I’ve been telling people that Bluesky is just another Twitter, even started by a lot of the same people.
Skip the drama and use Mastodon.
They are all drama. “Guess what I ate today? A hotdog! Isn’t that exciting?” We can use none of this.
How dare people share thoughts and emotions, we should all strive to be more efficient like you are.
Mastodon launching quote toots at just the right time.
Bluesky is the reason I’m pretty much over with the idea of ever convincing people to worry about privacy, digital freedom or societal issues at large.
Twitter was bad, became even worse, people wanted to migrate - sure. We had Mastodon, which worked perfectly, was Federated, was open for subscriptions, it was free, had working third party apps and a community already. Barely anybody migrated.
Then Bluesky shows up, and it’s the exact same technology, only more limited and with lesser freedoms… but because it’s a commercial company behind it, people immediately chose it. The argument that people don’t understand federation doesn’t even work, because the promise that Bluesky was going to participate in the Fediverse was even part of the marketing material.
People CRAVE big tech. They’re not victims of abuse or ignorance, they’re willing participants that would rather be enslaved by a corporation than use any collaborative effort.
The average person is a fucking moron man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
average person uses x and when you tell them that x stands for everything wrong with the world they just say something like “yeah but Joe Schlimblio posts on x and I follow them”
Fucking Moron Man! Defender of the average Joe, protector of the woefully mediocre! Without a thought in his head, but a spring in his step, he fights on with the conviction of a total idiot!
Not even just average people. Exceptional people who absolutely know better still fall for this shit. The “marketplace of ideas” is a failure.
If people want real ideas they need to grow them and care for them and that shit is hard and it will cost you time and money.
People don’t crave big tech, big tech just has more money and willingness to advertise and astroturf. When a newspaper or tv show or influencer mentions BlueSky in a story, it’s a 50:50 chance that an expensive marketing agency fed them it.
Exactly. You cannot grow without expending money. You cannot expend money if you are not generating money.
These services will not work until they have an economical purpose.
I wonder how much the adoption of newer platforms has a lot to do with having money to advertise. I feel like I lucked out a bit finding lemmy when reddit had the 3rd party apps shut down, just stumbling on a comment before it was deleted. Whereas if the commenter had paid for it to be an advertisement it may have stayed up
This is simple. Age verify because Bluesky is filled with porn. Soon, almost every state or the nation will require age verification if you host porn.
You can thank the religious GOP trash
won’t somebody please think of the children!!1!
The children aren’t fucking right, they need to be shown.
Hell you don’t even have to be funny on mastodon.
What we ARE picky about is posting images without descriptive text or asking for a volunteer caption.
some of the alt text is straight fire tbh.
for example:
a bloated orange corpse has been posed by a taxidermist to shake hands with a castrated old man who has confused the corpse for an ice cream cone. (c 2025 whitehouse oval mausoleum)
Christ in Valhala that jacket on the left looks like it is trying so damn hard to keep the flood of flesh horror at bay for the sake of all living souls.
I have never understood why people have ever thought or said that bluesky is better than reddit, or decentralized, or somehow not going to be abused as the company takes a very large amount of VC funds.
Pretty sure this is about the new EU legislation afftecting anything from porn sites, through nexusmods, and apparently even shit like bsky.
Not EU, UK. The EU, for now, does not require age verification. They are currently working on a system where your age can be verified using a secure token where Bsky would not get any more info than “this person is over 18”, at which point, they will most likely mandate its use.
And how would one obtain such a token?
Not from a Jedi.
Your ID and associated government software.
The government will know who you are, but not what you are requesting the token for. The site will know what the token is for, but will not know who is presenting it.
Imagine it like buying an old fashioned paper bus ticket, in places where tickets are anonymous and interchangeable. The ticket vending machine will get your card info, but will not know what you’ll do with the ticket. Maybe you’ll board a bus, maybe you’ll trade it to a vagrant for a blowie. The ticket machine won’t judge or connect the blowie to your payment info.
Then the vagrant or the bus driver will not get your card payment info either, they’ll only get the ticket, which you could have gotten anywhere, including by blowing someone for it. The bus ticket is the token, it only confirms payment, not identity.
