When I first got a Bluesky account, back when it was invite-only a whole bunch of the Physicists and Astronomers I used to follow on Twitter were already there. If anything it seemed like scientists were early adopters.
from one monoplatform to another? OK cool, what could go wrong?
oof. blue sky was created by the guy who made twitter wasn’t it? if he sells to the next bond villain, blue sky will just become twitter 2.0.
open source, decentralized.
Yes but it’s also a good sign that he left the project some time ago. He’s all about NOSTR now.
i have accepted that most of the internet will be a vicious cycle of enshittification. go to cool new site, site gets too popular for its own good, monetization kicks in, site now sucks, rinse and repeat.
FOSS stuff like lemmy and mastodon will never get past the first step, which is fine. they will just occupy a separate niche.
FOSS stuff like lemmy and mastodon will never get past the first step, which is fine. they will just occupy a separate niche.
I wouldn’t say never, but fedverse projects will need to find ways to smooth off the rough edges. Also the more enshittifcation happens the more I think people will be willing and able to get past the rough edges. If any one of the services breaks through and becomes mainstream, it’ll provide a roadmap to success for other services and people will be more comfortable with the concepts.
FOSS is the final destination after people get sick of capitalism ruining every other app/site.
People usually don’t go back to shitty products unless they have no choice. Linux users don’t go back to Windows. I’ll never use an Adobe product again. Etc.
Look at Linux’s popularity over the
yearsdecades. I’ve used it since I was 10 years old twenty years ago. It is absolutely climbing. FOSS hasn’t even peaked yet lol
Sort of like how they moved out of Florida and Texas. Repubs want a brain drain for some reason.
Proof that people rarely know much about anything outside of their field. They’ll just be playing this song and dance again when the Bluesky owner cashes in.
If/when that happens, its still better than giving twitter any traffic.
There is at least some (admittedly subpar) federation possible. So if the need is great enough, someone may take up the challenge.
From what I understand, Bsky didn’t actually provide much (if any) OSS code to create the federated apps, just the protocol. So there would need to be tons of work done to create it. Some people were (rightly) pointing out that time might be better spent improving existing solutions like Mastodon, rather than freely providing more value to a for-profit company.
Almost everything is available. You can run your own account host, feed generators, moderation services, app servers (appview, relay) and most code is open. The only thing not open is a bunch of custom scaling optimizations (like database configurations) and configuration for the official recommendation algorithm & spam filtering mod tools, and stuff like that. All the rest is available, and the things that’s missing aren’t necessary unless you want to match their user count (but then you can probably build it yourself)
I have no clue on the reasons people like Bluesky (or threads). None at all.
At least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, so they at least have to consider the public good in their decision-making and not just profit. May not be much, but it’s a start.
What like OpenAI?
OpenAI was always set up in a stupid way though. It was always for profit business that owned a charity, so there was always this potential to go into the “for-profit exclusively” direction.
If you look at news articles from a few years ago even back then there were people saying that the name isn’t really appropriate. GPT has never been open source at any point.
How is that regulated?
May not be much, but it’s a start.
Actually, when you tell people something is a start but it is actually a false start that doesn’t deliver on the fundamental promises at all, it is much worse than having a much slower start…
At least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation
🤡 🤡 🤡 🪴 🐶 👶 🤡
^ people that think that actually matters in 2025
Bluesky has a lot more normies on it while mastodon is mostly early-adopter types. Mastodon, in my experience, is either very technical people (software engineers and other tech people) or very political people. Bluesky has normal people on it
I checked out threads for a day and I liked it because the algorithm wasn’t jamming a bunch of outrage content down my throat but that’s the only thing I can say about it. Haven’t used it since then (deleted my entire meta account)
Took me like a day on bluesky to find all the funny people. Never saw any funny people on mastodon. :-(
The comedians don’t use it. Why would they, there isn’t that much of an audience there. Also I don’t think there’s even particularly political people on it for pretty much the same reason. All of the political commentators I follow either post on bluesky or post on both platforms, somewhat eliminating the need for Masterdon at all (assuming that’s the kind of content you want to follow).
