What You Should Know When Joining Bluesky
EFF: “Bluesky promises to rethink social media by focusing on openness and user control. But what does this actually mean for the millions of people joining the site? November was a good month for alternatives to X. Many users hit their balking point after two years of controversial changes turned Twitter into X, a restrictive hub filled with misinformation and hate speech. Musk’s involvement in the U.S. presidential election was the last straw for many who are now looking for greener pastures. Threads, the largest alternative, grew about 15% with 35 million new users. However, the most explosive growth came from Bluesky, seeing over 500% growth and a total user base of over 25 million users at the time of writing. We’ve dug into the nerdy details of how Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky compare, but given this recent momentum it’s important to clear up some questions for new Bluesky users, and what this new approach to the social web really means for how you connect with people online. Note that Bluesky is still in an early stage, and many big changes are anticipated from the project. Answers here are accurate as of the time of writing, and will indicate the company’s future plans where possible.”
How I Use My RSS Feed for Bluesky and Mastodon
Lifehacker: “It’s understandable if you’re a little burnt out on social media at the moment. I put off setting up a Bluesky account for years, mostly because I didn’t want yet another service to think about. At the same time, though, a lot of interesting people have shifted their posting to alternative sites like Bluesky account.
The good news: you can follow users on either site without ever setting anything up. That’s because every Bluesky and Mastodon account offers an RSS feed. This means you can use any of the best RSS readers to follow posts from any specific user. This is an ideal solution if you mostly want to keep up with the posts of a couple people. You could use this if there’s a writer whose articles and ideas you want to keep track of, for example. The RSS feeds for both services aren’t exactly obvious. Here’s how to find them…”
