Just to be clear: i'm very critical of a lot of aspects of bluesky, and it frustrates me to no end that so many people don't see or don't care about the red flags I see with it, but there are still a lot of things we can learn from them from a UX and moderation standpoint.

I also don't think fedi needs to "win" in a competition here. It's not a company that needs to show constant growth. Bluesky is a VC-funded for-profit corporation, of course they're going to grow faster and have more resources to develop nice UX. We should steal some of that nice UX though.

I much prefer the sense of community here. Bluesky feels a lot more influencer-heavy imo.

@oblomov I’m on my phone now so i’m sorry for my typing.

the lists are a big one. starter pack lists make it very easy to find people you might want to follow, and are more intuitive than our hashtag introduction system, though bluesky’s implementation means anyone can add anyone to a list so they’re also used for harassment - requiring approval is probably the move here.

the moderation lists to auto-mute/block folks are pretty cool too, and i think it could work alongside our per-instance moderation with some thought.

labels are neat, although i definitely expect they’ll be misused by bad actors there. probably need some moderation around them. kinda gotta see how that one shakes out.

Those are the things that scream out to me right now. All this shit takes development time and a lot of thought, though. They have waaay more funding than any fedi project i know of.

@oblomov @Eris

Starter lists are user generated. I can make my own starter list right now.

Users use the starter lists recommended by their community, and by people they trust.

@oblomov @Eris

People usually recommend them, but you can search for them too.👍🏿

I just searched for "comics starter pack" and two entries came up from people that seem trustworthy to me.

One is by @gregpak (Yes, that Greg Pak. Who wrote Planet Hulk, which eventually became Thor: Ragnarok).
m.youtube.com/watch?v=lWqUkMFi…

Another is by Eisner award winning artist Diana Souza.
portfolio.dianasousa.com

There are more, but these two illustrate the point.

(Feels very web ring-y! Shout-out Sage Weil! 🙂)

thank you very much! From the rest of the conversion I had with @Eris (subthread here <toot.cat/@Eris/113480947022388…>) this feels like something that could be implemented also for the Fediverse via public lists and a “one-click” import. The bottleneck would remain cross-instance reach of the list author, which BS solves by being centralized. I'll make an example to clarify what I mean.

1/n

@Eris Let's pretend Fedi platforms implement these public lists and one-click import, and that @gregpak and others well-known names compiled their list on Fedi too. I'm a newcomer to Fedi and join randominstance.social and search for comic-related lists, but since neither @gregpak nor the others are known accounts to the server I've joined, neither are their list, so the search turns out empty. So even with the feature, federation would end up making it less useful.

2/n

@Eris

So this is actually a wonderful feature and I would love to see it implemented, but at the same time I can bet on the fact that by the federated nature of the network it will *still* be a less smooth experience than a centralized service can make it, and this will *still* be a selling point for the corporate silo.

(Again, this isn't to say we shouldn't have it, I actually like the idea a lot. I'm saying it wouldn't be sufficient even if we had it. Ditto for blocklist etc.)

@elduvelle @Eris oh it will be a huge step, especially since if you join a high-volume server or one with topical interest, you're very likely to find a relevant list now and that will help build your follows quickly.

But in general, they will suffer from the same propagation issue that individual accounts have (what was the story of the journalist that tried Mastodon and dropped it like a hot potato because a colleague couldn't find him? I can't find the link anymore).