The thing is, bluesky is just old twitter, it will become X eventually…Bluesky sucks, but jessus, mastodon sucks in terms of usability. Its only for technical people and experience on mastodon is fatal compared to bluesky, sad that mastodon won’t take over, as it could…at least bluesky is not bad YET.
Bluesky is more popular because it has VC money behind it.
Would be better if it was Mastodon, but I suppose I shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and good riddance to Twitter, indeed.
Same here, well said. Bluesky’s not perfect, at least it’s not Twitter. I wish more people would use it though
While there has been some onboarding QOL stuff for mastodon, Bluesky still has them beat on that.
The “People” segment in the explore menu is a nice start, but it’s still dependent on the users picking a server that somewhat matches their interests.
thing is lot of that is on purpose. mastodon and fediverse are more of an attempt to come back to the state where there is no algorithm picking for you… but too many people nowdays are simply too lazy to search and actively choose what they want to see.
what we really need is to separate content (keep that in fediverse) and content access and presentation (the interface people use to access the content). if you want a bot feeding you content whole day and for your internet to become a tv you nobody can stop you. but if you want to think amd search nobody should stop you either
Why switch to BlueSky if you have Mastodon…
Guess why? /s For real, people, some of you live in a bubble…
Why switch to Mastodon when there is Misskey?
Why use Misskey when there is Hubzilla?
I’ve yet to find a multi language or English speaking misskey it appears they’re all Japanese
Gotta try the Misskey forks for English
You could spin one up this evening if you wanted. Or go use catodon.social.
That’s not the point. The point is, there are reasons Mastodon is being rejected, just like there are reasons you seemingly cannot pay people to use a Misskey-based or Hubzilla-based website.
It’s not where the people are going, and the public or semi-public figures are going to follow the people.
These who waited until the X take over to move away are simply following trends.
In a word, audience. I’d prefer it if everyone went with Mastodon, but the audience on BlueSky is orders of magnitude bigger. I cross post to both, but only because I don’t trust BlueSky not to do exactly what Twitter and Meta have done eventually.
They might do the Twitter. Jack Dorsey has already left the board saying exactly that.
I’m on both and Mastodon is missing (at least in any easy to use way) most of the features that make Bluesky such a good destination:
- instant add subscribe lists
- subscribable block lists
- custom feeds/subscribable algorithms
- keyword/topic blocks
- nuclear block where you never see the blocked person again
- optional discover feed
- DM preferences
All these things (and more I’m sure I’m forgetting), make Bluesky very quick to get started with and very powerful for honing your feeds to be exactly how you want and free of harassment and trolling.
I am still trying with Mastodon, but it’s really slow going and I can fully understand why people wouldn’t bother. After a year I am way behind where I was in a week with Bluesky.
I’ve seen a few larger creators say the reply management is bad at scale, too. The thing I mostly like is that here I am, reading Lemmy from Mastodon.
Yeah I’d prefer Mastodon to implement all these features and win, but I understand why it’s not winning ATM.
Same. Plus I came back here because Bluesky got too noisy so I’m kind of happy if it stays small!
Lemmy is still my favorite, I was never a huge fan of the Twitter model, but I enjoy taking part in the destruction of X.
over time I’ll probably end up moving over to Lemmy tbh. I think I’d prefer more of a forum vibe. I was never a Redditor so I didn’t “get” it until I started following Lemmy feeds.
Thanks for the list! As someone who has never used any Twitter-like site before (I guess microblog is the right term…?), and recently made a profile on Bluesky only to support it (I have used it briefly ~3 times since joining): what are the pros of Mastodon that Bluesky doesn’t have?
As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:
- Well implemented federation
Haha, thanks! I know it’s quite important for a good bunch of people here (on a federated site), but I guess I’ll stick with Bluesky then. Thanks for the insights! : )
It’s important because, along with the ability to migrate accounts, it prevents/deters enshittification. In betting Bluesky will hit that wall in the next few years (I’m guessing they’ll never properly implement federation).
