Bluesky is booming in Japan — mainly for reasons other than U.S. politics

I've been on bluesky for a while (over a year). My (leftist) bubble was complaining about how boring it was for the longest time. Now I keep seeing people complaining about the influx of the "new" people joining. And here I am complaining about the complainers. Oh, to be a human on the internet.

It's Eternal September all over again.
I think the decentralized nature and barrier of entry might keep lemmy in the stage of the "good old days" of reddit before all the people flooded in and sorta ruined it

I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention Misskey. It's a Federated platform that connects with Mastodon and the like, and has close to a million users. After Mastodon it's the most active platform in the Fediverse, and owes most of its popularity to Japanese users.

Not surprising, they are trying to redirect people on bluesky not on the fediverse
they are basically running a huge marketing campaign and a few halfwits on the fediverse are promoting a 'competing' platform.

nothing new under the sun.
I saw a lot of bizarre shit from there through my federated Mastodon instance…
- Let's just say that decentralized social media lets Japanese users post stuff other mainstream platforms won't.
  
  So yeah, there's a lot of lolicon.

Seems to be mainly because Bluesky is just a better user experience.

Changes in terms of service regarding AI (artificial intelligence), changes in the block feature and the presence of so many bot-like ‘impression zombie’ accounts are viewed negatively by Japanese users

But, X is still incredibly important in Japan and Bluesky isnt a serious threat to it culturally right now.

X is still a major, major news source for Japanese users, so it really won't slow down anytime soon. Newer platforms like Threads or Bluesky really don't have any meaningful adoption or use for brand marketing in Japan — yet

Anecdotally, a lot moved to Insta or maintain both xitter and insta, but yeah, there's no real inertia to move and, outside of otaku circles, it seems that mastodon and the fediverse are basically unknown.

what do you mean reasons other than us politics? do other kinds of reasons even exist?

Reminder
Is this sarcasm?

P.S.

I thought only people on Reddit were stupid enough for downvoting just to asking a question.
- Yes

Here we are on the Fediverse. And Mastodon exists. Why, therefore would we BLuEsKy?

The Bluesky user experience is lightyears ahead of Mastodon.
- Cool, how do we convinced the Masto devs of this apparent fact?
- anything specific you can call out for those of us who have zero interest in moving to another centralized platform?
You can bridge them together and call it a day. Otherwise, presumably because a bunch of the interesting people who left Twitter are there and not on Masto.

I mean, don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to, I suppose.
- A friend convinced me, since they are on BSKY, to get an account. I don't really get the format of Xitter/BSKY/Masto. I tend to hang here mostly, and on Pixelfed but less so. Same disappointment on my part from those who can't leave FB/IG/Reddit because 'that's where all the cool kids are'. So yeah, I may open the app from time to time (month to month), but BSKY is not for me.
  
  Note: We had a guy in town called MudMan, built a labyrinth some years back in a local park.
Cuz believe it or not, people tend to use microblogging platforms to connect with others in a specific niche, and mastodon currently doesnt have the userbase to host an account focused on most niches.
- How to we 'get there', to a point where the userbase is to a volume/ size that it fulfills this requirement? I think musc is helping our cause enormously by being a fascistic a-hole. But hey, we can't rely on him for everything.
- Neither does Bluesky.
Because all of the cool people are there! Don't you want to be cool, too?

More bluesy ads?

I would love to see more Japanese moving over to Bluesky. I've effectively moved there, but can't really leave Twitter because I follow a lot of Japanese game devs there, and they don't have a strong reason to leave like Americans do.

I’m curious to see what gets promoted in Japan. BlueSky’s discover feed in the US is fairly politics-heavy right now since a lot of the new users have been fleeing X’s MAGA swamp.

I have no problem with political posts, but I’m hungry for some more organic variety. If I want variety I have to put in a lot of manual work to find people and topics to follow.

It’s similar in JP.

The discover feed isn’t anywhere near the “for you feed” on X, so the experience isn’t super personalised and gravitates towards us politics, as that’s the most popular thing on the platform (similarly to lemmy).
- Lemmy /all is basically memes, tits, and articles about crazy Trump shit.
- There's a dedicated Japanese Cluster only filter that's pretty varied though.
I don't have an account there.

My discover feed in a browser with English was some generic memes and jokes, something about Drake's music, some comments on netflix and movies, etc.

My discover feed in a browser with Japanese set as the main language was some of the same, photography, anime drawings, and probably about half of the literal same posts (in English) as above. This could, I guess, be related to other sites I have visited or cookies or something.

Remember kids, Jack Dorsey still owns BLUESKY, and if anyone is trying to tell you he doesn't, they're lying.

Dorsey is THE founder of BLUESKY, and is it's largest shareholder, even though he is no longer on the board, and went through the theater of closing his BLUESKY account, he will have the say in pretty much everything, not the least of which, which fascist Elon Musk clone, BLUESKY is sold to, when of course it eventually it will be.

