this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users.

The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told).

It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth).

This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change.

Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts.

In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day.

There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy.

As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

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[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I just go where the japanese artists go, and they are going to either blue sky or misskey, mostly blue sky since it has a bigger reach, misskey closed account creation for outsiders, and the way mastodon works I bet it's defederated from a lot of the popular instances like baraag.

[–] IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Misskey is like mastodon so you can just go to another misskey instance.

But if you're talking about the misskey.io instance, it's not that defederated from my experience (the 3 instances I'm on aren't defederated from it).

The instance simply follows Japanese law so whatever Japan allows they allow and whatever Japan forbids they forbid (which is why censoring genitals is also mandatory in that instance lol). It's not like it's some nazi cesspool or anything like that.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 172 points 3 days ago (5 children)

What a garbage dataset to train off. The majority of everything there is all bots and AI anyway lol

[–] ohellidk@sh.itjust.works 82 points 3 days ago (6 children)

bots training bots. maybe this will (hopefully) corrupt the AI's data. its kind of like copying off a copy again and again.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 52 points 3 days ago

This is in fact precisely what happens. LLM output becomes increasingly incoherent with each subsequent generation trained off of previously AI generated data.

[–] TriPolarBearz@lemmy.world 40 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Sound like human

50und 11k3 hum4n

50()|V[) 11X3 |-|()|/|4|V

$[]|||||) |!|<[- #|_|///-||

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[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago

Opt out is such a shitty practice. Especially for AI generation

[–] Lon3star@lemmy.world 147 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Come on over to Mastodon, the water's nice

[–] ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 86 points 3 days ago (23 children)

I've stopped recommending it. The discovery and trending post mechanisms are either garbage or non-existent, and it's really hard to get a feed that's remotely entertaining. Devs also seem ideologically opposed to adding any features like that. It'll just give normal people who aren't willing to deal with all this crap a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to the fediverse. I do recommend lemmy to people tho.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 38 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

I feel like its the opposite.

Mastodon's hashtag following is by far the best discovery method out there.

I've stopped using Bluesky because I can't find any content and there's just too much "screaming into the void" making it impossible to find anything of substance.
I've stopped using Threads because it's just engagement bait.

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[–] Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (5 children)

How do we know this bluesky isn't just the same shit run by different assholes?

[–] fantawurstwasser@feddit.org 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

We know that it is run by the same assholes. Bluesky is VC backed and Twitter was also. There is no way that Bluesky won't go the same route as every other VC backed social network. Sometime in the future they will start to meddle with your feed to push ads and sell your data to everyone.

[–] Asetru@feddit.org 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This makes me wonder so hard why people don't switch to Mastodon instead. Like... You have literally seen this before! Why are you doing it again?

[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Because people "just want it to work".

from what I've read on bsky is that people don't like Mastodon due to the instances. They don't want to figure that out. Either because they're too lazy or because they've spent so many years utilizing apps that "just work" that it's beyond them.

That's the meat and potatoes as to why Mastodon isn't taking off, it's "too much work" to use Mastodon.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 20 points 2 days ago

We can't, but at least there is a chance it is not.

With Xitter, we know for certain.

[–] mm_maybe@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 days ago (3 children)

We don't. It probably is. Mastodon is the way, but they need to fix a few things themselves.

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[–] dog_@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I've been on the platform for about a year, it's more community driven than other sites.

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

we already know bluesky is run by former twitter assholes. but it's the same with everything. people disappointed in new facebook policies move to band...

there are better alternatives, guaranteed not to turn into a heap of shit because of designed safeguards - but people don't like those things; they always opt for the devil they already know.

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[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 119 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Dude, that’s gonna be one hell of a racist AI just based on the dataset it’s gonna receive

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[–] sweetpotato@lemmy.ml 42 points 3 days ago (4 children)

These mfs will use literally anything except for open source, decentralised social meda

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 3 days ago

The masses yearn for the corporate boot

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 50 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Just helpful to remember, as all this horseshit persists, Bluesky is Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is former head of Twitter and musk's good buddy.