I know; as much as I love the concept, I can already see .world soaking up most of the users, which might not be the best thing for federation - but TBF when I came over from Reddit, my main goal was to find something decent and similar, and federation was secondary at best for me; so I’ll see if it gets any worse, but for the moment, the first list definitely overweighs the second “list” for me.
Yeah I agree that we will probably happen, but the problem is using Mastodon is such a pain for the vast majority of people, it’s not worth the hassle.
And I say that to someone who uses both platforms.
- No “starter kits” which are just positive-feedback loops for popular accounts
- No “algorithm” which promotes popularity or engagement over quality or relevance
Bluesky’s main feed is totally algorithm free, it’s just the people you follow’s posts in chronological order, same as mastodon.
Starter kits are optional, but they allow you to get started in hours rather than months. For me, they made the difference between a vibrant and interesting feed well tailored towards my interests, and a very sparse feed that I didn’t use on Mastodon. For me they were the difference between a useful social network and a non-useful one.
Main one is that it doesn’t manipulate your feed with stuff “you might enjoy” so you can’t be easily manipulated by the people setting the algorithm. Of course, this is exactly why people find it hard. People want to be fed stuff and told what to consume.
Bluesky also has the option of doing this, or not.
Do you refer to the “Following” Vs “Discover” feed?
Apparently it’s very noticeable when a post hits the discover feed. The quality of responses dives off a cliff.
There’s a new option available now for reply controls, you can limit it to just people who follow you. While it’s a very low bar, it’s enough of a threshold for most randoms to not bother following just to reply to you
And even without that, I still have felt that the quality of replies doesn’t drop THAT much one it hits Discover - but it may be partly who I follow/am recommended, that block lists are doing a great job of eliminating trolls+spam, and I just automatically ignore any stupid/low effort stuff (“wow you are the best at that thing you posted about”, “that js amazjng i have never seen a linux before” or whatever).
This option will only help, though.
This one is so important. After a year my mastodon feed is perfectly tailored for me. When I open it I enjoy my time there and the posts I see. I can leave whenever I want, and without a feel of rage or anxiety. But the most important part is that I don’t feel the compulsive need to open it every other second. It’s to liberating in contrast with the algorithm led manipulation.
That’s not really a fair description of what’s going on.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a recommendation algorithm, can you imagine trying to use Netflix if it didn’t tell you about any of the shows and you just have to guess and type in a film in order to see if it existed?
The problem with algorithms is when they’re the only option, or when they are invisible and you think you are getting a timeline of people you’ve subscribed to, but really you’re getting an algorithm optimizing retention. As long as it’s just recommending stuff there’s nothing wrong with it, in fact as a lot of people point out, it’s kind of necessary.
The world functioned before recommendation algorithms. Even the internet did. Once upon a time, when Goggle worked, it didn’t modify its results based on your history.
Netflix could operate fine with classifications, ratings good tagging and search. It doesn’t need to monitor your viewing habits and recommend something based on them.
Yes but it would be more irritating to use than without which is my point.
The world function perfectly well without electricity but I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting that we go back to a pre-electrified age just because technically it’s possible.
It does have keyword blocking.
Not sure what nuclear block means but I can’t think of any way a blocked person could be seen again. It even has above nuclear blocking where you block their entire server.
It has custom feeds but the implementation with lists is very fiddly and I wish it would be improved.
There is a trending posts section but I think you want a personalised discover feed? Which will never happen of course.
Thanks for the update. Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It’s optional. The main feed has no algorithm, just who you follow.
Keyword blocking is a bit more sophisticated on Bluesky I think as they have a crowdsourced tagging system which allows you to opt in an out also of tagged words regardless of whether they appear in the body of the post.
The tagging sounds great. One of the problems with masto is showing the hashtags in the body making posts that use them look awful, and of course being entirely set by the author
Yeah it makes it look like a 4chan post.
Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It’s optional. The main feed has no algorithm, just who you follow.
The thing is, a lot of social media sites have or had this. YouTube has the subscriptions feed. Twitter has (I don’t know anymore) a following feed. Reddit used to keep posts on your homepage only being from subscribed subreddits.
One problem. People don’t use them. They see maintaining subscriptions as work and so want to be fed posts by algorithm.
Been watching @TechConnectify 's latest?! He has some interesting stats on the subscriptions feed on YT in there - and yes, it’s shockingly low.
I think people want plug and play. Maintaining subs isn’t work as such after you’ve set it up, but it does take that initial setup. https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuABeen watching @TechConnectify 's latest?!
Yes. Yes I have.
I use them. I use platforms more that have them. I leave platforms that don’t.
But to each their own I guess.
Cause the name is hard to remember… I was trying to yesterday and the closest I could get is megatron and megalodon
The name should have been MinBB (Mastadon is not Blue Bird).
It’s a big elephant and you send “Toots!”.
How do you confused that with a cynical robot and a giant shark? You’d post “Quips!” or “Bites!”. Wouldn’t work at all. 🙄
“Bites” is so cool…
I tried masterdon, mostertant (I don’t know what that one is) and eventually needed to look up the name from an E-Mail…
I think there’s a fairly serious problem for large accounts on mastodon but I will never have one so I can’t quite understand it myself.
Something like dealing with replies / scolds without spending all day blocking is too hard. It doesn’t help that “no algorithm” means “show first reply at the top” so quick replies can dominate comments.
The bit I don’t understand is why this is fine on blue sky. Is it just different users? I can’t quite believe that but I can’t see why blue sky would be less annoying.
It’s not that it’s less annoying, it’s that it was in the right place at the right time to capture sufficient network effect…
There’s plenty of people on masto saying they have accounts on both but prefer bsky due to difficulty managing replies.
As I say I don’t really understand it but it’s a real thing big accounts experience.
First time seeing HTTP code 451
because I needed an explanation of what that means, and I wanted it to be cute and funny.
“Sorry, it’s literally impossible for us not to sell your data!”
All these people - they don’t learn.
For microblogs NOSTR is already better than everything else, right now. Provided you don’t care much about keeping the same identity over years, cause an identity is a pubkey there, used directly (no temporary identities signed by it or something), so with more popularity those will be lost again and again.
I don’t use microblogs, just it seems to have that functionality functioning perfectly and in distributed fashion.
If you don’t like cryptobros there (less and less dominant over time btw), then BlueSky might raise even bigger suspicions.
I would prefer any ActivityPub instance, but press media (and in general private entities), to which scientific institutes intend diffusion, is moving to bluesky…
Non-EU folk - this website won’t open in EU because they don’t want to follow our local user privacy protections. What they’re going to do with your data? Who knows.
man that is so cheeky of them!
Instead of abiding with the law, they just chose to block content altogether 🥲
But yeah, you’re 100% right.
Why are they selecting BlueSky over the Fediverse?
The fediverse just doesn’t have the audience nor ease of use to be the smart investment for most people, at least in the short term.
In the long term, I believe the fediverse would be the right move. However most people struggle to think long-term outside of their own fields, and scientists are not immune to this phenomenon.
Because the Fediverse is a mess with atrocious UX. Choose the wrong server and you might find you are cut off from a large chunk of it because a mastodon.art mod didn’t like something that happened on your instance and servers copy blocklist from each other (not a theoretical example, mind you, something I learned a few months into being on one particular instance.).
Servers can have all sorts of rules you will have to carefully study or risk getting banned (some for example will only allow images with descriptions being shared, this includes boosts.)
In short, the amount of work expected to participate is just - never - going to draw in the average user.
Its too nerdy for its own good. The plebs want simple. Its the way of things.
Presumably either because they’ve not heard of the Fediverse, because almost nobody has, and/or because they want people to actually see what they post.
I would assume the same reason anyone chooses it over the fediverse, because they want their content to be easily discoverable.
