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Bluesky Hits 40 Million Users, Introduces 'Dislikes' Beta (techcrunch.com) 56

Bluesky has surpassed 40 million users and is launching a "dislikes" beta to improve its personalization algorithms and reduce toxic content. TechCrunch reports: With the "dislikes" beta rolling out soon, Bluesky will take into account the new signal to improve user personalization. As users "dislike" posts, the system will learn what sort of content they want to see less of. This will help to inform more than just how content is ranked in feeds, but also reply rankings.

The company explained the changes are designed to make Bluesky a place for more "fun, genuine, and respectful exchanges" -- an edict that follows a month of unrest on the platform as some users again criticized the platform over its moderation decisions. While Bluesky is designed as a decentralized network where users run their own moderation, some subset of Bluesky users want the platform itself to ban bad actors and controversial figures instead of leaving it up to the users to block them. Bluesky, however, wants to focus more on the tools it provides users to control their own experience.

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Bluesky Hits 40 Million Users, Introduces 'Dislikes' Beta

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  • by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Friday October 31, 2025 @08:59PM (#65765418)

    https://www.socialmediatoday.c... [socialmediatoday.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Because Elon Musk bought twitter. In many folks minds this has parallels to the biblical tale of Lucifer being an angel who fell from grace to become Satan.

      Ten years ago he was going to save the planet with electric cars, solar shingles, advancing battery tech, etc. as well as moving human space travel forward. Now everything he does is evil because he changed twitter and supported Trump.

      The reality is somewhere in the middle.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Berkyjay ( 1225604 )

        The reality is somewhere in the middle.

        No, it's all the way at the Lucifer end and if you think otherwise, then chances are you privately think the Nazis were just misunderstood.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        Ten years ago he was going to save the planet with electric cars, solar shingles, advancing battery tech, etc. as well as moving human space travel forward. Now everything he does is evil because he changed twitter and supported Trump.

        Tesla's battery tech advancements were minor and mostly not their doing. "His" moving space travel forwards would do better off without him at this point. His supporting Trump has done more damage than he's done good. The EV revolution might have happened slightly later without him, but Trump might well have not become president at all, so he's especially done more harm than good to America.

      • by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Friday October 31, 2025 @09:53PM (#65765516)

        He was always a piece of shit. He always will be.

      • by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Friday October 31, 2025 @09:58PM (#65765526)
        He's a tech illiterate poser. Talks a lot about tech topics and science buzzword bingo, which got people excited in the early days, and it's part of his brand. But turns out his knowledge is only skin deep, he uses words without understanding what they mean, and he likes to take credit from underlings. He also lies a lot, and he's a deadbeat dad.

        Look it up.

      • He's still delivering exactly what he promised.

        The difference is that now a lot of people hate him for delivering what he promised.

        • He's still delivering exactly what he promised.

          You mean a Trump presidency?

          The difference is that now a lot of people hate him for delivering what he promised.

          Oh, so you do mean a Trump presidency.

      • But there is in fact no “biblical tale of Lucifer being angel who fell from grace to become Satan”. That's a post-biblical Christian retcon. There's a reference to the king of Babylon being sarcastically called a heavenly being (“Lucifer” = light-bringer = morning star = the planet Venus), but Isaiah 14 is explicit that it's just talking about a guy, not a supernatural entity; and the Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament”) does not have a devil figure.
    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday October 31, 2025 @09:45PM (#65765494)
      .. it's like 5% of the internet dude. So website lots and lots of people used suddenly became Nazi heaven. No shit those of us who don't like Nazis would like some serious alternatives.

      If you don't use the site or you only ever use it to look at the occasional post from a very specific person you might not notice the Nazis but if you read any of the comments they're basically everywhere along with pussy pics and bio bots cuz all the mods got fired and replaced with an AI written by teenagers.