Would that essentially kick all non EU users out?
The government will know who you are, but not what you are requesting the token for.
Unfortunately, things don’t work like that. There are a nearly infinite number of ways for the identity provider to figure that out.
The site will know what the token is for, but will not know who is presenting it.
Same as above.
Wherever you go, whatever you do, there are many entities already tracking you that know precisely who you are and what you are doing. All such legislation would do is add governments to the list. There is no safe or anonymous version version of an identity provider.
There are a nearly infinite number of ways for the identity provider to figure that out.
Name one.
No u - go learn.
The smart card in your id.
🌈 magic 🌈
Generally, enough to be always, the “protect the children” argument is used by the worst warmongering authoritarian neocons to ensure enslavement.
I saw this from the moment BlueSky was trying to advertise itself as Twitter 2. Single point of ownership means it will definitely come to be locked down over time because server cost and administration will always be a problem.
The company is a company just like the company used to fund Activitypub and Mastodon development.
The protocol is still federated. Content addressing even makes mirrors more reliable!
(besides the current DM implementation, when encrypted messaging is ready it’s meant to get federated too)
Also, reminder that this is a UK law applying to all social websites there, even your average Lemmy instance. You could get blocked if you don’t comply.
well yeah… twitter 2?
Applies only to the UK, which is requiring it for apps that host adult content: https://www.theverge.com/news/704468/bluesky-age-verification-uk-online-safety-act
From your helpful link:
“If users don’t want to verify their age, or if they’re under 18, they will still be able to have an account with certain features limited. Bluesky will block “adult-appropriate content” and turn off certain features, such as direct messaging.”
So you can still use Bluesky without age/identity verification, including being able to post.
Yeah, I get pushing for Mastodon over Bluesky, but Bluesky is being forced to do this by the UK government for UK citizens so this is just exaggerated rage bait.
Rage bait, or a line being drawn? The excuse that it’s just for certain type content, only some features will be limited, etc. sounds like “it’s just a little bit of Orwell, why you so mad bro?” Let the free market sort it out, if most people are fine with limitations (and future additions to those) then so be it. There are alternatives right now, so make a choice.
The UK government is forcing them and all other web services to do the same. UK-hosted Mastodon servers may coast under the radar for awhile, but they’ll come for them eventually.
Rather than getting mad at Bluesky for implementing government-mandated age verification, how about actually getting mad at the UK government?
A lot of us are and have protested for years. The previous gvmt didn’t care and the current one don’t either because its not really about kids, its about control and surveillance. The ruling political class want to know what its citizens are up to and/or want us to know they can id us any time, especially those of us who are noisy about political issues.
Our right to protest is just about gone, including the right to wear masks. We are legally obliged to provide pins to our phones when detained and we can be arrested if a protest is deemed obstructive - which includes being too noisy. We can even be arrested just for discussing holding a protest of some kind.
At the same time, we are told that vocally supporting non-violent groups is now terrorism and can be punishable with prison time.
And the vast majority of the UK population sit on their collective arses moaning about immigrants and watching Love Island. They don’t care - genuinely, they absolutely do not care their rights are disappearing one by one.
Required to use our fingerprints/faces, and PINs at border, but not PINs at e.g. protests right? Or is this a thing where within 1000(?) miles of the border is close enough?
Mad at your government, but still leave Bluesky, just don’t leave angry.
Also, it’s just a matter of time for other governments to do the same. They’re already working on it in the U.S.
How about both? And while doing so, use applications that aren’t yet subjected to those rules.
Why do you think Mastodon is exempt from those rules? The law applies to all sites/services with a significant UK audience - some of the Mastodon .uk instances will definitely be subject to this, and because of how badly the law is written, it can apply to many more.
People can have their hardon for hating Bluesky, but they’re literally just trying to avoid being fined by the UK govt here - this wasn’t their idea.