What’s blocking Mastodon’s posts to be discoverable?
In order to discover someone’s posts on Mastodon, they need to be on the same instance as you, or someone else on your instance has to already be following them.
BlueSky is specifically designed as a drop-in Twitter replacement, it’s an easy transition, and tons of Twitter users have been advertising it for a long time. The Fediverse is comparatively obscure.
also mainstream professionals are going to bluesky, like press and corp PR. big step towards critical mass.
And it’s ridiculous because the difference between Mastodon and Twitter is minuscule.
I remember following some popular Twitter Head. Someone made a fake account on Mastodon and started getting followers but only posted once. Since then, his followers have grown to around 11k without any content at all! Imagine if it had been a real account. But the Twitter Head would rather switch to Bluesky instead. Such bullshit.
It really isn’t minuscule, it’s still confusing enough for the vast majority of people. Just the fact that there are different servers and them having to learn about that is enough to put people off. Anything more complicated than basic sign-up/in weeds out 90% of people, every tiny little thing they need to learn makes it less likely they’ll even think about using it.
This is obvious. The way you and many others here think about how knowledgeable, tech-literate and willing to lift just one extra finger the average person is isn’t correct, people are dumb and lazy. And it hurts the fediverse as a whole and slows adoption.
Your opinion and my reply here have been said thousands of times, I don’t understand how your kind of ignorance and misunderstanding is still so prevalent, I see it almost weekly.
your kind of ignorance and misunderstanding
I was with you up until this. I was taking about my perception but thanks for generalizing and passing judgement anyway, jerkface.
I also see your kind of bullshit regularly on here, with many not giving the benefit of the doubt, not asking follow up questions, and therefore assuming the worst takes. Every single time.
i get it, its so frustrating. with bluesky we are just hitting the snooze button, theres bound to be problems with a privately owned social network again.
the fact people are categorically rejecting a nazi platform for being nazi is actually pretty refreshing though.
B/c people are indoctrinated under capitalism to need some kinda daddy.
Isn’t BlueSky part of a fediverse?
A fediverse, but not the fediverse (ActivityPub/the one you’re on right now)
Why is ActivityPub “the” Fediverse? “Fediverse” is very broad and encompasses multiple protocols, a lot of which predate ActivityPub becoming commonplace.
The original Fediverse apps are still around and don’t use ActivityPub. For example, StatusNet / GNU Social use OStatus and Identica uses Activity Streams / ActivityPump (which was the protocol before ActivityPub). diaspora (if it’s still around) used its own protocol too.
Some of the older apps have adapted to use ActivityPub, while some of them still exist in their own separate part of the Fediverse.
Because a fediverse is any group of technologies that talk to each other via a common protocol. In 2025 that’s ActivityPub and has been for awhile. It would be one hell of a stretch to assert that a single platform with its own home made protocol that doesn’t talk to any other technology in the entire fediverse as part of that fediverse. So at best you can say Bluesky has its own fediverse. And if one fediverse is going to be “the fediverse” it’s going to be the one that actually connects all the most common platforms people use today, including Diaspora.
Diaspora doesn’t use ActivityPub, does it? It’s still a Fediverse app though, and still fairly widely used.
It would be one hell of a stretch to assert that a single platform with its own home made protocol that doesn’t talk to any other technology in the entire fediverse as part of that fediverse. So at best you can say Bluesky has its own fediverse.
I agree with this.
Oh, looks like it doesn’t. It’s Friendica that uses both ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols
The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
Most people will not have any way to answer that without knowing what the downstream impact will be. Mastodon people are working on smoothing that down, but it’s still a pretty fraught question. And if half a given community ends up on one server and half on another, they get fragmented and conversations and followers fizzle out.
Bluesky wants to tell people they’re not a single-node lock-in to avoid the Twitter effect, but it turns out that’s their key advantage.
The only thing that will guarantee they don’t end up like Twitter is if they revamp their corporate governance mechanisms, but they had to take VC money and haven’t come up with a long-term revenue model, so it’s not clear how they can avoid it.
