Stefan ⓥ

@GrossWeather Clarifying, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible now, I just don't exactly know what that migration looks like right now.

@GrossWeather And again, even if Bluesky dies, you'll essentially be able to "press a button" and move everything over to another similar host. I'm still learning the ins-and-outs myself, so don't quote me, but it might even be possible to do that now! Or broadcast your feed across networks.

Need to evaluate your thoughts again. Last time, you told me to stay on Twitter and not go to Threads. But a lot of people (including one friend I respect a lot - who will show me it this Sunday) suggest moving to Blue Sky. Should I? I do not have time to do both.

@GrossWeather Okay I've said too much now, but I'd love to see you switch! Your insight is invaluable, and I think you'd provide a great service on a platform that has a much more noble purpose than this one!

@GrossWeather The main advantage of Bluesky is decentralization. Without getting into too many details, it means that instead of X or Meta controlling everything in a silo, you are in control of your posts, followers, etc. If BSky ever becomes unusable, it's easy to migrate elsewhere...

@GrossWeather There's no such thing as a panacea, but I really believe that decentralizing social media is a step in the right direction and works to address 20+ years of damage done by big private social media companies.

@GrossWeather It might even be possible to syndicate posts back to Twitter from Bluesky, although Twitter has become increasingly hostile towards automated mechanisms lately, so I wouldn't bank on that.

@GrossWeather I'm not entirely certain, but there are possibly also tools that will replicate posts from Twitter to Bluesky if you want to trial it but not leave fully Twitter just yet. There's definitely a tool that will let you copy over your historical Twitter timeline to Bluesky.

@GrossWeather That is a much different landscape compared to now where private, centralized social media requires eyeballs and engagement, driven by fear and division and outlandish claims. We can more easily relegate that to the fringes to prevent it from infecting ALL conversation.

@GrossWeather Things might be a bit more civil, too, with network moderation and management pushed to the edges rather than being a large, centralized entity. The conspiracy theorists will still have their voice, but individual network operators will be able to limit their reach.

@GrossWeather While that is subject to scrutiny and the platform is still new, it at least signals a willingness to act better than the titan of Meta.

@GrossWeather Threads promised eventual integration ActivityPub, but I am unsure if that materialized. I'm also unsure how incentivized Meta is to do something like that. Bluesky is a public benefit corporation in contrast.

@GrossWeather Over the long arc, I expect one protocol will win out or we'll have fairly sensible bridging between the two.

@GrossWeather But right now if you switch social media platforms, you lose everything & start over from scratch. Bluesky and decentralized social media protocols are solving this problem. The only trick is there are two competing protocols: AT Proto and ActivityPub, which Mastodon uses.

@GrossWeather The advantage is obvious: You can switch email providers on a whim and not lose your inbox, contacts, etc. because all of those things are standardized via protocols. So providers are incentivized to provide quality product and not game their userbase too much.

@GrossWeather ...within the protocol network and not lose all your things. This approach is more akin to email; think of it like email vs. Gmail or Yahoo. Email is the protocol and Gmail and Yahoo are specific email providers adhering to the standardized email protocol.

@GrossWeather It’s the main implementation of one of the federated social protocols. It seems to be gaining a lot of traction lately as a twitter successor. The author of the IEM bots just relaunched them there! Would be great to see you there. bsky.app

Never heard of it.

@DevinScillian It's always been wild to me that you can almost draw a straight line from Detroit to Barcelona, yet the latter has a much milder winter.

Look at mild London sitting up there in Alberta.

Alright, I think Xwitter is really getting tough to be on. I’m going to BlueSky. See you there? bsky.app/profile/saramb…

@KennyTorrella @mbolotnikova I’d love to see coverage on the impacts of these types of facilities that currently exist in west Michigan. We’ve passed a few in horror. I’d love an exposé on their impact to the watershed, especially Lake Michigan/Great Lakes, our most precious water system.

28/That's all! A couple things: 1. I'm starting on a much shorter series about Midwest factory farm pollution. Got ideas? Pls lmk. 2. @mbolotnikova and I are launching a newsletter in September called Processing Meat. Sign up here, share w/friends: vox.com/pages/processi…

1/Today we launched a 10-story series called How Factory Farming Ends about the past and future of the fight against factory farming. To commemorate it, I'm going to share thoughts on each piece as they roll out this week. vox.com/future-perfect…