Astro Hacker News - My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions

abhinavb05 |next [-]

andypiper |root |parent [-]

I know the author, and do not believe that this is a true statement.

nunobrito |next |previous [-]

The article is OK albeit unaware of what is happening on the NOSTR world so I'll take the liberty of making some predictions related to NOSTR:

1) Blossom grows even more and defacto replaces IPFS for decentralized file distribution

2) Open Social goes beyond text and decentralized video, docs, meetings, calendars become easily available with several implementations sharing a common NOSTR protocol underneath for accounts and communication, see https://iris.to/ as first example

3) True P2P social web is achieved. Forget about servers or clouds, each cellphone becomes its own data center and cellphones talk with other using P2P techniques

KellyCriterion |next |previous [-]

Does anybody know what happened to the great "Mary Meeker" (?) Web Internet Report, posted annually by her?

I loved her compilations.

baggy_trough |next |previous [-]

> Bluesky will cross 60 million registered users in 2026. Growth will slow from 2024’s explosive pace but remain steady, driven by continued X dissatisfaction and improved features.

That would be a surprise since (active user) growth has been negative over recent months.

rapnie |root |parent |next [-]

Launching in early 2026, Eurosky Social [0] is coming.

> The next era of social media: built and run in Europe, ruled by our laws.

> Eurosky is building a European alternative to Big Tech social media and web services that is focused on innovation, user choice and open standards. Eurosky develops foundational software and services that enable entrepreneurs and startups to launch their products faster, cheaper and ready to scale.

[0] https://www.eurosky.social

chrneu |root |parent |next |previous [-]

As far as I can tell, bluesky is pretty much on the way out. Nobody really uses it like they did twitter. it doesn't have the same vibe. it just feels forced. the science community might save it as a kind of summarizing service.

i think this might be a problem with many of the "replacement" services. That initial growth and boom was driven by the novelty and curiosity of the service. Now that twitter is seen as kind of played out it feels unnecessary to be on a clone of it. The draw is gone and most of the utility(alerts) have moved elsewhere.

i tried using bluesky and it just felt...lame? It wasn't really bluesky, just the fact I was on yet another social media service. A significant amount of folks on there are only on there because it isn't twitter. then they realize they don't need twitter which means they dont need bluesky.

bluesky feels like a bunch of high school kids who didnt get invites to the real prom so they made a different prom, but the different prom kinda sucks. "Yay, prom!" "Um..this isn't prom, this is different prom."

AJ007 |root |parent |next [-]

Mastodon has been better than I expected after the first Twitter exodus slowed down. Much less noise than X/Twitter. The protocol may turn out not to be scalable, but it's very much alive.

observationist |root |parent [-]

It's like a compromise between forums and twitter, and there are some great smaller communities out there. When the curation and moderation are good, and the community has a solid purpose, you get gems - quite a few mastodon gems out there.

akho |root |parent [-]

At this point, it isn't clear why federation is in there at all. The "forums, bit twitter" concept does produce nice places, but federation seems like a net negative for that.

owisd |root |parent [-]

The steelman for federation is that email survived the rise of the big platforms despite no-one owning email, so making other applications follow the email model means they too could be free from central ownership.

jasonlotito |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> As far as I can tell, bluesky is pretty much on the way out.

Maybe in your niche, but it's absolutely filled with lots of great people, and the posts are on topic and fun to read. Perhaps the issue isn't Bluesky, but you. There are still great posts there, but if you weren't reading that stuff to begin with, maybe this is a good thing that you aren't using it anymore.

observationist |root |parent |previous [-]

Some of the worst of the pile-on, scolding, pearl clutching behaviors that made everyone very glad to see certain people leave other platforms make large swathes of bsky totally worthless. It's like a mashup of the worst parts of reddit and twitter.

There are a couple nooks and crannies that are worthwhile, but at scale it's not a good place. The vibe is "something went wrong" and "poor decisions have led me here" and not "warm, welcoming, vibrant, innovative community of wonderful people."

cebert |root |parent |next |previous [-]

What’s unfortunate to me is both Bluesky and X have become dominated by political posts. I don’t have any interest in that and just want to keep up with interesting tech updates.

j45 |root |parent |previous [-]

Steady might be just fine if a higher majority of those users are writers and publishers and not just consumers.

riffic |next |previous [-]

can't reveal too much too soon but someone out there is quietly trying to make "At least one major national government or major city will launch an official presence on BOTH Bluesky AND the ActivityPub Fediverse in 2026" happen.

jimmydoe |next |previous [-]

social network, and to some degree open internet, is a millennial thing, it will die out as millennials get older.

culi |root |parent |next [-]

A poll of gen alpha (aged 12-15) from 2024 asked about job aspirations:

  YouTuber (32%)
  TikTok creator (21%)
  Doctor/nurse (20%)
  Mobile app/video game developer (19%)
  Entrepreneur (17%)
  Artist (16%)
  Sports athlete (15%)
  Professional online streamer (15%)
  Musician (14%)
  Teacher (14%)

flipbrad |root |parent |next [-]

Something so grim should be accompanied by its citation, just so we can check it's not a windup

culi |root |parent |next [-]

I didn't wanna cite the Fortune article I got it from because it cited research from a group called "Whop" that didn't have the full data available. But here's the article I read

https://fortune.com/article/gen-alpha-dream-careers-youtuber...

EDIT: now that I'm looking more into it, I think this YouGov poll was the original source https://today.yougov.com/technology/articles/39997-influence...

I do vaguely recall a more serious study showing a vast majority of kids thinking "influencer" was a viable career path and a very large portion beleiving it was the only viable career path for them. It also found that these percentages were higher in boys than in girls. That's the study I was trying to find but failed and found this instead

xnorswap |root |parent |previous [-]

two decades ago it would have been:

  1. Movie Star / Actor
  2. TV Star / entertainer

Youtube / tiktok are just the equivalent for that age in this day & age.

culi |root |parent [-]

This is probably true and I would be really interested to see a longer-running study with a consistent methodology taking this on

senorrib |root |parent |previous [-]

I’d argue those aren’t really because of the social aspects of Youtube or TikTok.

ronbenton |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Anecdata—as one of the oldest millennials, I have seen a very steep drop off in social network usage amongst my peers. Too much IRL family stuff.

chipheat |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Why? At least currently I don't feel this way about them.

riffic |root |parent |next |previous [-]

A "social network" is a concept that goes far beyond computing and the internet

fogzen |root |parent |previous [-]

I tend to agree — but is there any data on this?

mnls |next |previous [-]

Bluesky? Fediverse? Really?

amannm |next |previous [-]

please put more work into AI generated content

antonkar |previous [-]

X or Bsky will likely evolve/become replaced by the social network where every tweet is an instant poll, here's a mockup I found:

https://x.com/MaskedMelonUsk/status/1987338574606356901?s=20