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).

    • ohellidk
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      832 months ago

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

    • @Knuk@lemmy.world
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      32 months ago

      It’s also about the art posted on it. I use bsky for that purpose and all the “migrants” didn’t want their work to be fed to an AI.

    • @ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
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      982 months ago

      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.

      • Dr. Moose
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        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.

        • @anoncity@lemmy.world
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          152 months ago

          Yeah Threads has nothing of substance, just engagement bait as you said. X is similar now that users can make ad revenue

        • @ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
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          112 months ago

          I disagree, I just think some kind of engagement algorithm would be better. I haven’t used bluesky or threads so I can’t speak to them. I’m just saying that back in the day on twitter, I had no problem finding a bunch of very funny and clever posts, and posts were catered to me well. Through both me following people and I assume through the engagement algorithm. I’ve tried adding a bunch of hashtags, but I’m not finding a bunch of hilarious stuff to send to my friends like I did back then on twitter.

          Bunch of spam too, because bots use the hashtags, so I’m often scrolling through a bunch of auto-posted stuff. Idk. Maybe I’m using it wrong. I just feel like your average person isn’t going to go through all that crap so they’ll cling to twitter until it dies.

          And I’ve tried switching instances around, which is just confusing honestly, and didn’t really help with finding lots of content that I want to see. I used mastodon more when I was able to mirror people I know are funny on twitter to my mastodon feed lol. I want to like it, I just find I’m never tempted to go on it. Can’t figure it out.

      • @Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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        222 months ago

        While I agree that it makes Mastodon less entertaining I also think that it makes it a lot more fair, representative and trustworthy as a lens through which to observe & participate in social discourse and share information and opinions. That in itself will probably mean that it remains less popular but I think it’s also what makes it more valuable IMO. We need to calm down from the urgency of the digital dopamine cycle, for many reasons. If social media is a truly human media then it should be boring at times because that is a human reality that we are adapted to.

        • @moormaan@lemmy.ca
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          142 months ago

          I agree. I love Mastodon’s calm columnar UI with lists and hashtags where I feel I’m in control of my experience, and that I can just stop whenever and come back in three days.

        • @ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
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          92 months ago

          Yeah fair points. I will say this implosion of the social media I used to use has pushed me towards doing other things than scrolling on my phone lol, and that is a positive thing.

      • jaxiiruff
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        2 months ago

        Lemmy and Bluesky are what I use, atproto is just much more promising for microblogging than activitypub and Mastodon proves that. Lemmy is perfect for it though.

      • Clot
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        62 months ago

        Exactly, their official app is just pure garabage and they aren’t even trying to fix it

      • @Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        62 months ago

        It’s not perfect? Interesting. I’m sure that will be a deal-breaker for people exiting a failing platform run by a megalomaniacal MAGA asshole actively harming working people…

      • @actually@lemmy.world
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        52 months ago

        Another issue I had was hundreds of saved toots having had awesome pictures, important data or things to do.

        I saved them hoping to use some later, but it all remained an unorganized glop: unusable unless I looked at each one again, in order, to find the 75th one back, about a cat

      • @DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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        12 months ago

        I know what you mean. I’m self-hosting and use https://relay.fedi.buzz/ to subscribe to hashtags from all over the fedimicroblogosphere. It’s literally too much interesting content, I kept scrolling new stuff for hours and had to cut down on what tags I subscribed to. It’s like that Lemmy explorer but for microblogging.

        I think a reasonable admin should be open to using the service to populate the federated timeline with niché content users ask for.

        The only downside is “catch all”-tags and people abusing tags. “Hey #fediverse, check out my XYZ!”. No, I want fediverse news dang it!

        But the dev stuff? Yeah.

    • Beefalo
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      122 months ago

      It’s gonna train the little robot dog, which they’re gonna put a gun on. And drones. It’s gonna train drones, he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.

      • nocturne
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        52 months ago

        he’ll sell it to anyone who’ll buy the data.

        And if they will not buy it musk will sue them until they buy it.

    • @jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      This is why when we give vacuum robots AI powers, they run around your house shouting racist pejoratives

      Welcome to the future

  • @Snapz@lemmy.world
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    552 months ago

    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.

        • Prior_Industry
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          112 months ago

          But he’s left seemingly under a cloud, so unless the leadership changes I doubt he’s influencing decision making.

          Let’s be honest these social media platforms will be a rinse and repeat. Just enjoy it whilst it lasts. Move on when the ownership go full Elon.

      • @Snapz@lemmy.world
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        32 months ago

        So he’s completely removed from anything to do with that company and isn’t inherently woven into the DNA as it’s very recent founder?

    • @Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      72 months ago

      I dunno. I’d say it’s more important to see what exactly he’s doing and what Bluesky is.

      Right now Bluesky is really good. So until it turns bad I’m sticking to it.

        • @umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          12 months ago

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

          • @Snapz@lemmy.world
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            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.

  • @ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    502 months ago

    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.

    • @takeda@lemmy.world
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      252 months ago

      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”.

      • @ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        172 months ago

        The headline directly says half a million users left twatter. As far as I can tell that is literally a lie.