It's all a losing proposition, whatever direction you move - except if you move... Away.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

im not sure people wont consider mastodon tbh.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

i know. but its our responsability to understand why the corporate shitty options are always preferred by the layman public.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Because we are extremely simple and self obsessed animals on the whole. At the intersection of those two things, we regularly conflate base familiarity with earned trust. A bit of a narcissistic drive to tell ourselves that... if WE know about something, it MUST be good, otherwise we wouldn't have taken the time to first learn about it!

It's why your town is currently infested with candidate signs in every public space. It's also why incumbents have such large advantages in elections and why dead/convicted politicians (or Last-name sharing family members of those politicians) are often elected after the fact.

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[–] Default_Defect@midwest.social 21 points 3 days ago (5 children)
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[–] JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee 38 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Social media like Twitter preys on people's fear of missing out.

Manufactured Problem - not being up to date on internet bullshit. Marketed solution - be on twitter. Supply and demand died a long time ago. Now it's all about manufactured problems, and conveniently marketed solutions.

This sort of psychological manipulation in marketing works. It's why it's so hard to get people to leave websites like Twitter, reddit, fb ect. They've made their brands synonymous with media trends.

It took long enough, but I'm genuinely happy to see folks wising up and realizing they don't "need" Twitter. It's like watching a bunch of people break up with a toxic ex all at the same time.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

Not just Twitter. FOMO was what kept me on Reddit far longer than I should have been there.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 49 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Wait this whole article just baselessly assumes that 1 new bluesky account = 1 person leaving twitter. That is so obviously unrealistic. Sure some people were probably curious and wanted to check out something new but that doesn't mean they will immediately switch platforms.

You can’t just make fun of Those Guys for endlessly believing fake bullshit while unquestionably parroting this garbage.

[–] Istolla@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Getting a 100000 new users when Twitter loses roughly the same amount is a pretty significant correlation.

[–] takeda@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Twitter is for narcissists, and when they say Mastodon is not as good as twitter they really mean that there's not as many people watching them as on Twitter. So Bluesky gaining 500,000 new accounts could help in making it "better".

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Bluesky is pretty great once you learn how to use it. I plan to slowly back off twitter.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 41 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a false promise all the same.

Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.

There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides (however imperfectly). It is also full of "liberal" sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.

Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, it will grow into a toxic, centralized (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system), shithole where only popular accounts get any engagement with their posts. Mark my words.

[–] Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

But is it filled with the people that many want to follow and interact with? Twitter was popular for this reason, and people will tolerate being advertised to and sold on if it recreates that experience.

I had brief conversations on Twitter with Ice-T and John Carmack. Twitter’s nature enabled that remarkable connection. Could it happen on Mastodon? Absolutely, but those celebrities and geniuses need to embrace it. If it’s Bluesky, it’s better than X if only for a time.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Bluesky is the promise of Mastodon with none of the failsafes of Mastodon.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (7 children)

That type of social media just isn't really for me. But why would one want to choose Bluesky over Mastadon?

When I did try Twitter I somehow ended up following and be followed by a bunch of folks from Ghana... that was pretty neat. Although I did miss out because my Akan/Pidgin is basically non existent. Although I was introduced to the word "bomboclaat" which was interesting... lol

[–] pycorax@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I'm mostly still on Twitter because I follow a lot of Japanese artists and bands. Now plenty of them are jumping out BlueSky so off I go.

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[–] Miphera@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (3 children)
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[–] Jordan117@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

While anything that gets people off Twitter is good, I'm sorely unimpressed by those artists who "had to" to patronize the racist transphobic neo-Nazi hellhole "because my audience is there"... until Musk's policies happened to offend their own personal interests, by requiring training for their AI. Countless models trained on all public images already exist, jumping ship won't prevent their work from being scraped elsewhere, and frankly, any one image or even portfolio will contribute virtually nothing to the result, so quitting in protest is largely symbolic. But so many peoples drew the line at that, and not at Musk making "cis" a slur, or protecting child pornographers, or boosting white supremacist supremacy theories. It's really disappointing to see.

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[–] Euphorazine@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago (4 children)

So let's say on Twitter, someone blocks me and I can't read their post. Can't I just log out and read their post that way? I don't have a Twitter account, so I've never seen a blocked link before.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 28 points 3 days ago (4 children)
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