this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media (www.newyorker.com)
submitted 4 days ago by remington@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 49 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Corporations cannot create nontoxic social media, the incentives will always be there to make it toxic.

The only way to do it is something like mastodon where actual people run it and thus can deal with people who are being toxic either by blocking etc because the fear of losing money, or the likelihood of the entire site/platform disappearing etc just isn't there (obvioiusly individuals sites go down sometimes but the entire network is unlikely to disappear), or by the use of people explaining why what they did was wrong and the toxic people listen.

Edit: If Bluesky actually ever becomes decentralised as in users can run their own servers and federate or block other servers then perhaps it might become good, but until such a time then I do not trust them.

They should also make a non-profit foundation if they want to be seen as trustworthy, so that they can't ever be sold off.

Those are the only way we and many others will ever trust them.

[–] realitista@lemm.ee 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh I think they can do it for a while.. But then they need to start bumping up the profits.

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, I meant more long term but didn't express that fully. So you are correct, corporate social media will go that way eventually unless they do the things we recommended.

[–] ShotgunForFun@beehaw.org 1 points 4 days ago

If they never go IPO... I think they can do it. I think people can make money and not be cunts at the same time.

Even if they go IPO... they have the choice.

[–] AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Corporations cannot create nontoxic social media, the incentives will always be there to make it toxic.

I don't know that's true. The incentives to make it toxic come from engagement being the goal, which is a function of advertising being the income. I'm not advocating for it, but if there were a flat subscription and no ads, I don't think they'd have any economic pressures for toxicity.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

Social media requires free users to function on to fundamental of a level for that to really work tbh

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

We think Minds tried something like this (though it might be different tiers) and it didn't exactly go well, forcing users to pay one way or the other always leads to economic pressures to keep users around, even if they are being toxic at least from what we have observed.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago

Capitalist media is always toxic.

[–] cotlovan@lemm.ee 20 points 4 days ago

Bsky is just Twitter, 10 years ago.

[–] thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Enshitification commencing in 10... 9...

[–] StenSaksTapir 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And that's fine. Bluesky is in its last phase of proving the important point. Once all the regular journalists move away from Twitter, it will have been proven, that migration away from a defacto "standard" platform can happen, even though it's a pain in the ass.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Honestly I think they already hit critical mass.

[–] StenSaksTapir 3 points 2 days ago

Not until news media starts quoting posts on Bluesky as much as, or more than, they do Xitter.

There's still the force of habit and larger engagement on Xitter for many established names.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 4 days ago

It's owned by a billionaire. I don't think enshittification is far away

[–] thirtyfold8625@thebrainbin.org 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This seems to be a general overview of (the history of) Bluesky, rather than being focused on "nontoxic social media"

[–] remington@beehaw.org 11 points 4 days ago

Yeah. Clickbait title.

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm glad to see a lot of different people trying different models. I don't think microblogging really has the capability of being nontoxic, but who knows? Maybe they'll succeed where everyone else has failed. I certainly know we're trying to have nontoxic social media around here, and we have plenty of issues at a much smaller scale.

[–] remington@beehaw.org 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

We must have better moderation tools if we ever want this instance to grow.

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 points 4 days ago

Maybe, but social problems cannot entirely be solved with technology.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

we have plenty of issues

I would venture to say that despite those issues, thanks to y'all's moderation this space is non-toxic on the whole. It may be that size is a de-facto limit on maintaining a space like Beehaw, or it may be that we (as in, internet users) just haven't figured out the best format/ structure for scaling up safely.

I think a microblogging platform that allows moderated, invite-only sub-groups (and which doesn't show you any posts by users or groups you don't subscribe to) could be a good step towards that. Sort of a combination of BlueSky feed + Beehaw communities/ FB groups. That could give you a Beehaw-like moderation experience in a microblog platform.

I think most microblogging platforms' failure in this area likely stems from them being ad and engagement-driven, and their corporate "need" for users to be more and more active across "interest domains", clashing with their users' need to stay isolated from users who are toxic to them.

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 3 points 3 days ago

clashing with their users' need to stay isolated from users who are toxic to them.

Sadly Lemmy does not solve this problem as the creators think like a corporation or do not want to be fully cut off from other users and thus do not have proper blocking (which is something built into ActivityPub mind you), for now it is only one way blocking which does not solve being isolated from toxic users as it still allows for some toxic behaviour etc.

If Lemmy ever gets that feature it would actually prove that it is dedicated to user safety, but a lot of people in the open source social media world seem to be 'concerned' with not being able to see everything due to entitlement, as others unrelated to Lemmy also are lacking the same or similar features.

[–] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Remember when Twitter tried that? And look at it now. A festering pool of feces and maggots...

[–] remington@beehaw.org 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Did you read the article? Do you understand, technically, how Bluesky differs from Twitter (X)?

[–] knightly@pawb.social 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I did, I do, and I'm calling this article bullshit for not pointing out that while the protocol might be open-source, they have yet to share the server software that's required to operate it.

BlueSky "lets" people host their own profile data because it reduces how much data they have to host. It does not allow them to login and browse the network without going through their centralized servers to do so.

So, it's not really decentralized, not really open source, and remains under corporate control until such time as they decide to let anyone compete with them on their own network.

[–] remington@beehaw.org 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I understand all of that. What I’d like the OP to address is how Bluesky could turn into something resembling Twitter if it’s, technically, very different.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 days ago

The point being made is that it isn't very different. Focusing on the technicalities ignores the broad strokes of it. Missing the forest for the trees and all that.

The discussion of Bluesky's flaws, drawbacks, misleading claims of "federation", etc... has already been done to death.

This also isn't debate club. "What I'd like OP to address" good god.

But in the interest of good faith, here's the cliff notes: It's run by a corporation headed by one of Twitter's original founders, and there's not significant evidence it will not fall to the same path to shittiness that Twitter did. It is only technically federated, not actually in practice. It is not fully open source, as key portions of the infrastructure code have not been released. Of the portions that have been released, it is nearly impossible to run your own node due to the major amount of storage space required. Beyond that, all communications must ultimately go through BlueSky's centralized infrastructure. There's no point to running your own node because their centralized infrastructure won't talk with it. No one has actually been able to do anything more than host their own profile in regards to federation. At this point there is no financial incentive for them to invest money in solving the issues preventing it from being able to be truly federated.

Most of all, mastodon already exists as a mature system for federated microblogging without the major drawbacks of bluesky.

[–] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

I know that BlueSky has investors and soon enough every company has turned into shit when investors are involved.

[–] luciole@beehaw.org 4 points 4 days ago

Also Google's now retired motto: "Don't Be Evil".

[–] kiwii4k@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

ain't gonna happen

need no anonymity and a complete reversal of human nature to achieve this.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

IMO, toxicity isn't as much about who comes into your environment as it is about who you allow to remain. There are plenty of low- and non-toxic spaces online, they're just heavily moderated.