More from The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms
The platform posted about the milestone this afternoon, which it crossed after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X yesterday as part of an ongoing feud with the platform.
Apparently, enough are headed to Bluesky to drive its iOS app to the top of the Brazilian App Store, as TechCrunch writes.
We already knew video was on the roadmap, but it seems like it’s the next big feature headed to the app. The app’s 1.90 update just added a bunch of useful-seeming “anti-toxicity” features.
Meta is now testing posts that will disappear after just 24 hours, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. (You may recall Twitter’s short-lived version of this, Fleets.)
When replying to one, you’ll see a timer next to the person’s name, along with a banner at the top that says the post will disappear, taking any replies with it, the outlet writes.
Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, wrote the “protocols, not platforms” paper that inspired Twitter to kick off the Bluesky project in 2019.
“It is, of course, exciting to see thoughts I’ve expressed for how to fix the Internet actually start to become tangible reality, which is why I’m excited to be involved with Bluesky to help it continue to move forward,” Masnick says.
Seems like a really useful way to help your friends and followers find stuff to check out on Bluesky. The starter packs have a link, a QP code, and a preview image to make them more shareable.
It’s trying out new “Show more like this” and “Show less like this” options within post menus that can help personalize your feed. The decentralized network is also rolling out performance improvements and alt text for GIFs.
Even without one Jack Dorsey, the social platform does have some new features on the roadmap, including:
DMs, video, improved Custom Feeds, better anti-harassment features, and a new login tool called “OAuth”
These are coming “over the next few months,” with a plan for off-protocol, one to one direct messages, and 90 second video clips.
[Bluesky]
CEO Eugen Rochko says the fediverse app has established a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US in order to receive tax-deductible donations. Mastodon was previously based in Germany until the government there pulled its nonprofit status with “no advance warning or explanation,” according to Rochko. The board for the five-person US nonprofit includes Twitter cofounder Biz Stone.
[Mastodon Blog]
The decentralized social network has awarded an $800 grant to SkyBridge, an “in-progress proxy web server that translates Mastodon API calls into appropriate Bluesky ones,” which will let people use their favorite Mastodon apps on Bluesky.
The funds came from Bluesky’s rather modest ($10,000 in its initial allocation) grant fund for developers on the AT Protocol.
In the fediverse, that is. Petition e-4769, which so far only has 850 signatures, cites the “considerable controversy, harassment, misinformation, and strife” of corporate-run social media in asking the government to use open-source alternatives like ActivityPub, the social protocol used by Mastodon (and which US President Biden is now posting into... from Threads), for communication, instead.
The petition is sponsored by Parliament Member Gord Johns, and closes on April 21st.
[www.ourcommons.ca]
Unlike every other app and service chasing the bouncing ball of vertical video (off the top of my head, we have YouTube, Instagram, NBA, Amazon, Reddit, Twitch, Netflix, Spotify... you get the picture), Bluesky’s April Fools’ contribution is... actual shorts.
At least, assuming they get enough orders on Custom Ink to put the shipment through, but I’m not sure why Bluesky CEO Jay Graber didn’t mention this when she was on Decoder?
While Threads continues to test the waters of federation, the team is working on other features too. Continuing a push that started with “NBA Threads” outreach events around summer league and All-Star Weekend, and snagging posts from newsbreakers like Woj and Shams, it’s now testing live scores of NBA games and plans to add other sports.
Of course, it’s March, so why not start with the Women’s and Men’s NCAA basketball tournaments and bring in the NBA during the playoffs?
Yes, Windows users can get the Threads app Mark Zuckerberg is showing here from the Microsoft Store
But once it’s installed, you’ll get the same desktop web app experience (loaded in Microsoft’s Edge web browser) that we’ve had access to since August.
One of the creators of the ActivityPub protocol, Evan Prodromou, is now beta testing the ability to cross-post from Threads to Mastodon. He’s the first non-Meta employee I’m aware of with this feature enabled, which suggests that we’re getting closer to a wider rollout.
In other Threads news: Everyone now has the ability to save drafts and access the phone camera directly in the app.