      One of the pillars of the internet basically got destroyed. People would like to see it get rebuilt. Personally I'd like to see the journalists the Twitter kicked off able to draw enough of an audience again that they can make a living some journalism besides the corporate slop.

      Up until muskrat bought Twitter there was a ton of good journalism going on there. You probably did notice it because other outlets would pick up on it and report on it often without going on your way into properly credit the original source.

      People do not understand what they've lost even after they've lost it sometimes
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        I never used Twitter, but I saw the value. He took the closest thing we had to a public commons and made it the Nazi commons.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by quall ( 1441799 )

        I see more Nazis on Bluesky though.

        Obviously I'm using that term in the liberal sense, but you know all about that based on your post. Crazy how even Jewish people and patriots use Twitter/X over Bluesky, even though it's apparently full Nazis lmfao.

        Funny how "good journalism" had magically disappeared after Musk purchased it and introduced the ability to call out facts and bias. You ever think that it was always full of poor journalism prior to that? Maybe it's just that your echo chamber broke down. Kind

    • https://www.socialmediatoday.c... [socialmediatoday.com]

      Because the extremely polarizing Elon Musk bought Twitter with the intention of making it a having for the far right.

      Perhaps the site survives is politics and meddling, but I don't think we've ever seen a major social media platform this vulnerable since MySpace.

      We year about it because people are rightfully interested.

  • We need automatic AI fact checking and context providing of every post. Why? Because humans are dumb, therefore lies can be used to mislead them. Here's an example: Homicides in Ireland, Italy, Germany and even some US cities like San Francisco are at historic lows. However if you were on X you would think the opposite. Why? Because every time there's a murder they spread it around with various narratives and memes. For example, a woman was horrifically murdered by a black person on a train. Obviously the r

  • And I thought AI datacenters would be the final straw to break civilization's back.
  • by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Friday October 31, 2025 @09:55PM (#65765520)
    Another place for people to curate their warm, soft bubbles of bias reinforcement.
  • by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Friday October 31, 2025 @11:50PM (#65765622) Journal

    Now you can restrict what you want to see before ever looking, so there is no chance of seeing anything new, or learning anything at all.

  • by Fons_de_spons ( 1311177 ) on Saturday November 01, 2025 @05:18AM (#65765836)
    We should do the same for voting a new president. You can give one +1 and one - 1 vote. It may end polarization as the polarizing ones get nullified.
  • A lot of BlueSky users use it because it's not supposed to be algorithmic, you're supposed to create your own feeds. Of course people are jerks and abuse hashtags, and for example I see a lot of political posts with game development or art hashtags, but you can just easily block these people. This "user personalisation" sounds like it's one step towards yet another algorithm-based shitty monetisation model, because clearly they still have no new ideas on that department. Well, there's always Mastodon...
    • At some point you have to go to the algorithmic feed if you want to find new stuff outside of your current bubble, so Bsky was never non-algorithmic. Feceboot allows you to show all posts by favorites, friends, or subscribed groups or pages, although it doesn't exactly make this easy to find. I use a specific address [facebook.com] when I go there to get this functionality. It even works on mobile! (In older times, their app copied everyone's contacts and then deleted them so you're a schmuck if you trust their app on you

      • If the algorithmic feed is opaque, no thanks, because it's going to be the same old disaster like Twitter, it's just too easy a direction...
  • On one hand a lot of the people I liked to follow on Twitter are now on Bsky.

    On the other hand some of those people have been censored for saying things they could have said on feceboot without getting in trouble.

    Also Bsky has had a pretty pathetic bug as long as I've been using it where uploaded images and also the thumbnailed images for links just show up as all black. This does not happen on any other site. It does not always happen on Bsky. It seems to be worse on some days than others. I can post two i

  • Not surprised, though the story had potential.

    I have a few thoughts, but not worth the effort for stale story... Wish I'd seen it much earlier. Makes me realize (more than usual?) that Slashdot's use of time is fundamentally incompatible with my once-a-day schedule.

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