Interesting. Bluesky actually started as a research project at Twitter, but is now a separate company. Furthermore, it’s the reference implementation of a new decentralized social networking protocol, not based on ActivityPub:
I welcome Julia on a new media.
And I would love it if political discourse and judgement of this or that platform were not relevant (and ignored) when discussing a programming language.
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Even if it’s not as bad as 4chan, it’s definitely not a good thing if the leader and moderators use the platform to promote or censor content based on their political orientation and aspirations, which is not even debatable for X currently.
Which makes it all the more important to choose a platform that doesn’t throw political content and bots in our faces. I do use Facebook and YouTube, and while the leaders may not have as obvious a political motivation as Elon Musk, there is a lot of sponsored political bait. I might tolerate watching a video or ad about Julia there, but I’d never try to talk to anyone on there about it.
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Even though I brought up the “problem” with X, I agree that we should avoid political discourse on this platform. That probably includes too much back-and-forth about exactly how odious X, its owner, or the upcoming U.S. administration is. Clearly, we should be tolerant of a wide range of political views, while still upholding the core values that define the community.
There are difficult moral and practical questions around this. I would certainly like everyone to ponder the differences between political views and ethical values, and philosophical issues like the paradox of tolerance, but this is probably not the forum to do even that. It’s difficult to discuss in a level-headed way, and not to slide into hyperbole. There’s a real danger of creating bad blood quickly if we let this thread go down too much of a rabbit whole. Let’s try to avoid that.
I think that at this point, the people managing Julia’s social media accounts can make their own decisions on how to deal with specific platforms. I don’t envy them having to make such decisions, but I certainly don’t want to pile on.
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I really like the idea of listing relevant hashtags alongside the platforms that use them. Hashtags are of special importance on Mastodon in particular because of the more limited way toots are boosted to the public view (to use the proper parlance).
I am not on Bluesky, but I’ve heard they have something called “starter packs” which are curated lists of people that newcomers can add to bulk follow people instead of finding/following people indvidually. Perhaps a JuliaLang Bluesky starter pack would be a good idea?
Perhaps a JuliaLang Bluesky starter pack would be a good idea?
There is one!
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As some here already said, pretty sure this is the wrong venue for political discussion. Nothing good for Julia or the community would come from that.
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As a moderator, I strongly suggest we keep this discussion focused on the potential of BlueSky for the Julia community, rather than the comparative merits of American political parties or other social network companies.
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Yep, I’ll go farther and say this topic has accomplished its purpose: the BlueSky account has been announced, folks are getting connected there as they choose, and there’s even now a starter pack/list folks can join.
Thanks all!
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