Bluesky Is Booming in Japan

[toddmorey]

The article nails Twitter's problem: spambots and promoted tweets. Checking Twitter now feels like checking my spam folder. Bluesky at the moment feels like a group chat with old friends.

It will get worse as it grows—that's how these things seem to go. However, two things give me a bit of hope: first it's been a chance for a complete reset and I'm ruthless curating who I follow. Secondly, and most importantly, hackability and API access makes it easier to filter out the stuff I don't want to see. You don't even have to built it yourself! There are already AI tools that will hide screenshots from Twitter / Insta / etc for example.

[josefritzishere]

The Twitter nazi problem is also real. Nobody wants to hang out at a pub where a bunch of nazis are doing their nazi thing. Ditto chatrooms, social media etc.

[sundaeofshock]

I think the “Don’t engage, just block” culture helps a lot. I don’t have much of a block list since the larger accounts I follow have been ruthless in with their block lists. There is a spam-bot “herd-immunity” developing in certain communities on Bluesky.

[amazingamazing]

Silly fools - once they need money it’ll turn to poo just like all other social media.

[bryanlarsen]

There was an intermediate state on Twitter -- where the default experience was poo but one could make Twitter palatable by using third party clients and other tools.

The promise of Bluesky is that this intermediate state won't be yanked. There are some steps they've taken to fulfill this promise, but it's not fully realized.

[rsynnott]

I mean, if it just gets as bad as pre-Musk Twitter (which was basically financially stable, albeit certainly not printing money), then I think a lot of people would be okay with that. People were tolerant of a lot of shit from Twitter; there's a reason it was affectionately known as the hellsite.

[fallinghawks]

This is great news to me. I've made the switch to Bluesky, but don't want to close my account on X yet because I follow a bunch of Japanese game devs, for whom US politics is not a reason to leave. Hope to see them on bsky.

[fofoz]

Bluesky stats:

https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

https://bcounter.nat.vg/

[attilakun]

These are great. I'm working on something related, a hashtag tracker for Bluesky [1]. Japanese posts are often among the top hashtags.

[1] https://www.butterflystats.com/

[nixpulvis]

I'm still waiting for the dust to settle before I open my starter packs.

I don't really need to be caught up in the hype. Even though marketing myself more would be nice. This rat race is exhausting sometimes.

[mehdix]

Filter this page [1] for newly created profiles and see how it grows in realtime.

https://firesky.tv/

[nixpulvis]

What the hell am I looking at here!? This surely can't be ALL the messages right!? That would be amazing.

Someone want to do the math on bitrates?

[maelito]

French posts have also skyrocketed.

[p4bl0]

Indeed! In particular in higher-education and research many people moved over to Bluesky in the past two weeks. In fact, the biggest "starter pack" on the platform is the French “#HelloESR” pack (ESR means "enseignement supérieure et recherche", literally "higher-education and research").

[esskay]

Not really a Japan exclusive thing, it's had massive growth recently.

[leosanchez]

Did people stop having meltdown about politics?

When I installed few days ago every post was about politics it was suffocating.

[hagbard_c]

The amount of BS astroturf - or should that be bluescreen [1] given the subject at hand? - is remarkable which makes me wonder whether these posts are created by a small but dedicated number of users. Having a quick look at the submission history for belter, a prolific high-karma poster indicates this might be the case given that it shows 7 posts in the last 4 days which either directly plug BS (3 posts) or are negative towards something related to Musk or X (4 posts).

7 posts in 4 days sounds like a person on a mission. What about others though? It would be a coincidence if belter happened to be the leader of the pack when it comes to BS bluescreening. So, what does it look like for the last 7, 31, 365 and (why not) 3650 days? Well, like this when searching for posts with 'bluesky' in the title [2]:

In the last 7 days belter was actually the most prolific bluescreener. In the last 31 days (i.e. including the whole post-election period) the following users submitted two or more posts with 'bluesky' in the title:

      2 "coloneltcb"
      2 "davidbarker"
      2 "hasheddan"
      2 "hboon"
      2 "Karrot_Kream"
      2 "Kye"
      2 "ulrischa"
      3 "belter"
      3 "colinprince"
      3 "consumer451"
      4 "cannibalXxx"
      4 "speckx"
     11 "mooreds"

Run the command yourself [2] for the other results, they are less interesting. The results show most 'bluesky' posts come from individual users so in that respect this disproves the thesis that the whole BS push is the result of a few users trying to create groundswell around BS while showing there are a number of users, belter being one of those who are pushing the subject with above-average fervour.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key

