on there as you can't view it properly without an account. I think that public posts on any platform should be visible to all, even if not logged in.
I've not tried Bluesky or Threads and don't plan to. I will focus on Mastodon and Hive as I've had enough of corporate platforms. I do find Mastodon a bit preachy and 'holier than thou' with people telling you that you must annotate your images and use tags in certain ways. They are also fairly anti-crypto and I got blocked by a certain open source advocate for mentioning Hive :) I will still use it and I follow some interesting people.
Twtr used to be the default place to follow celebs and interesting people (not necessarily the same thing), but now they are all over the place. Instagram has a lot, but I find that mostly tedious. Previously I lost touch with a lot of people when Google+ shut down. but Google has failed at social several times.
I'll stick with the decentralised options for now. Some people have looked at integrating Hive with the 'Fediverse'. I wonder if the gatekeepers there would tolerate it.
The Guardian has joined the exodus. I like this cartoon there. The artist is on Mastodon.
It's mostly sheep that have left. Standing around bleating because the sheep next to them is bleating, and it's what the flock is doing anyway. People still can't seem to grasp the concept of ownership; they seem to have this entitlement attitude to everything these days.
I like to know what is happening, and I don't trust the news media to give me the facts. They only give us their interpretation of facts or, at the very least, what they would like us to think. It's better to suffer Elon's insane ravings for the odd little nugget of value than to stand in the corner bellowing, "La, la, la, I'm not listening!" 🤷♂️
It's easy to call people 'sheep', but it ignores their actual opinions as you cannot generalise. People won't pull the plug lightly. As for 'the news media', you generally know where they come from and they have to build trust. Randos on the socials may be less reliable for news.
I think it's a turning point in social media and we don't have precedents for any of this. The print media has a shrinking audience and TV may be losing viewers too.
Musk is a troll who is likely to benefit from the chaos he helped create.
We need another war; there's money to be made in a war. 😉
Be careful what you wish for...
LOLZ
Twitter used to be fun. I joined in 2011. There were a lot of bots, but also a nice vibe. Some nasty people would respond to my comments, but I could block them if they weren't polite. I never had the sense that my comments were filtered by the organization. There wasn't a hierarchy based on money. Everybody 'tweeted' for free. Since Musk took over there are accounts with checks that you pay for. Say something against him, and you are likely to get erased. Now he has it worked out that if you have a legal issue you have to sue him in a particular court in some Texas backwater. The court has a judge that leans his way and almost guarantees a positive outcome for Musk. He owns the platform and can do what he wants, but it no longer feels like the freewheeling place it was when I signed on. Just joined Bluesky and it feels like the original Twitter. If that turns out not to be true, well, I'll just go away. I love Hive but generally blog about family, pets, art, etc. I did get a little political in the last few weeks, but I don't want that to be the thrust of my blogs here. Bluesky is different. I will microblog about events of the day and they will in many cases be political.