Fool me once.

Maybe Jack will sell bluesky to elon again for 50b and create another network called "freebird", lol
- The ultimate grift
- Then definitely get sued by the washed up people still touring as Lynyrd Skynyrd even though none of them are original members
- Elonite will buy this one too and name it PhoenX
Do you have a source for the “largest shareholder” thing? I’m having a hard time finding anything about that.
- This user is spamming the same comments about this on every post about Bluesky and their sources are "trust me bro I hate Jack"
- that's right, you absolutely are having a hard time finding ANYTHING at all about the ownership of BLUESKY, only that it was incorporated. zero on it's shareholders, zero on Dorsey's transfer of private stock/equity. absolutely nothing at all.
Bluesky has exactly the same monetization and profitability issues twitter did, if anyone tries to tell you differently they're lying. Sooner or later Bluesky will fatten a sufficient crop of highly engaged users and run out of venture capital runway and be forced to look for someone to buy the platform. There's no way around this.
- yep
Fuck off with this unhinged, unsupported rant. Prove it or stop posting it.
Jack Dorsey still owns BLUESKY, and if anyone is trying to tell you he doesn't, they're lying.

But Mr Dorsey is no longer part of the team behind it, having stepped down from the board in May 2024. He deleted his account altogether in September. It is now run and predominantly owned by chief executive Jay Graber as a US public benefit corporation.

You sure about that?
- "It is now run and predominantly owned by chief executive Jay Graber as a US public benefit corporation."
  
  It's that predominantly that's the tell. The Guardian has no more idea who owns which and how many shares as anyone else, because it's a privately held corporation. Yeah, i'm pretty sure, and when they go public, we'll all be positive of it. If Dorsey wasn't the largest shareholder, they would have been feeding THAT out to the press, instead of the incessant every present PR line "stepped down from the board" and "closed his account" lol
  
  jack dorsey is the largest shareholder in bluesky because he founded it and has never transferred or given up his shares in it

If you are wondering how bluesky is gaining so much traction that's how. ADS.

Subscriptionwall.

Same as in subscribe-to-download sites or create-account-to-see-link forums: Do they want dead accounts that much?

The main problem with BLUESKY is that it's the same regurgitated shit you find everywhere else. As a brand new user here's the first 10 things in my feed:

Someone trying and failing to make a clever joke about the US Presidential election.
A picture of black hole (which is great!)
Semi-clever joke involving Professor X and Alvin and the Chipmunks
Self Described "transfem lesbian" screaming about how much they love women. I mean yikes it's creepy AF.
Boring US Political schlock about Lauren Boebert.
Science / Astronomy content
Video Game Post
Self Described "#1 Gayest Lesbian" screaming about how much they love women. A copypasta of the other and still creepy AF.
Another eye-roller "I am soooo depressed" meme.
Boring US Political schlock defending Dr. Fauchi

So BLUESKY seems to be Twitter v2, primarily inhabited by the Pre-Elon Blue CheckMark types. Can I "fix" that with filtering? Probably but if I do then the feed will slow down so much that even checking in once per day will probably be too often.

Well... Then... Just don't follow those people. My personal feed is 100% artists and scientists. That's the fun part of Bluesky; unlike Twatter, you're not forced to see all the cringe and ragebait.
- And you don't have one asshole owner boosting visibility of his own posts and those of accounts he likes, and lowering visibility/shadowbanning those of people he doesn't. The "For You" feed tends to have not stuff you actually enjoy, but things that make you angry.
The main problem with bluesky is not posts that you don't like, it's whatever it's centralized or not.
I use 4 feeds:

Following - full control over who I want to see

Popular with friends - I use this to find new people since my mutuals are liking these posts

Booksky - just everything reading related

GameDev - speaks for itself

What I also like better than Twitter is whenever I reply to someone / quote tweet someone but block them after, other people won't be able to see the post anymore. I've noticed (at least for now) that helps a fair bit against pile-ons and rage baiters. Hope it stays that way.
What’s up with the multiple account in this thread that refer to BlueSky in all caps? Is this one person spamming from multiple accounts, or is that a thing?
- The article body originally had it in all caps and once I noticed that I rewrote my comment that way. The article now shows it as "Bluesky" (no capital S) which is apparently the correct way. I dunno wtf is going on.
Is this a fresh account that you went to the discover tab on?
- Yep.
It is exactly like that, which probably is the point. I never got on with Twitter even before the downfall. Now on Bluesky I'm being selective about what I like and follow. I'm gradually getting the kind of feed that I like to see and reply to. It takes quite a bit of work to influence the algorithms to your liking, but it offers a different social outlet than what Reddit-like sites can offer.
I registered and I felt the same as you. Not worth my time.