LONDON – Looking for a new social media platform because X, Threads and Mastodon just aren’t cutting it? you can try blue sky.

People looking to avoid the chaos, noise and political fuss following the US elections are noticing a different mood on the Bluesky social platform; The environment here is seemingly welcoming and there are noticeably fewer trolls.

The site quickly announced that it was adding more than one one million It welcomed new users in the week after Election Day and emerged as one of the fastest-growing rivals to Elon Musk’s X and similar platforms.

If you want to check out the new space, here’s a guide to how Bluesky works:

getting started

Maybe you’re not ready to add another social media account. No problem — all posts and profiles are public, so you can browse Bluesky without signing up.

You may experience a feeling of deja vu because the look and feel of the platform is very similar to X. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was the first Bluesky champion. (Dorsey is no longer affiliated with Bluesky, which is owned and operated by his executive team as a public interest company.)

If you go out on a limb and get an account, you’ll need a username. You’ll notice that Bluesky handles are slightly different because by default they end in .bsky.social, which is the site’s domain name.

You can personalize your username to make it more memorable by using your own website’s domain or purchasing a custom domain through Bluesky. But this may not be something most new users need or want to do right away.

How do I find interesting people?

Bluesky boasts that it offers users “algorithmic selection” to tailor the content shown to them, rather than leaving it to the whims of a centralized system.

“Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billionaires making unilateral decisions about what we see.” says.

This means you can follow custom posts created by other users or design your own posts. If you tap #Feeds in the menu on the left, you’ll see some default offerings, like Cat Pictures and Gardening. My Bangers is a list of your most popular posts by likes, and Catch Up shows the site’s most popular posts from the last 24 hours. You can find more by searching and tapping the Streams button.

There’s also the usual “Discover” feed of suggested posts and a chronological feed of accounts you follow.

Bluesky to help new users get used to it starter packs Recommended posts and accounts to follow that anyone can create and share. They do not appear in Bluesky’s search results, but can be found at: online directories.

Or someone might share one with you. After I signed up, a colleague referred me to one. major news sources. There are tens of thousands of starter packs, ranging from broadly appealing topics like Taylor Swift to niche interests like Taylor Swift. cargo bikes or comedians in the United Kingdom. You can follow the entire package or scroll down the list to select individual accounts.

What about the people you follow on X? There is a browser extension tool called Sky Follower Bridge this will help you find X users who have switched to Bluesky. But before you click the follow button, check to make sure there isn’t a different user using the same display name or handle.

How to publish?

Ready to join the conversation? You can write a post or reply to others, but keep it short because there is a 300 character limit (20 characters more than in X). You can also upload photos and videos, but videos cannot be longer than 60 seconds. Of course, GIFs and emojis are also available.

You can @ people by typing their username, like posts by tapping the heart icon, or use hashtags to highlight a theme. Bluesky added: menu turn into hashtags; so when you click on one you get different options to see or mute posts in that topic.

What about trolls?

Bluesky’s approach to decentralization also extends to the content control options it offers.

For starters, users can choose to reply, repost, or quote posts from the settings menu. Specific words or hashtags can be muted temporarily or forever, while accounts can be muted or blocked individually or collectively by adding a checklist. You can even fine-tune the level of adult content shown in your feed.

Bluesky has a team of content moderators who monitor the site for illegal or rule-breaking material. But it also takes a different approach through open sourcing. content moderation system In an attempt to address issues with traditional moderation services, which are said to “lack transparency and user control.”

So individuals or groups can create their own content filters or taggers that go beyond what Bluesky offers. These taggers can be used to categorize content or users; these can then be blocked or hidden. But they can also be used for informational or creative purposes, such as editing or validating content.

Taggers exist to detect images created by artificial intelligence or to check the accuracy of news posts. you can find lists of taggers online. After subscribing to a US politics tagger, some posts in my feed were flagged as “!Donald Trump” or “!Democrat politician” and hidden unless I clicked Show.

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Follow Kelvin Chan blue sky

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