[2] Run this command:

    now=$(date +%s);query="bluesky";for n in 7 31 365 3650;do echo -e "\nLAST $n days\n"; curl -s -d '{"query":"'$query'","page":0,"hitsPerPage":1000,"minProximity":7,"numericFilters":["created_at_i>'$((now - (n*24*60*60)))'"],"restrictSearchableAttributes":["title","url"]}' 'https://uj5wyc0l7x-dsn.algolia.net/1/indexes/Item_dev_sort_date/query?x-algolia-agent=Algolia%20for%20JavaScript%20(4.13.1)%3B%20Browser%20(lite)&x-algolia-api-key=28f0e1ec37a5e792e6845e67da5f20dd&x-algolia-application-id=UJ5WYC0L7X'|jq '.["hits"].[].author'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n;done|less

[sundaeofshock]

People post frequently on topics they like. There are plenty of folks on HN that are heavily engaged in just a few topics, from specific programming languages to certain political ideas.

[hagbard_c]

Running a variation on the command [1] above shows that belter is not so much focused on BS, rather he has a bone to pick with Musk which most likely explains his interest in X-alternative BS:

    Top authors for posts mentioning 'musk':

    LAST 7 days

      2 "breadwinner"
      2 "cannibalXxx"
      2 "highcenburg"
      2 "mpweiher"
      2 "peutetre"
      2 "RobinHirst11"
      2 "thunderbong"
      3 "rntn"
      4 "belter"
      4 "JumpCrisscross"

    LAST 31 days

      4 "ivewonyoung"
      4 "marban"
      4 "paulpauper"
      4 "rbanffy"
      5 "mitchbob"
      6 "peutetre"
      7 "rntn"
      8 "2OEH8eoCRo0"
      8 "JumpCrisscross"
     15 "belter"

    LAST 365 days

     12 "howard941"
     12 "isaacfrond"
     12 "jrflowers"
     15 "bookofjoe"
     15 "rbanffy"
     17 "doener"
     19 "peutetre"
     27 "rntn"
     29 "JumpCrisscross"
     30 "belter"

    LAST 3650 days

     12 "howard941"
     12 "isaacfrond"
     12 "jrflowers"
     15 "bookofjoe"
     15 "rbanffy"
     17 "doener"
     19 "peutetre"
     27 "rntn"
     29 "JumpCrisscross"
     30 "belter"


 [1] Run this command:
    query="musk"; now=$(date +%s); echo -e "Top authors for posts mentioning '${query}':\n";for n in 7 31 365 3650;do echo -e "\nLAST $n days\n"; (curl -s -d '{"query":"'$query'","page":0,"hitsPerPage":1000,"minProximity":7,"numericFilters":["created_at_i>'$((now - (n*24*60*60)))'"],"restrictSearchableAttributes":["title","url"]}' 'https://uj5wyc0l7x-dsn.algolia.net/1/indexes/Item_dev_sort_date/query?x-algolia-agent=Algolia%20for%20JavaScript%20(4.13.1)%3B%20Browser%20(lite)&x-algolia-api-key=28f0e1ec37a5e792e6845e67da5f20dd&x-algolia-application-id=UJ5WYC0L7X'|jq '.["hits"].[].author'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n|tail -10) ;done

[nixpulvis]

I won't stop them.

[jazz9k]

Bluesky is just another haven for degenerate behavior with authoritarian leaders. It will be gone within a year or two.

[incomingpain]

Japan is 1 of 2 countries whose political polarization is worse than the usa.

The democrats fleeing to bluesky after the unexpected to them win of Trump, the greatest threat to democracy...

Identical for Japan's exodus. LDP did still win in october.

One of the shocking things CNN recently said. X is properly balanced politically. This is what's needed to cure the polarization.

[piva00]

> One of the shocking things CNN recently said. X is properly balanced politically. This is what's needed to cure the polarization.

Care to elaborate? I really don't see the logical steps for this to happen, those bubbles don't intermingle on platforms since they pigeon hole themselves, the only overlap is through slinging shit onto the other side.

Would really appreciate some elaboration on how exactly this statement could have any logic.

[sundaeofshock]

I didn’t see that CNN article, however I do see my feed on twitter. It’s a depressing flood of MAGA assholes that made it painful to see anything interesting. I’m sick of all the rage bait that’s pushed because it juices engagement numbers.

It’s been a joy to follow conversations on Bluesky and not have to worry about some chud interrupting with “cry more libtard” or some anti-trans bullshit.

[fomine3]

Absolutely false. Both side still love X.

[walthamstow]

I am entirely fed up with articles about Bluesky growth / Twitter demise that include only the proportions and not the absolute values

So Bluesky users quintupled... is that from 5 to 25 or what?

[ahiknsr]

From the article

> Active daily user numbers in Japan of Facebook-owner Meta's Threads have picked up from about 500,000 to 1.5 million, while for Bluesky it has gone from about 50,000 to about 500,000.