this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Just around 24 hours after Musk made his comments, more than 42,000 new users joined Bluesky, making it the biggest signup day yet for the currently invite-only platform that launched earlier this year.

Bluesky saw a total of 53,585 new signups by the end of Tuesday, September 19. The new users gained in that single day make up 5 percent of the platform's entire user base of 1,125,499 total accounts.

The new user signups are tracked via the third-party website "Bluesky Stats." Looking over Bluesky signup numbers on the tracker for the past month, it appears that the platform usually sees from 10,000 to 20,000 new signups per day. Bluesky has doubled its usual daily new user numbers already, with many more hours left in the day still to go.

It's impossible to know whether Musk's comments about charging users to post on X really played a role in this, but it almost certainly had some effect.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

~~Who is the target audience for BlueSky?~~ BlueSky's tech isn't as open or developed as the alternatives though, is it?

Edit:
Not sure why I asked that first question, answer's obvious, so it was more out of frustration I think. Sort of in a similar way towards people moving to Threads or any other corporate social media again after getting screwed before.

[–] funkless_eck 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

it's invite only, which first makes you think, "oh cool - no spammers!"

but then you realize you just need one spammer to get in and now they only invite spammers, and control their invites... as a form of spam! Flooding the net with "cheap" invite codes (only $10!) and multiplying.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Invite only makes people think no spammers? Have they never been in any space with minimal obstacles to entry like that? Any place people are, there's going to be someone or some activity you don't care for.

Makes me think of folks thinking there will be fewer annoying people in online games with sub fees. 😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems pretty easy to control though.

Once spammer is detected, you just ban them and the account that invited, all the way up a down that invite tree.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And in the process nuke every legitimate user who may have used their codes, great way to build trust in a new platform. You can't even vet users to see if they are spammers or not because you need an account to view the service.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Wellp, Nintendo intentionally breaks their own games if you pirate their stuff. Not allowing bribes is a simmlar looking situation. "This product is defective the last person who had their hands on it mustve screwed it up somehow."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nintendo intentionally breaks their own games if you pirate their stuff.

I'm not aware of them doing this all that often. In fact, it's more something that game developers do from time to time, rather than Nintendo specifically. The classic one being when they introduce a bug that only affects the pirated release, then every time they get a report on that bug they know the user pirated their copy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm not sure what exactly they're referring to. if they're referring to the N64 games that was the developer Rare who did it, not Nintendo, Nintendo is just the publisher. If it's related to Switch games then it's possible they're referring to Online only games or the many many Piracy-related myths as well as disinformation that plagues the Switch Modding scene to this day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

or the many many Piracy-related myths as well as disinformation that plagues the Switch Modding scene to this day.

I mean I've been running a cracked Switch for years, and while my finger isn't on the pulse entirely I'm not aware of any of this either. They definitely ban people (I've had one banned) but even then you can still use the device, just not online or in their store (as if you were in there much anyway).

The bigger issue in the Switch modding scene is that half the developers are divas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Some examples of the misinformation include:

  • banning preventing people from using Installed Software (one person actually referred to it as bricked)

  • Bans preventing use of Wifi hardware (FTP or Local play)

  • Banned Cartridges will get other Switches banned, or that cartridges are still getting banned

Things like that are the most egregious ones.

Lately though it's mostly been what is ban worthy and what isn't. For that there are two camps, there are the conspiracy minded, and there are the more reasonable people.

For conspiracy theorists it's as simple as plugging in RCM (or Booting from the Modchip if they have that instead) and booting into Stock, that's enough for them to consider ban worthy. Some of them draw the line later at the actual firmware but the thing that these claims usually share is that they lack data backing them. It's usually influencers who make these types of claims (hence why it's become a cultural phenomenon, Yay 😒).


The more reasonable ones group the actions that are and aren't ban worthy through testing and historical evidence which is mainly:

Guaranteed Ban:

  • Piracy
  • Custom NSPs
  • Cheating In Online games (includes save editing and some LayeredFS patches)
  • Log Tampering (Using an EmuMMC can cause mismatches if used online)
  • Account Tampering (custom PFP)
  • Hacking the servers (CDN abuse, bans both console and account)

Things that don't cause bans:

  • Booting Package3 (bootloader)
  • Booting into Atmosphere
  • Overclocking (is dangerous, but not ban worthy)
  • Homebrew games + Emulation using package Override (holding R when launching a title)

Things still up for debate:

  • Use of themes
  • Use of NTP time changer
  • Cheating in Offline games

(They also give methods for preventing bans, unlike the first kind of people like Using emuMMC to separate Identities, blocking Nintendo domains in the hosts file, and even using Incognito to erase the Identifier data.)


Unfortunately Popular Culture tends to prefer the first type of person's opinion so I've found that when discussing Homebrew with people outside of the community it can lead to some pretty nutty arguments, even going back to ones from before, such as banning cartridges.

The bigger issue in the Switch modding scene is that half the developers are divas.

That is very true, many of them are assholes, I visited GBAtemp's politics section and was astonished to find out how many of them are Bigots, at least judging by the crap they spouted about "pronouns being forced" and "not wanting to call a man Ma'am" really disgusting shit that no respectable person should ever say. Nor should any forum ever put up with (basically GBAtemp is a Nazi bar).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Some examples of the misinformation include:

  • banning preventing people from using Installed Software (one person actually referred to it as bricked)
  • Bans preventing use of Wifi hardware (FTP or Local play)
  • Banned Cartridges will get other Switches banned, or that cartridges are still getting banned

Those all just seem like misunderstandings from users who aren't tech savvy, coupled with a little bit of urban legend gossip.

  • It's possible to brick your Switch in a handful of ways, but that doesn't mean Nintendo did it.
  • Officially the wifi is only used to connect to Nintendo services, so a user might think that the wifi doesn't work when Nintendo doesn't work (because they're banned).
  • Stories about dodgy cartridges have always been a thing.

Unfortunately Popular Culture tends to prefer the first type of person’s opinion so I’ve found that when discussing Homebrew with people outside of the community

Hah, yeah homebrew stuff isn't generally meant for proper conversation. You're either interested and ok with it, or you see it as just about piracy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah I think many of them serious misunderstandings by the people who posted the videos and articles, though also some of them seem to have been to cause fear since many of them tried to make it seem like they knew what they were talking about.

I don't think the ones who talked about systems being bricked actually knew what bricked means since they also said in the same breath "it can only play cartridges", which isn't what happens when bricked, in fact as I know from recovering a Switch with Prodinfo_gen that's one of the things a previously bricked system likely can't do if you had to generate a new prodinfo from scratch without a donor.

I could normally forgive the wifi misconception normally, however in the case of the person who was talking about Wifi not working when banned they explicitly stated that Local play between Switches won't work anymore, even when offline, which obviously isn't correct.

In the case of cartridge banning which was a thing it was always the cartridges themselves that were banned, but many news outlets both tried to frame it as if it was the user who would get their account banned, they also tried to make it seem like it's an Ongoing issue and that it's the end of used game sales.


I agree that homebrew stuff isn't really the best thing to talk about with most people who don't understand it well enough, usually does come up though in discussions whenever I open my Home Screen since I do have custom Themes with Wildly different layouts that obviously aren't stock (this is the one I'm using at the moment, but I have a few others I cycle through to keep things fresh).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Invite only is a technique that becomes a hinderance and gimmic after about 100k members.