I’ve been on Bluesky pretty early on and over time it’s been my Twitter replacement of choice replacing Mastodon. For most of the time there, the data community just never hit critical mass and I mainly used it to talk to other folks like academics, scientists, devs, and stay abreast of news. But something weird started happening late last week – I started getting a steady trickle, and then a big rush of new followers, a fair number of which I recognized from Data Twitter back in the pre-Musk heydays. As of this writing on Monday, the steady stream of new users continues. (View Highlight)
The best that I can piece together what happened is that the influx is a combination of two things. First, the recent changes to Twitter’s block system and blanket using of tweets to train Musk’s AI ambitions gave a lot of people yet another, more concrete, reason to seek a different platform on top of the already many reasons to leave. The second factor was that I had been included in a couple of data-related “starter packs” on Bluesky that people were using to mass follow people who tall about data. Put that together and there’s been a flood of users. (View Highlight)
Starter packs are an interesting onboarding feature Bluesky had added a while back. They’re user created lists of up to 150 accounts and anyone can browse the list and select individuals to follow or click a “follow all” button. These lists are completely user owned and can be as arbitrary and capricious as the creator wants to be. Moreover, there’s not even a browsable directory for these things, they seemingly get passed along by word of mouth, links, and the occasional search. (View Highlight)
These packs are a useful feature because there’s little in the way of a recommendation feed that will pull posts related to your interests for you. The dev team had also tuned down the system that showed you a reply to a conversation unless you follow both people (I think) in the conversation because big accounts getting into extended internet battles would dominate entire feeds prior to that. The end result of those design decisions is that without a robust list of people to follow, users see a very quiet, boring feed and leave. The only solution is to follow lots of people and packs is a nice way to find curated lists of relevant people quickly. (View Highlight)
Thanks to the synergy of features and events, there’s been a flood of activity as people join, mass follow, and then rediscover familiar faces in conversations and expand their network. These same people then share links to starter packs, or (even better) create and share their own. Word seems to have gotten around outside of Bluesky because people are joining in on the fun and we’re having a bit of a reunion moment right now. (View Highlight)
I think so, yes. I prefer it to Mastodon, others can feel the opposite way. Both are better than Twitter at this point. I know back when Bluesky was launched, many people had misgivings about missing features, moderation tools, and just healthy skepticism of investing in a network that might never get off the ground. (View Highlight)
Now, in late 2024, the general user experience is very Twitter-like already, more so tha Mastodon. Animated gifs work, short native videos had just been added, a thread-writing feature is in development. “Verification” is free and done via a DNS record in a domain/subdomain you own and you carry your account info/follows/everything throughout any changes there. The moderation team is apparently quite responsive to reports. Direct messages have been implemented (though it’s worth noting that they’re not fully encrypted messages and moderators could potentially access them under certain circumstances). There’s even a 3rd party Tweetdeck like UI at deck.blue. Oauth hasn’t been implemented yet, but you can generate “app passwords” in the settings to give unique revokable access credentials to tools and services safely. (View Highlight)
Probably the one feature I occasionally use that doesn’t seem to exist yet is a favorites/bookmarks feature to store bangers. [Update, some readers informed me the current workaround for bookmarks is to use thispinned feedwhich shows you posts that you’ve replied with a 📌 emoji with. Yes it is very hacky.] (View Highlight)
More interesting is that while there’s few algorithmic feeds available by default, users can, and have, created their own feeds to fit various niches and tastes. For example, one of the devs created a “Followers” feed that surfaces posts from people who follow you but you don’t follow, thus allowing you to find interesting folk you might have missed, or block any creeps. You can even experiment with creating your own feed from scratch with your own server or using feed generation services like SkyFeed. Most of these feeds are browsable in the UI. (View Highlight)
Another interesting thing is the block feature is more aggressively used on Bluesky, and the accepted norm is to block early and often, for any reason or no reason at all. Blocking an account is publicly visible (as in tools can show X blocked Y) but the community’s been very aggressive in discouraging block shaming. The function stops blocked accounts from interacting with your account, as well as making past interactions unviewable including things like quote reposts. Which seems to put a damper on the most egregious dogpiling behavior. (View Highlight)
Taking things a step further, there’s also lists you can subscribe to that can mute or block whole chunks of accounts or activity. One example is this one that aims to to block right wing propaganda accounts and their followers. Obviously you’d have to trust whoever runs these lists to do what they say, but they can be useful for people who experience outsized harassment from certain groups. (View Highlight)
There’s also muting (which is NOT publicly viewable info), and you can mute terms and accounts completely or for 1, 7, or 30 days if you need a break about a certain topic. Great to get some breathing room. (View Highlight)
Mastodon’s got a pretty decent community settled in and I know that some people prefer the norms that have gotten established there. While I’m not quite a fan of the relatively high incidence of “reply guys” and the the HOA-like vibe, it’s still better than nothing and I’ll continue to use it going forward. But I don’t have as much fun while doing so. (View Highlight)
The one thing that eventually led me to using Mastodon less was I had a huge amount of trouble finding other communities to listen in on and interact with. In fact, thanks to the federation model and being on a very small instance, it was very hard for me to find new interesting data people to follow because their posts and even conversations just simply wouldn’t make themselves over to my instance to view without a lot of conditions aligning. (View Highlight)
Bluesky’s federation model is different and overall aims to make it so that everyone on any instance can see the same network of posts, so I find it much easier to find new and interesting people to interact with. As someone with a million hobbies and interest, this was the killer feature for me. (View Highlight)
Yes, I know that for the past 2 years or so, a lot of data folk wound up using LinkedIn as the place of interaction… but really? Do we actually want to stay there, mixed in with the endless people unironically self-promoting their “personal brand” and the endless startup founder grind porn? I’m also not a fan of the overly aggressive “suggested post” algorithm that gives me something I don’t want every couple of posts. LI’s got it’s uses, but not for the kind of banter data folk like to do. (View Highlight)
Before you do anything else, set up a profile picture and add in a basic description, maybe even make a single post to signal that you’re a human. That way when you follow someone and they receive a notification, they have at least some basic information to decide if they want to follow you back or not
A simple search query looking for the words “pack” and “data” and “go.bsky.app” which is used to link to starter packs. Tweak as suits you.
Next, follow people. As many as you can so it’ll populate your feed. Follow more than you think is necessary to make up for the lack of strong default feeds. You can always unfollow or mute the occasional annoying person later.
If you want, set your preferences to mix your feeds together into one thing in Settings → Follow Feed Preferences → Show Posts from My Feeds
Have conversations and positive interactions! Bluesky tends to have a much better ratio of interactions per post. If people like things they aren’t afraid to hit the little heart button or reply and you shouldn’t feel afraid to either. As people have good interactions with you, they’ll likely start putting you onto their own starter packs too.
Finally, make your own starter pack of people you like interacting with and share. Let’s not have a dozen lists all pointing to a bunch of old accounts (mine included) that might have gone stale and inactive. Point to new folk and people you just think others should follow. There’s value seeing “people someone else respects/finds amusing”. (View Highlight)
It’s gonna work out if you just be… a normal good human being. The vibe right now is everyone’s rebuilding their network at the same time, chatting up a storm. The group of people posting simultaneously will be higher than it can sustain over the next few months. It’s the easiest time to talk to people. (View Highlight)
Yes, it’s scary and sad to have to start with a new account again! But data folk have always been a great combination of welcoming and helpful while never taking ourselves too seriously. So just follow a ton of people and have fun conversations. People will realize you’re not some robot account and usually follow back. The details of the network will sort itself out on its own. (View Highlight)
