Lyrenhex ⸬

The State of the Social Networks 2024

23 October 2024 7 minute read draft bluesky, fediverse, social media

The current state of my social network accounts, the history of them, and future plans.

There’s been yet another exodus of users from Twitter, and in particular this one has affected a couple of people I was mutuals with on Twitter who hadn’t moved in the prior exoduses[1], so I’ve actually been paying attention to Bluesky in a way I previously had not: I’ve been pretty happy with my digital social presence from 2022 til now, but now that I am actively looking at another social network for the first time since 2020, I figured it’s as good a time as any to cover all the current major networks, my thoughts on them, and present the state of my digital social presence: also known as “where you can find me going forwards”.

The Fediverse (aka Mastodon, *key, Akkoma, Pleroma, wafrn, …)

I’ve had a long history of interest in federated and decentralised social media networks, having tried diaspora* back when Google+ was still a thing. On that note, I do think that “circles”, as supported by both networks, were a really nice idea! The ‘fediverse’ as it current exists, however, is powered via ActivityPub, consisting of the myriad interoperating softwares of Mastodon, Misskey and its many forks (such as Sharkey), wafrn, and even some older federated networks which have implemented support for ActivityPub recently.

I think the fediverse, as it currently exists, is fantastic, and represents a practical implementation of federated social media: I reside on my own instance, for example, giving a lot of control over my own experience and stronger ownership of my data. There are weak points, but as it stands, this is by far my most active social media presence and it is likely to remain so for the future.

My only complaints boil down to two things:

  1. We should really expand on the privacy options available (Public, ‘Quiet public’/unlisted — aka public but not broadcast via hashtags etc, Private, and Direct) with the notion of ‘circles’: I might post something that I want a subset of my followers to see, but not all of them, and this kind of fine-grained access control should not be dependent on having multiple different accounts for people to follow.
  2. I generally hold the opinion that all social media is flawed by its very nature: corporate social media is flawed because it’s media-centric, wherein the attempts to draw revenue from the platform encourages both an overwhelming reliance on advertisements and predatory techniques to drive engagement — usually by sowing hate and discord; whereas the fediverse lacks such media-centrism, but is flawed via the social aspect, as people often act hypocritically or inconsistently — for examples of this, see the absolutely insane situation parts of the network end up in sometimes with regards to so-called ‘fedi meta’.

If you want my day-to-day thoughts and general posts, I would advise following me here. It’s also a good contact method as long as you’re not on an instance I personally take issue with (see my instance’s rules to assess the likelihood of that).

In lieu of that, however, my posts are currently bridged to Bluesky via @lyrenhex.com.social.lyrenhex.com.ap.brid.gy.

Bluesky

I assessed Bluesky as ‘maybe interesting’ on its limited launch, and did end up making a dormant account when I was invited to do so in November 2023; however, it’s only now that I’ve actually had any incentive to bother with it, with some mutuals finally moving off Twitter to this instead of fedi. My simplest view is that I fundamentally do not trust Bluesky:

  1. They remain a profit-motivated organisation, and are likely to attempt to derive returns on their investments in due course (regardless of what promises they might make now to break later)
  2. Moderation is an interesting problem to solve, and I’m unconvinced that Bluesky’s approach of ‘sweeping the issue under the rug’ by labelling hateful content rather than outright banning it is a reasonable approach. I am aware of the argument that they might always find a way — and that is true, as can be seen in the parts of the fediverse that I do not interact with as either I’ve blocked them or never even interacted with them thanks to the ‘herd immunity’ effect, wherein those instances don’t manage to break through the ‘bubble’ formed of the instances I do actively interact with. I disagree this is sufficient reason to approach this as Bluesky has, however, as this is making basic human decency a user choice and not an expectation for engagement with the network. You should always show bigots the door.
  3. Best explained by people who have spent longer reading the ATProto spec than I have, and host their own PDS, “Bluesky is federated in theory”. I do not expect Bluesky to improve that situation significantly, and for as long as I practically cannot self-host the entire Bluesky stack as a benchmark, I don’t think it’s a federation model that provides the same guarantees as fedi.

With that said, given I have mutuals there now who I do wish to see the posts of, I expect to be somewhat more active now. I may post about streams there (though this isn’t a guarantee), and beyond interacting with people specifically on there, I may post on there ad-hoc or when my personal fedi instance happens to be offline (since it likely works pretty well as a fallback for that, I suppose). If that’s of interest to you, you are welcome to follow via the link at the top of this page.

You should not expect it to be a reliable mode of contact, however: I am likely to be delayed in responding, will not prioritise it above other networks, and do not have direct messages enabled from anyone I do not myself follow.

You may view the posts I make on Bluesky on fedi instead, bridged via @lyrenhex.com@bsky.brid.gy.

Historical: Twitter

Rejected: Threads

  1. Linguistic aside: The plural of words ending in ‘-us’ depends on the etymology of that particular word: many of these are a direct copy or derivative of a Latin root, in which case Latin plurality rules apply (and hence these gain an ‘-i’ suffix; examples include ‘cactus’ -> ‘cacti’); some, however, actually derive from Greek roots, and for these the Latin plurality rules do not apply (examples actually include ‘octopus’, which conventionally is pluralised to ‘octopuses’ — I personally think this is a woefully displeasing set of syllables, however, so given that English is descriptivist and not prescriptivist, I think breaking the rules here and going with ‘octopi’ is pretty reasonable; alternatively, I’m partial to just copying the Greek plural form as ‘octopodes’, which sounds much more pleasing). Anyway, exodus derives from Greek, and therefore the plural is exoduses. I don’t have any particularly strong opinions on that one… ↩