That’s enlightening. It links to an article about self hosting a relay, which explains that, as I suspected, a relay does not have to mirror the entire network. It also seems that using a relay at all is an optional optimization.
It looks like the BlueSky AppView is not (yet?) open source. I wonder why nobody has built an alternative yet.
I don’t think many people have read RFC 5322 (I haven’t), but most non-technical people I know understand these things about email:
I do lament the overall level of tech literacy.
The average person understands email pretty well. Mastodon doesn’t require much more understanding than that, but could probably use some UX and messaging work.
I’m inclined to agree that’s a problem. Everyone’s first encounter with a social media content recommendation algorithm was one designed to manipulate them into clicking ads, so it caused some backlash. Recommendation algorithms can be tuned to show things people care about and want to engage with.
It seems to me software designed to facilitate discussion shouldn’t have a downvote buttton. There should be a UI for marking comments as inappropriate, but it should require a second step saying why. Perhaps one of the reasons should even be “I disagree”, but that option should have no effect.
It’s not impossible to abuse of course, but it nudges people in the right direction. Those UI nudges can be pretty effective.
In the context of ad-supported algorithmic social media, offensive is the wrong question. It’s about brand damage.
Showing an ad next to something that actually offends people can damage a brand, but even something a little edgy might turn off customers of a brand with a more formal or conservative audience. The algorithm’s ultimate goal is to get people to watch ads, so something a little edgy might reduce the reach of that content. Censoring it prevents the algorithmic downrank.
It’s probably more fair to call its claim of being decentralized fake or disingenuous. There doesn’t seem to be any way to participate in the ecosystem without going through the Bluesky relay, a central point of failure with strong incentives to eventually do something shitty.
Yes. I think it’s good not to form opinions about subjects you don’t know much about.
When it comes to voting in an election, it’s possible to make good decisions about candidates without forming opinions about every policy issue. That’s kind of the point of representative democracy.