Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Category: Mastodon

Thoughts on BlueSky

BlueSky seems to have picked up a good bit of traction. There are lots of differing opinions on BlueSky where it fits, it’s future, and whether to support it or not.

I’m going to look at BlueSky mostly from an educator’s perspective.

Lots of people left Twitter, er X (no link intentionally). Twitter was at one point a very useful platform. Originally, it was terrific to be at a conference and follow a hashtag to know what was going on. Twitter also allowed teachers to share links, ideas, successes, and concerns. It was a place to make connections.

However, once Elon Musk purchased Twitter, a quick decline occurred. Twitter had been suffering from trying to figure out how to navigate external pressures (how do you handle it when a powerful person tells blatant lies?) and revenue issues. Twitter had tried a variety ways to fund their operations (external apps allowed?, not allowed?)

With Twitter becoming a toxic site, people started looking for alternatives. BlueSky had been funded prior to Musk purchasing Twitter. BlueSky was designed to be an open-source component of Twitter.

BlueSky was one option, Mastodon another. Mastodon is truly federated. There is no single owner (currently the originator of Mastodon has a lot of influence, but it is not the same thing as an owner; plus Mastodon is working toward being a fully non-profit, independent organization). Being federated means that there are many different sites that can operate independently while being voluntarily connected. If there are branches that promote things you don’t like, you can block them and never see them. There is real power in federation. There isn’t really a monetary model for Mastodon, it relies on voluntary payments or passion projects.

I tried to move to Mastodon in 2018. I loved the open-source nature of the platform. However, Mastodon in 2018 was a bit confusing. There was a bit of a learning curve. Most importantly, there were no teachers, no educators there (at least that I could find).

BlueSky skyrocketed following Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Although they claim that they will be federated, instead of utilizing an already existing protocol, they are creating a new one. The new protocol is still being developed, thus BlueSky is not currently federated.

BlueSky has been adopted by a good number of teachers. BlueSky has done some smart things. There are starter packs, which makes it easy to follow a group of accounts. I even saw a newscaster use their BlueSky account in their chevron the other day.

So, I’m trying to read the tea leaves for the future. BlueSky is the closest experience to the old Twitter. It is still very much centralized. That centralization creates an easier, smoother experience for users.

Several leaders who I follow have provided differing opinions on BlueSky.

  • Cory Doctorow – is not posting to or using BlueSky as this point. Although he respects many of the people involved and what they say that they are going to do, he is not investing in the promise of something. Rather, if he can’t move his information and presence from a site to another place, he will not support that site. Cory is on Mastodon. Moving information, exporting everything, is easy from Mastodon.
  • Ben Werd – has a neat write-up about if he ran BlueSky. He mentions quite a bit about what the promise of BlueSky is, but still seems to believe that there is a way forward for BlueSky to become federated and a successful, capitalistic company.
  • Manton Reece has a nice write-up about when BlueSky was unavailable.
  • Then there is the issue of BlueSky participated in Government censorship in Turkey. Due to BlueSky being built to eventually be open (?), third party apps did not have the same issue. (*Note that I’m not fully aware of the third party apps, I’ll need to investigate.)

So, who will be the winner? It’ll be interesting to see. I still don’t see educators moving to Mastodon. I don’t anticipate that they will be soon. Open-source still has too much “need to learn” and less than pretty involved. There are just too many speedbumps for educators to fully embrace Mastodon. BlueSky has the mind share right now. It is very centralized and very close to how Twitter used to work. The question is in part, will BlueSky truly federate? Will BlueSky end up being controlled by a small number (or one) of individuals? We won’t know the answers until we know the answers. At that point, it may be too late. We may have just exchanged one bad situation for exactly the same thing.

Mastodon and WordPress

First of all, I love that I can post to my blog and have that post automatically be posted to Mastodon as well. This has partially changed my relationship with my blog. I’m posting much more to my blog, knowing that I get an increased audience opportunity by also going to Mastodon.

Basically, I post to my blog and everything flows to Mastodon. I use the Mastodon Autopost plugin. This allows me to control whether a blog post goes to Mastodon or not (via a simple checkbox in the side panel). I installed this prior to the ActivityPub plugin being available. Plus, the ActivityPub plugin wants to use the name on my admin account, which is not my name, and I haven’t found an easy way to change that. Autopost works for what I want.

However, when I post, if I use the built-in Featured Image to set a featured image, the ALT-Text doesn’t stay with the image. That is, I’ve entered the ALT-Text for the image within the Media Library, but that ALT-Text doesn’t make it to Mastodon.

I frequently use a Featured image plugin that allows you to use a URL as the featured image. This is my preference since I don’t have to take up space on my server. If I use the Featured image plugin, I can click the Preview button and see the image, PLUS, I get an ALT-Text box. I can enter ALT-Text here and it will travel to Mastodon.

Mastodon has a culture of providing ALT-Text. I want to be a good citizen, respectful of users who need ALT-Text, and do the right thing.

So, this may be a tip that the Featured image plugin will allow you to provide ALT-Text (remember to click the Preview button to be presented with the ALT-Text box). OR, this might be a request to know if there is a way to get ALT-Text to travel from WordPress to Mastodon.

Tracking Kids

An article by 9to5 Mac, titled “Tens of millions of teens want parents to track them, finds survey” cites a WSJ article about kids being tracked (which is behind a paywall).

@9to5Mac

This is interesting. Gen Z (aged 11-26) wants to be tracked by their parents. Given that Life360 was called out for selling precise location data, this is very interesting.

It seems as though teenagers have always wanted to have freedom, to find their own way, to start developing independence and separation from their parents.

The article mentions:

  • Specific time tracking (like when out on a date)
  • Mental health (anxiety)
  • Better relationship with parents

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