Post

Ben Werdmuller
@werd.io

You can’t convince people to move to a new network for ideological reasons. A few will; most won’t. The only driver is giving them something new that they want and can’t get anywhere else.

11 reposts112 likes

tierney cyren
@bnb.im

🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

tierney cyren@bnb.im

the second one is just... normal? we need to give people reason to use the thing. Every personal project I build right now uses it, and they're all non-atmo projects. People need to want the things they're using enough to be like "fine sure" and then *keep using* the things we build.

🎃 Booooooo!(ty) 👻 🍑
@reactionordinary.bsky.social

I mean kinda? The day I seriously began planning my exit from Twitter & asked my moots for a BS invite code was when he did that far reaching “rate limit exceeded” thing that made the whole app nonfunctional. Beyond ideology, I knew he was gonna keep breaking things & I didn’t want to fight w that.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

Look, I’ve been doing social for a very very long time. I know full well that you don’t get the mainstream to switch a network for ideological reasons. But I also know that it’s also startlingly rare for them to switch for any other reason too! There aren’t that many popular networks!

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

I mean how many significant sized social networks have drawn people in by doing something new in the last decade? Instagram isn’t new. Threads is Twitter but for your Instagram social network. Facebook is the same. Reddit’s not really a social network but it’s been there forever.

kylie4Bob
@kayfourbee.bsky.social

It kinda depends what you mean by ideological reasons. I quit twitter because it wasn't fun anymore, and it was becoming bad for me. That happened because its ideology changed, but it was the second order effect that pushed me away.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

I mean to me that’s ideological. Did you come here because it’s decentralized? No. But you definitely came because fewer Nazis. And it was only really founded because it was decentralized. So you know you’re here because it’s decentralized and lacks Nazis. Both of those are ideology.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

I don’t think that’s a pejorative thing to say, nor is it enormously complicated. But it’s not the extra functionality of this place that brought you or because it has new fun features. You’re here because it appears to believe in something different. As am I.

Ben Werdmuller
@werd.io

I think that’s clearly true, but the ceiling is also much lower - unless the center of gravity for culture and important conversations also moves here.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

Sure, absolutely true. I guess I’d just say that a million regular users used to be something that everyone thought was amazing, and the existing big social networks are very uncommon and mostly built on long term usage, lock in and network effects.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

It’s worth saying that of the three significant new social networks that aren’t already owned by a large social network provider two are ideological - BlueSky and truth social. And TikTok is the other one.

Sage
@sageauthor.bsky.social

I disagree that every person is on BlueSky for ideological reasons, but I see how you could phrase it that way. A lot of people moved from twitter to here because of Elon. He got rid of a lot of moderation which resulted in more hateful comments.

Sage
@sageauthor.bsky.social

Here on BlueSky they have at least decent moderation that works most of the time. So people are getting safer spaces here that they are not getting on twitter. Just my thought anyway.

Tom Coates
@tomcoates.bsky.social

I mean, I’d argue that was ideological - he wanted more racist, anti-trans, homophobic language and speech, and wanted to promote right wing people. So people left for a nicer space. I think it depends on what you understand ideological to be.