Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

Is there any plan to offload hosting costs to users repos or do the relays have to bear the cost of images / videos ? It just seems very incongruous to me for a decentralized app to suffer from hugs of death like this link is right now. I actually tried to pull this up on the wayback machine but they seem to have only crawled as far as the butterfly logo ? Is this intentional ? I know that bluesky likes to give users control of where their post ends up, maybe they have asked internet archive not to crawl ? [0]

I liked how urbit did it, just paste s3 bucket credentials into the app settings. A - its pretty cheap even for a terabyte of storage, B - it removes liability from the application not having to host user content, C - it increases decentralization, with many hosts in many jurisdictions able to host content.

EDIT: I went to sign up for a new account and right away I'm given the choice to host content on my own server, neat, I think I'll give this a try [1]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20240831230005/https://bsky.app/...

[1] https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation

Servers are holding up so far. Somewhere been 800k-1mm signups (need to check backend). Fortunately we were overprovisioned. If we hit 4mm new signups then things should get interesting.

edit: we did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, firehose crashed a couple times, image servers are giving bad load latencies randomly) but we managed to avoid a full outage.

I left Xitter about 6 weeks ago and went all in on Bluesky. Took time to give feedback to the algo, but it's doing much better these days. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much, you'll get the same news & events on Bluesky. A lot of people who were scared of losing their following are reporting more, better engagement with lower follower counts.

What I really like about it is the ATProto, which while imperfect, seems like the best current design for the next gen of social media built on a federated foundation.

- DID for identity

- PDS for data mobility

- algo feed & moderation choice, you can build your own and anyone on Bluesky can use it (https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...) If you didn't see, they recently added anti-toxicity features and are looking towards community notes

- Bluesky is the twitter like view, but you can build anything on ATProto and leverage the shared infra

I'm personally working on a "reddit" like view of the Bluesky network. Not a reddit clone, but a different way to organize the same information around topics, news events, and/or links. One could also design their own Lexicon and build something very close to reddit. One of the cool things is that all the objects for all apps are stored into a single SQLite database per user. So if you want to move your data to a different host, all of the apps, content, and connections survive that migration.

I’ve started using it again recently and find it’s improved massively. I can find all the people I want to follow and my feed is much nicer. I see no reason to go back to Twitter.

Several folks in Brazil had much to choose from out of Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky as alternatives to Twitter / X.

Now that X got banned in Brazil and to potentially lose over 100M+ users we are starting to see which platforms they are choosing to sign up to.

So far, Bluesky is seeing a surge in user registrations after the invite system was lifted a year ago. I would expect Threads to also see a surge in registrations as well.

Mastodon however appears not to be even considered as a migration path at all yet, but either way it is still early days for all options.

We'll see in the next 6 months after this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471807

Reportedly, Orkut (which originally was popular in Brazil) was reactivated a couple years ago:

https://applemagazine.com/is-the-long-extinct-social-network...

I am surprised no one mentioned nostr.

https://nostr.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr

supposedly more distributed and censorship resistant than bsky. https://thenewstack.io/bluesky-vs-nostr-which-should-develop...

One of the linked articles said it boiled down to X being ordered to censor political opponents of those in power. They chose not to. I’m glad.

Now, traffic is going to Bluesky. I wonder if this means that Bluesky has or will be offered the same choice. We might see what the character of that organization is by what choice they make.

Hopefully the growth of Bluesky doesn't get crazy. It's handy for Twitter to keep the eternal September types in a sort of quarantine. Grandparents on Facebook, culture wars and spam/scams/porn on Twitter.

It's best if there's no single monolithic "winner" in the exodus from Twitter because that community would descend into the same patterns of stupidity that are unavoidable past a certain community size.

The next phase of social media should be about community affinity and quality, not size.

They will ban Bluesky too if it gets too popular .

So what can brazil do to shut down Bluesky if it starts hosting the same illegal accounts?

People still aren't CHOOSING to leave Twitter/X.

For anyone with a strong enough computer, you can see the firehose stream of what people are posting on bluesky live here: https://firesky.tv/

The stream has noticeably more Portuguese in it these last couple of days.

I don't understand why Tumblr hasn't been able to lift itself up amidst all of this

Beazil will ban Bluesky, too, or worse, Bluesky will comply with Brazil's censorship.

Nostr is the actual solution for this dilemma and our best bet to preserve free speech right now.

I think banning any network that allows citizens to air their views, whatever they may be, is very dangerous. Free speech that is free of control is essential.

I also think that anyone, especially someone prone to childish tantrums like Musk, having unquestionable control of a major network on which citizens can air their views, is also very dangerous. Free speech that is free of control is essential.

Bluesky is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's also boring. Most users don't update their feeds. The Brazilians will get bored too and leave once X.com resolves the ban.

X.com is where the action is at. It's where the news makers and shakers are.

I like Bluesky, its devs, and its tech. I even built a third-party web client for it in Solid.js. But I find Bluesky to be too toxic. There's too much unwanted nudity, even if all my filters are turned on.

Starlink will not block X-Twitter in Brazil:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41421531

Bluesky can become the modern version of Orkut.

Who would’ve thought it took legal obligations to get masses to finally adopt a Twitter alternative…

Bluesky is the new Orkut! ;-)

My favorite thing about BlueSky is I can be my domain: @bradgessler.com.

Here is a friendly reminder that Twitter/X started cooperating way more with government takedown requests since Musk took over [1].