      • @vzq@lemmy.world
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        12 months ago

        Mastodon is still pretty rough around the edges. Especially for the regular Twitter Instagram crowd.

        • @MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
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          32 months ago

          What’s rough about it? I’ve never been a twitter guy so can’t really compare, but I have a Mastodon account that I pop into periodically, and it works fine.

    • @Istolla@lemmy.world
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      42 months ago

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

  • sweetpotato
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    492 months ago

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

  • @JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • Flying Squid
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      142 months ago

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

  • @Jordan117@lemmy.world
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    352 months ago

    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.

    • @fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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      72 months ago

      Yeah this is pretty much how I feel.

      I loathe musk, and despise twitter, and I’m happy about anything they will be unhappy about.

      That said, I don’t have a lot of respect for anyone who is still there. Journalists, politicians, anyone who has to be there for their job… I still just don’t have a lot of respect for them.

  • @Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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    322 months ago

    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.

      • @Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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        I can see this random tweet from Taylor Swift just fine in incognito mode. I can’t look at replies but I can see her posts.

        https://x.com/taylorswift13/status/1781171613058097619

        People on Lemmy link to tweets all the time and I can navigate and read them. Not sure what you mean then that it’s authwalled. It’s an annoying experience and it bugs me every time I visit to make an account or log in, but I can see them.

        • redfellow
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          102 months ago

          You can see a tweet, but not list of her tweets, iirc.

          • Poplar?
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            12 months ago

            You can view some profiles (authwall for others) and some show all content (tried it out with bbc and forbes), others drop relatively recent content while some others only show ancient content from a year or more ago.

            The latter two were when I tried opening the twitter pages for some smaller podcasts I follow.

    • @Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de
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      42 months ago

      Someone could just open another account with a new mail address. Blocking doesn’t help much against stalkers as long as your posts are public.

  • @ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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    282 months ago

    And that’s on top of all the Brazil users who fled to BlueSky when he refused to comply with a court order (and pay a fine) so they blocked Twitter for a few days. I’m not sure how many went back after he paid the fine but BlueSky was fairly popular in Brazil even during the closed beta so I’m sure a ton stuck around.

    • @vzq@lemmy.world
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      There is notably more Portuguese content since then. I’m guessing quite a bit stuck around.

    • Flying Squid
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      122 months ago

      Just like a real girlfriend, but better. Apart from you having absolutely no sex life and apart from the fact that it has absolutely no emotional attachment or attraction to you whatsoever. And it will also never do anything like buy you dinner or a birthday present. Enjoy throwing money at your robot that you can’t even fuck like a fleshlight.

        • Flying Squid
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          Fair enough, but I wouldn’t call that having a sex life unless you’re really into fucking tubes and aren’t just using it as a vagina substitute.

    • @Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      202 months ago

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

      With Xitter, we know for certain.

    • @fantawurstwasser@feddit.org
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      132 months ago

      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
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        72 months ago

        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
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          12 months 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.

    • @sibachian@lemmy.ml
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      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.

      • @T156@lemmy.world
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        22 months ago

        Although it also helps that places like BlueSky have less of a barrier to entry.

        Alternatives like Mastodon are a bit more confusing, compared to a centralised site, where everything is linked in through the one interface.

        • @sibachian@lemmy.ml
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          12 months ago

          i disagree. the only barrier of entry is when people are pushing the fediverse concept as a whole. for the vast majority of people; all they need to know is to go to mastodon.social and sign up, done. they’ll get the wider picture on their own terms and at their own pace if left alone.

    • Dog
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      52 months ago

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

    • @supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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      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
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        12 months 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.

    • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      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

      • @zeppo@lemmy.world
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        That’s how Facebook went for me the last time I tried to use it with a new account… I was immediately swamped with friend requests from people in western and central Africa. I accepted some out of curiosity so of course FB decided that’s what I was really into. I’m not sure if these people just send out random requests or why they want to add Americans… I didn’t get hit up for scams or anything, it was just people posting and sharing photos of their lives as normal FB users.

        • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          22 months ago

          That’s how it was for me too. I was never targeted or anything… although there was some discussion of some ridiculous scams others were supposedly doing. It was just normal conversation for them, for me it was kind of like a riveting soap opera. Too bad I forgot the password/it got bought out by an asshole.

      • @pycorax@lemmy.world
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        42 months 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.

      • @stephen01king@lemmy.zip
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        42 months ago

        1 reason for me, the algorithm. I can never find a lot of new thing to discover or new people to follow on Mastodon when I first started, which makes me not use it very much even now.

        • @Lag@lemmy.world
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          72 months ago

          I heard the struggle with recommendations is because it doesn’t track you. One of the suggestions was to use tags to find content based on your interests.

          • @ahal@lemmy.ca
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            22 months ago

            That’s a good point. The original question was why would someone pick blenny Bluesky over mastodon? You just hit the nail on the head.

            It’s because the vast majority of users value features and usability much higher than privacy.

      • @ahal@lemmy.ca
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        22 months ago

        Because users value usability over privacy.

        The major thing that make Mastodon unusable is lack of users. That and lack of algorithmic feeds.