The email experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
No that decision is, for most people, made for them. You use the server provided for you by your ISP/work/university or the one that’s associated with logging into your smartphone.
Most people use several email servers for work, school, personal, etc.
Somehow those dolts figured it out. Shocking. \s
“How can I send Gmails?”
Depends on whether you have an Android or iPhone for 99% of people. Or, they use an email account that their ISP provider created for them when they signed up.
Your email server doesn’t also run the group email list and all the join/drop/approve/ban operations. And if you bring your own email domain name, you can go somewhere else and get no disruption. But if you sign up for me@hotmail.com and hotmail bans you, you’ll lose all your connections and conversation history.
The canonical list of operations on a social media platform far exceed that of an email service, a bulletin board, or a messaging service group. It’s apples and rocket ships.
Bluesky is offering simple one-stop answers to a lot of these concerns. Fediverse needs to answer all these, plus address the whole long-term financial sustainability question.
The canonical list of operations on a social media platform far exceed that of an email service, a bulletin board,
This is just untrue. There’s almost nothing to Twitter, IG, etc., while many bulletinboards are far more complicated.
For e-mail, it does not really make a difference.
Good luck with you hotmail account… Or using Outlook… etc.
I use both Outlook and non-Outlook e-mail (the former forced by my school) and never had problems.
an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
This question is extremely easy to answer. We all did it. I don’t think people on Lemmy are some kind of master race. smh.
For a long time now, the entry point to mastodon (joinmastodon.org) has had the default option as being “join mastodon.social”, with an option to choose a different server delegated to a secondary button. This compares to bsky, which shows you a dropdown of servers to choose from, defaulting to “bluesky social”.
It’s a tiny difference in UI; both have a default and offer an alternative. Why do people say it’s difficult on mastodon, while bluesky users are apparently not confused by the same option? Even if the option on bsky is basically a joke so far.
The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
This is such a cop out and makes no sense. A “server” is basically just a website. The only reason we call them servers/instances is because they are are running the same software in the background and can communicate with each other - that’s it. So we put them all under common flags such as “Mastodon” for those who use the Mastodon “template”, and “Fediverse” for all the “templates” that can communicate with each other.
This is literally just a problem with marketing and communication, people hear “instances”/“servers” and they shit themselves because they can’t be bothered to do a bit of research. In reality they are just different websites that can communicate with each other. You have the “shakedown.social” website, the “dads.cool” website, the “bookwyrm.social” website, and plenty of others; they are all Twitter clones (Mastodon) and they all allow you to see the content posted on the others.
The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
I’m so tired of this nonsense. The very simple answer is “literally any server”. It really doesn’t matter. At this point most apps have a default server.
Except it does matter. Your choice of server affects what content you’re allowed to see and what people you’re allowed to interact with.
Yes but no, not really. Most instances federate with all the same other instances.
Exactly! And even if a person gets it wrong, you’re encouraged to make an account elsewhere without fault or foul. That’s what I did. And what was I looking for when deciding on a server? “A general purpose server.” Oh, look World seems to be it, what a coincidence that it’s the top suggestion. lol…
just tell people to join mastodon.social. problem solved
What happens when their server expenses aren’t covered, or bad people move in and every message has to be moderated, or the site moderators ban you?
And getting a whole community moved over… oof.
I moved a private mailing list to a WhatsApp group, then they changed their privacy policies. It took two years to convince people on to Signal, and 2/3 of the people didn’t make the jump. And this was with a small group of people who knew each other IRL. Imagi e doing that for tens or hundreds of thousands worldwide.
This is why people are hesitant to get off Meta/Twitter. They’re not going to do it again.
What happens when their server expenses aren’t covered, or bad people move in and every message has to be moderated, or the site moderators ban you?
What happens when BlueSky does this?
I moved a private mailing list to a WhatsApp group, then they changed their privacy policies.
Answering your own question there.