So obviously Musk is not protecting free speech here because he usually doesn't do it. What is he protecting?

[1] https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...

“Masterful gambit, sir.”

(X is facing a deep decline in revenue, cutting its valuation from $44B to ~$12B [Musk’s stake is worth ~$7B], and Musk makes a choice that drives millions of users to an alternate site: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-collapses-84...)

This is all very unfortunate. It's sad to see liberalism dying in Brazil in real time. The very little reported thing is that this judge also installed a fine of something like $8000 per month (more than double the top percentile salary) for anyone using a VPN and also demanded that Apple and Google remove X and any VPNs from their app stores.

Brazil is rapidly turning into a police state.

Hopefully most people migrate to one of the alternatives not owned by an American oligarch

It’s obvious by now that this law will only get selectively enforced. Several members of the ruling socialist party continue to use X to push electoral propaganda aimed at the upcoming election (which would be funny if not tragic). [1]

Any law that’s only selectively enforced, is ripe for abuse by any kind of government. More so by a government that’s descending into autocracy.

[1] https://x.com/sofiafonsoferre/status/1830181842898530650

I'm from Brazil and this judge is totally out of control. I agree that X needs to have a legal representative in Brazil, this is correct anywhere, but he threatened a fine of 200k and imprisonment to the person Musk appointed as representative if his stricture orders were not complied with. He threatened us to pay $9k in fines per day if we use VPN to access X. Unless you are part of the government base, it is difficult to find someone who approves of his actions.

Disclaimer: indifferent at best to musk, probably more dislike than anything else, but not with vitriol.

So I read that this is all because musk refused to appoint a Brazilian citizen as an X representative, as dictated by Brazilian law. I have not verified this part.

Musk refused because the last person to fill that role had all their bank accounts frozen by the judge.

The judge also cut off payments from Brazilian citizens to starlink, something about relating star link to x. so musk said “well then starlink is free for Brazilian citizens because I don’t want to cut people off from their internet connection.” Or something like that.

Edit: blackeyedblitzar child comment of this has better information.

Copying over my latest backend status update; figure folks would find it interesting

Servers are holding up so far! Fortunately we were overprovisioned. If we hit 4mm new signups then things should get interesting. We did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, event-stream crashed a couple times, algo crashed a couple times, image servers hit bad latencies) but we managed to avoid a full outage.

We use an event-sourcing model which is: K/V database for primary storage (actually sqlite), into a golang event stream, then into scylladb for computed views. Various separate services for search, algorithms, and images. Hybrid on-prem & cloud. There are ~20 of the k/v servers, 1 event-stream, 2 scylla clusters (I believe).

The event-stream crash would cause the application to stop making progress on ingesting events, but we still got the writes, so you'd see eg likes failing to increment the counter but then magically taking effect 60 seconds later. Since the scylla cluster and the KV stores stayed online, we avoided a full outage.

Twitter is 'banned' in Pakistan for very similar reasons (requiring a local representative, requiring censorship, etc) under the guise of 'national security concerns'.

We are all still using it via VPN. We get all the govt related info from it, and no one is asking, how come the govt dept themselves are using twitter when it's banned?

No one will move to bluesky/threads/mastodon because as I said everyone is on twitter.

Afterall, if I want to know about the next road blockage or electricity outage, I know I need to go to twitter to check, where else would I go?

these are bullship tactics, but they seem to be working, and the internet is fracturing. It was nice while it lasted, but we will no loner have a 'world-wide' web, just national networks with passport controls on accessing external nets.

I remain surprised at how casually people will step over the free speech dead body so they can hate on people the media at large has maligned.

Regardless of what you think of Musk, where's your outrage over this blatant authoritarianism?

Found this on Bluesky lol

Funny how Musk bought Twitter for saving it from censorship and pushed it into censorship. The fact that decentralised services are becoming a thing it's a good outcome though. Maybe that's what always been in his mind after all :) ?

Brazilian Miku is dead. Long live Brazilian Miku.

I’m glad I don’t live in Brazil. Why ban X? It makes no sense.

Well, the general issue that caused it is disinformation campaigns

People that point out Brazil's current state of affairs don't seem to realize that eventually, a ban of unmoderated social networks is inevitable from a legislative standpoint.

I wish that X/bluesky/Facebook/etc had something like a clear label next to its users, maybe a robot icon when the post was created via their API or in an automated manner.

That would help people to identify campaigns already a lot.

But on the other hand, these are the paying customers, right? It's always "just advertisement" until it is not anymore.

double standards?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/modi-twitter-bbc-m...

“First I’ve heard,” Musk wrote in response to a question from Canadian lawyer David Freiheit.

“It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things,” he added, referring to the multiple companies where he is CEO.

That the tide turned against Musk when he undid the old Twitter censorship regime which was targeted towards primarily American conservatives. Since then, a lot of folks, including here and on major subreddits like news and politics, have openly wished harm on the site and on Musk. Here Musk was pushing back on illegal [1] censorship, and many people on this thread are celebrating the authoritarian judge responsible.

Lots of pro-censorship people on HN. Remember what happened to Brendan Eich? [2]

[1] https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198

It saddens me the Brasil banned X because of racism, anti-semitism and hate-speech. But X is still not banned in the west.

At some point we have to come to this realization in the west that absolutism is never the answer. Free speech is good upto certain extent, the way it was at Twitter before the rich and powerful took over. Moreover, it is content moderation and it doesn't have anything to do with free speech.