Mastodon might not be legally exempt, but depending on how much effort the UK government puts into enforcing this, large swaths of it might be functionally so. Most instances presumably arent hosted in the UK, and while some of those outside that country might block traffic there or be big enough for the UK government to order ISPs there to block them for noncompliance, theres a decent chance that some smaller, foreign run instances might simply ignore whatever the UK is doing, and if a UK user signs up to one of these, or uses a VPN to use one that does block the UK, and can still get the content from the rest of the network due to federation anyway, then the platform as a whole could potentially get away with ignoring those rules in a way that a single large site couldnt.
It’s absolutely Orwellian, and people should be angry at the UK for forcing this onto any website their citizens access.
But there won’t be alternatives for long cause you’re placing the blame on the whip and not the person cracking it.
A) I’m just commenting on it being labeled as rage bait and not a call for action(s)
B) Absolutely go after the root cause as well as find alternatives
C) There are always alternatives
Beware USA :(((
Supreme Court’s ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online (July 4, 2025)
its a good thing I never write and have sex at the same time
which is requiring it for apps
The simple solution is not making everything a fucking app…
It’s always hilarious to watch people act like they care about security and privacy but download 27 different apps instead of just using a web interface…
It’s like the iPad generation can’t figure out a bookmark list
I said apps but I probably should have said websites and apps, because websites aren’t exempt. I hear you on how frustrating it is when they’re making everything an app, though.
In the Fediverse, nobody knows you’re a dog. Arf arf
Unless your account is on pawb.social
Hey! This here is cat territory. You just walked into a world of hurt, pardner.
I would not surprise me if eventualy Mastodon will have to do the same especially the Mastodon servers located in the EU and UK.
There is not “the” Mastodon. If servers are affected by such stupid laws, people can go to servers in countries that aren’t affected. Or at least until the great firewall is built.
Which is also exactly why it will never be popular. People don’t want to have to deal with jumping around instances, dealing with the poor discoverability of the fediverse, etc. Even lemmy has that issue, I’m here because im a linux nerd so there is a decent amount of content i want here found easily but for anything else might as well be worthless.
The EU does not require age verification, only the UK does.
I would not surprise me ifeventualy Mastodon will have to do the same especially the Mastodon servers located in the EU and UK.Ftfy
I mean, firstly, this appears to only affect UK users (atm). And secondly
Users who don’t verify their age will have certain content and features, like direct messages, restricted
So, features I don’t use or want, for the time being. Which will be a problem when I run into it, I guess. As it stands, BlueSky remains the least worst option. When that changes, I’ll change with it.
Less worse than Mastodon?
But muh bait-posting!
Muh outrage!I mean, its still a shit policy and it makes BlueSky worse.
Just not bad enough to do another platform migration, particularly to a platform nobody I know actually uses.
Fediverse wins once again :3
It’s only a matter of time before Mastodon follows suit. Remember when we all believe Reddit would never go corporate?
This is the natural order of tech. It cannot survive without selling out.
The Fediverse has scaled impressively well and currently boasts millions of active users, and about the only thing that seems to actually be shaking smaller instances hosted by hobbyists on very tight budgets are if an AI scraper finds them and starts trying to use them as an ingress point to slurp up Fediverse content (which is honestly sad given they could simply spin up their own instance to suck data down via Federation)
Remember Reddit? Facebook? Twitter?
Have you heard of FOSS? Federation?
Bluesky was built to be a Valley bigotfest and data vampire from the very beginning.
The lead dev of mastodon is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t run the instances.
I’m pretty certain that my Masto home instance isn’t going to turn into corporate trash because the the people running it have been running queer servers for decades and are community-funded.
And suppose mastodon does turn into shit? My home instance also supports other fedi protocols.
Companies founded by Jack Dorsey or taking VC money, though? Guaranteed hellsite, just a matter of time.
which instance?
Fair enough, but money changes a lot of things. History is rife with examples of this. And while that may not be a catch-all rule, there’s a better chance of it happening than not if history serves.
didn’t the founder for mastodon say two years ago that they would rather shut everything down before selling it?
Didn’t Reddit say the same thing?
We’ll see how well bluesky’s decentralization works now :p
Pretty sure deer.social will keep working, etc
lady posted this without any tags. how is she supposed to rub someone’s nose in it if no nose can find it?
Tags eat into the 300 character limit. She had too much she wanted to say.
