By KELVIN CHAN, business journalist
LONDON (AP) — Are you in search of a brand new social media platform because X, Threads and Mastodon just aren't enough? You could try it Bluesky.
People seeking to avoid the chaos, noise and political hubbub following the US elections are noticing a changing mood on the Bluesky social platform, where the atmosphere appears to be welcoming and there are significantly fewer trolls.
The site announced that it had quickly added greater than 1,000,000 gained recent users within the week after Election Day and has turn out to be one in every of the fastest-growing competitors to Elon Musk's X and similar platforms.
If you're tempted to check out the brand new range, here's a guide to how Bluesky works:
First steps
You might not be able to add one other social media account yet. No problem – you possibly can still browse Bluesky without logging in as all posts and profiles are public.
You might get a way of déjà vu because the looks and operation of Platform X are very similar. This shouldn't be a surprise since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was an early Bluesky champion. (Dorsey now not has an interest in Bluesky, which is owned by his executive team and operates as a nonprofit corporation.)
If you are taking the step and open an account, you have to a username. You'll notice that Bluesky handles are barely different in that by default they end in the location's domain, .bsky.social.
You can personalize your handle to make it more memorable through the use of your individual website's domain or purchasing a custom domain through Bluesky. But it might not be something most newbies need or need to do instantly.
How do I find interesting people?
Bluesky boasts of giving users “algorithmic choice” to customize the content they see, relatively than leaving it to the whims of a centralized system.
“Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billionaires making unilateral decisions about what we see.” it says.
This means you possibly can follow custom feeds arrange by other users or create your individual. If you tap #Feeds within the menu on the left, you'll see some standard offerings like “Cat Pictures” and “Gardening.” My Bangers is a listing of your hottest posts by likes, and Catch Up shows the location's hottest posts from the last 24 hours. You can find more by doing a search and tapping the Feeds button.
There's also the standard “Discover” feed with suggested posts and a chronological feed with the accounts you follow.
To make it easier for brand new users to get used to it, Bluesky has done this Starter packs of really helpful feeds and accounts that anyone can follow, create and share. They don't appear in Bluesky's search results, but they might be present in Directories online.
Or someone shares one with you. After I signed up, a colleague referred me to 1 major news outlets. There are tens of 1000’s of starter packs available, starting from broadly appealing topics like Taylor Swift to area of interest interests like Taylor Swift Cargo bikes or British comedians. You can follow your complete package or scroll down the list to pick individual accounts.
What concerning the people you followed on X? There is a browser extension tool called Sky Follower Bridge This will enable you find X users who’ve migrated to Bluesky. However, before you click the follow button, make certain it isn’t one other user using the identical display name or handle.
How to post
Ready to hitch the conversation? You can write posts or reply to others, but keep it short as there may be a 300 character limit – 20 greater than X. You may also upload photos and videos, although videos can’t be longer than 60 seconds. GIFs and emojis are after all also available.
You can still @ people by entering their username, like posts by tapping a heart icon, or use hashtags to spotlight a subject. Bluesky added one Menu to hashtags. So once you click on one, you'll get different options to view or mute posts on that topic.
What about trolls?
Bluesky's decentralization ethos extends to the content control options it offers.
First, users can select whether to display replies, reposts, or quote posts of their feed from their settings menu. Specific words or tags might be muted temporarily or permanently, while accounts might be muted or blocked individually or in bulk by adding them to a moderation list. You may even fine-tune the extent of adult content shown in your feed.
Bluesky has a team of content moderators who monitor the location for content that is against the law or against the principles. But it also takes a unique approach by offering its products as an open source solution Content moderation system in an try and solve problems with traditional moderation services which can be said to lack transparency and user control.
This allows individuals or groups to establish their very own content filters or labelers that transcend what Bluesky offers. These labelers might be used to categorize content or users, which may then be blocked or hidden. But they might even be used for informational or creative purposes, similar to curating or reviewing content.
Labelers exist to discover images generated by artificial intelligence or to fact-check news stories. You can find Lists of labelers on-line. After subscribing to a US politics labeler, some posts in my feeds were labeled “!Donald Trump” or “!Democratic Politician” and hidden unless I click “Show”.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com