Since joining Bluesky, I’ve learned more about developers (coders, programmers, tech bros, whatever they’re calling themselves these days) than I ever imagined.

Let me make clear, up front, what I expect from a Twitter replacement: a forum like Twitter but without the Nazis and other moderation problems. I do not want to moderate a server, nor do I want to have to put up with some of the nonsense that goes on at Mastodon.

The first day I was on Bluesky, three or four weeks ago, it was mostly developer-speak. The next day, a large number of users arrived, and the developer-speak was drowned out in a sea of body parts and shitposting. Everyone was giddy not to have to deal with the mess that Elon Musk has been exacerbating. It was fun, but the sort of thing that ages quickly. The wave of euphoria crested. Now people are trying to figure out what comes next.

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After a two-week orgy, Bluesky is settling down to the problems of being a social medium. Not solving those problems yet, but defining a problem is the first step to solving it.

Bluesky looks to me like the most likely successor to Twitter, if they can solve their problems. The others have stagnated, for their various reasons. The network – the people on the app – is the most critical factor, and Bluesky did a good job on that starting off. But there are next steps.

Bluesky’s intention is to be a better Mastodon – distributed over servers/instances, with distributed moderating. What Mastodon has gotten wrong on that is the intimidating signup, which demands that you choose a server before you have any idea of what that is. They have now said that they will make that process easier, but I am not clear whether that has happened yet.

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I get my news from Twitter. I follow experts in various fields, from universities, think tanks, wherever. I also follow individual reporters and editors who have proved their worth and governmental officials. I do not follow “official” news feeds from media.

I use Tweetdeck on the desktop with an ad blocker, and my mobile is an Android. Both of those seem resistant to Elon Musk’s mucking about. In any case, my experience on Twitter is about the same as it’s ever been, minus some of the people I’ve followed who’ve given it up, plus far too much about Musk. My “For You” feed shows only people I follow anyway, with their tweets mixed up in time, not the string of Musk tweets others are reporting.

I have signed up on Post, Spoutible, and Mastodon. Mastodon came last night, when the feed on Twitter seemed particularly thin. I have been avoiding it for many reasons, mainly its complexity. I looked at it before the rush and was put off by the demand to choose an “instance.” WTF. I later joined up, randomly chose a server, and then tried to set up a profile. It was during one of the rushes, and the screen kept freezing. I really really hate software malfunctions and am slow to go back to sites that display them. It doesn’t matter that I knew why it was.

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Several decades back, Claude Shannon defined information theory. Here’s a short description that partakes of some of the hype that has always surrounded information theory.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Shannon’s “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” served the purpose that “quantum” does today. It was a way for a group of people to show their perspicacity in understanding pretty much everything and probably a contribution to dealing with a developing field. The transistor was invented in the early 1950s, and World War II had demonstrated the usefulness of high-speed computation.

There was much trying-to-be-erudite discussion of information theory and just plain mystification, as for the quantum everything we keep hearing about today. “Entropy” has always been useful. The fad for information theory in this respect has largely died, which is why I was surprised to hear that it has intrigued Elon Musk and others in Silicon Valley.

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Between temper tantrums, it appears that Elon Musk has some coherence to his worldview. There’s the rightwing stuff, but there’s also a distinctive Silicon Valley contribution. Jason Steinhauer explicates that contribution in terms of three “clashes” on how power is to be wielded.

Clash #1: An integrity problem v. an interference problem

The professionals (lawyers, scientists, college professors, trust and safety people) on Twitter see integrity of information as primary, whereas Musk sees interference with information as primary. This requires a fair bit of explaining, which Steinhauer does.

Elon has spoken publicly about how he views problems through an information theory framework. Information theory, which you can read about in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is a mathematical framework, not a journalistic or humanistic one. It is not concerned with the substance of a message—its meaning, its accuracy, its intrinsic value. Rather, its principal concern is getting messages from point A to point B with as little interference as possible. Information theory insists that solving the technical problem is the necessary first step in developing any reliable communications system.

This is why Elon has doubled-down on engineering while laying off staff focused on marketing, public relations, and trust & safety (in addition to wanting to save money). It is also why Elon has consistently tweeted about Twitter’s improved network performance and reduced latency under his leadership.

Further, Musk construes government and journalism as contributing noise, where others might see them as contributing organization and clarification.

Clash #2: Reverence for legacy institutions v. animosity towards legacy institutions

This is one of Silicon Valley’s dearest beliefs. Move fast and break things. Steinhauer has more.

Clash #3: Saving democracy v. saving civilization

A person who defines this as a conflict has defined the side they are on. A bunch of white men from South Africa and elsewhere have decided that they will save the human race. The Mars thing is part of this. Producing many children of their superior stock is part of it. The long-termism of Sam Bankman-Fried and William McAskill fits.

Musk is not the only denizen of Silicon Valley who thinks this way. It’s useful to understand their thinking for future battles.

Cross-posted to Lawyers, Guns & Money

I am moving into Phase 2 of my three-phase strategy for dealing with the destruction of Twitter. Phase 1 was to set up accounts on alternative platforms.

• Mastodon. A quirky platform run by quirky people. I have seen too many reports of it being unfriendly to people of color and arbitrary bannings by those quirky people.
• Counter.social. Not a bad interface, but nobody’s going there.
• Post.news. In beta, but they are building it surprisingly gracefully as they add users. Up to something over 100,000 users as I write. It looks like the best choice to me.

Phase 2 is to spend some time figuring out what is the best way to interact on Post. Its setup is different from Twitter: longer posts allowed, and comments on the post, rather than the Twitter free-for-all of individual reply tweets. My first feeling was that these are improvements, but I have become less sure of that. The interface is better than Twitters, but I hope they will eventually have something like TweetDeck.

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The deal is done.

BREAKING: Elon Musk will buy Twitter for $44 billion, shifting control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person https://t.co/4XSCeqRwzz pic.twitter.com/mkLMVEQAIG

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 25, 2022

I have greatly enjoyed Twitter. It has been my main source of news and a continuing thread of humor, and I have met a great number of intelligent and helpful people through it. It’s a communication medium in which I’ve tested my ideas and learned from others.

That is now likely to end.

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