I’ve played around a bit with Bluesky in the past, but have now decided it’s time to make a move. Those of you who have been following the site on X will want to know about the change, as posted in my first new Bluesky ‘skeet’ in some time. The change in user experience is striking, a bit like walking in an alpine meadow after spending years in a subway car. Not that I have anything against subways…
Have decided to move to BlueSky for good, having left X for obvious reasons. Future posts from my Centauri Dreams site will be linked here. Current post considers Clément Vidal's striking concept for using millisecond pulsars to move entire stellar systems. www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/11/14/a…
— Paul Gilster (@gilster.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 8:30 AM
Addendum: For those who have asked, this affects only those of you who are connected to me on X, which I no longer use. If you don’t use X, nothing has changed in how you see Centauri Dreams.
Sounds like out of the frying pan into the fire, I will stick to your well scripted org site Paul.
And always glad to have you here, Michael! My social media posts are usually nothing more than a brief description of the current post and a link to it, so you’re not missing much.
I take it Bluesky is the free speech alternative to twitter/X or whatever else its called. I’ll have to check it out.
Yes, it’s quite good and many of the scientists whose work I write about here have been migrating to Bluesky. Their model is different and users have a good deal of control over how they receive information. Lots of flexibility baked into the platform and excellent filtering to remove what you don’t want to see.
Hi Paul
Yes I have seen a lot of people moving to Blue sky I will have a look at it tonight
If I figure it out I will try and follow you on the site.
Cheers Edwin
I heard bluesky is decentralized and that it is more customizable by users. Since I have never had a twiiter or X account, I would be clueless about it personally.
You all better be nice to Elon or he’ll get mad and use DOGE to cut off funding for all the kinds of research folks here are interested in…(:
How did you arrive at that conclusion…Elon has done enomous amounts of work in the electrification of the car industry and if not more in the space and communication industry than about anyone on earth. Just because we differ in our political views should not mean we should blank each other or have meltdowns and then post it on media platforms. Anyway back to the future.
I agree. I go to this web site directly so whether Paul uses X or Bluesky has no impact on me and it’s his prerogative of course. I enjoy using X as an aggregate information source and find it rather easy to separate the signal from the noise. I accept the fact that there is noise because it is a free speech platform. Kudos to Elon for providing that along with launching rockets almost every other day!, including the recent Falcon Heavy Launch of the Europa Clipper and of course his Starship program to make humanity interplanetary!
Moving away from X to BlueSky seems to me like a way to restrict one’s reach rather than extend it, but long live Centauri Dreams regardless of which media site Paul uses.
The key is that you will not be forced to get Elon’s X/tweets, that when you block trolls and Nazis they stay blocked from your feed and they cannot see your posts either.
The federated structure prevents single control by BlueSky, although Cory Doctorow is cautious about its eventual “enshittification”.
In the meantime, while it is tiny compared to X, they are getting 1 million signups per day, and I note that the Guardian newspaper has officially ceased to post on X. Whether any US media follow suit is doubtful as the largest outlets are doing advanced obeisance to the incoming regime.
I am interested in whether it may even prompt moves away from Facebook.
Well, it has already prompted my own move from Facebook (as well as X), so there’s one example.
Does it include blocking commies…from how I see the blocking feature any key hurty words can be used to block huge swaths of humanity. The perfect echo chamber if you like. Your site here Paul is perfect with no noise.
@Michael
The purpose of blocking is to allow the user to moderate the feed by preventing uncivil behavior by offers and their supporters. So you can block individuals, people who associate and support a troll, and swathes of people under a common usage term.
What and how you do that is up to the user. I use the word “uncivil” which is really a nice way of saying people who will troll, use sealioning, arguing in bad faith, and for many, outright neo-Nazis. For example, Substack has supported extreme right-wingers who do occasionally intrude into comments rather than stay in their own areas. Xitter has become a very unpleasant place to inhabit even with carefully curated feeds now that Musk has changed the algorithm rules. That is why people and advertisers are leaving the platform. Journalists who use Xitter almost uniformly state that it has become worse to navigate and pick up useful information for their jobs. They stick with it but the psychological and time-wasting costs of using it become ever greater. Posting and commenting doesn’t need to be a “safe space” or an “echo chamber”, but they should avoid bad behavior.
I would say that Paul has kept Centauri-Dreams in that civil category for many years, which makes it a good place to post, comment, and have discussions with contrary views without a comment thread degrading into a vituperative mess. More popular blogs, like Charlie Stross’, usually have over 1000 comments per post [ Charlie’s Diary]. But on occasion, he has issued a “yellow or red card” for commenters who start to abuse others in a thread, or act in a trollish way, and even outright banned trolls. To moderate so many comments, he has trusted individuals to help moderate so that he can do other work, like writing novels for a living.
Alex I have used twitter before Elon bought it and there was plenty of pretty toxic stuff on there before including government interference ! There was some entity that was miss using the old Alogorithim to connect hateful comments to the advertisers, it is now a court case. And the advertisers are coming back. You can set up X so no one can comment but this is neither here nor there now.
There are plenty of nutters on BOTH sides of the fence and I have argued with both, you can’t fix stupid, it’s a state of mind !
This makes sense. This makes Bluesky more like a decentralized blog system rather than a single integrated posting system. This then allows for people to moderate the discussions on their threads, not only to keep disruptive political discussions out, but just to keep discussions on topic. I would agree that Bluesky is more appropriate for Centauri Dreams than X. This sounds like a good choice. Of course, I’ve not used either.
Consider Mastodon as well, as long as we’re hedging bets ?
You can use https://fed.brid.gy/ to automate this.
I’ve never wanted Twitter, or tried Bluesky. But I’ve been on Reddit, and haven’t had any problems. How does Bluesky compare with Reddit?
My knowledge of Reddit is slim to none, I’m afraid. Maybe some of the readers will have ideas on this.