Just to be clear… I’m a massive Fediverse fan, and have concerns about BSKY’s governance. But many communities streaming off Twitter seem to be heading toward BSKY because it’s a shallower on-ramp.
Mastodon people recognize this and are working to smooth down the friction points.
This isn’t good, though. The whole point of the Fediverse is to be a decentralized network. If we push everyone to a single server, we’re centralizing the network!
This comes with added expenses for the maintainers, for one, and increases privacy and data-protection concerns as well.
Also, Mastodon actually already funnels people towards .social, though they don’t push it too hard. Check out joinmastodon.org and see for yourself.
IMO, the solution needs to be something like a server auto-selector, where the location of the user is taken into account, weighted by the number of active users on the server, and using some sort of vetting system to try to avoid sending people to unmaintained servers (like only selecting servers with a certain degree of uptime and uptime stability).
Probably because it has an algorithm
It doesn’t though.
tech and age, need for investment.
- fediverse is complicated for scientists not doing computer sciency stuff
- senior researchers are less flexible with new tech, so similarity w twitter means they don’t have to learn a new system
- Already present audience means there’s little risk in investing time in BS.
This.
Many people like stuff getting recommending to them algorithmically.
Exactly. I’ve curated my Mastodon feed way more than Bsky, and still, it’s incredibly boring. Great if you want to use socials less.
It also tends to overvalue new stuff, so whoever screams the most occupies the most space in the feed.
I don’t understand why people ask this. Most people you talk to on Lemmy will say they don’t want the userbase to grow much more than it has because with that growth comes the other problems that larger platforms like shitter and reddit have.
That’s true by and large and we also don’t have enough moderators here as is.
And for reasons I don’t understand, people keep asking why mainstream media outlets, influencers, and other trusted accounts don’t transition to the fediverse, as if they won’t bring with them an influx of users (at least a fraction of which would be considered undesirable).
Why do you want them to come here? (As someone who would like to see Lemmy grow, I’m curious about how you think this will rollout and what the consequences will be). I would like to see Lemmy grow but I’m not sure all of that growth will have solely good follow-on effects.
I mean, I hate BlueSky too, but I think the reason it’s more popular than Mastodon is that it’s more centralized and in practical terms that means it’s easier to adopt and engage with.
The biggest headache I have with Mastodon (and Lemmy, to a lesser extent) is defederation. I understand it’s the most practical thing to do sometimes, but it’s waaay overdone. Like, there needs to be a culture of only defederating as a last resort due to pratical concerns (e.g. bots I guess). Unfortunately the current culture is one where many instance admins treat defederation as a personal blocklist. I wish more admins would leave it to individual users to decide who to allow or not.
I never had a Xitter account so take what I say with a grain of salt, as I only interacted with the platform as a spectator.
For me it was funny to watch as I slowly saw people dive into madness over the most irrelevant things.
It didn’t matter if it was left or right people still lost all senses over unimportant things like Hunter Biden’s laptop or this week’s conspiracy theory.
I opened Mastodon and as I scroll through I see the following order:
- republican bad post
- republican bad post
- republican bad post
- something linux related (usually hector martin)
- republican bad post
And I get it, republican is bad, but after reading 3-4 republic bad posts my mental state needs a break or something different which is what Xitter was able to do. Some new music being announced/discussed, maybe a video game, maybe a joke.
BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.
I personally think that the problem is rooted in defederation, it’s being used willy-nilly like it doesn’t have effect on the people using the platform. But not becoming an echo chamber is essential to a platform’s long term health. If I know that a platform has the same message for me when I open the app I’ll just start using it less, which is what happened with Lemmy sadly, I open my feed and it’s full of dystopian and republican posts, I just don’t bother anymore.
Incoherent rant over.
Your rant is 100% sensible and/or valid and/or based or whatever one says these days.
If a user wants their own echo chamber, let them cultivate it themselves. The hosts should not decide for them, and the choice to defederate should be based on practical/material/legal concerns only.
BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.
Isn’t the whole thing about BlueSky that your feed is your feed though? You actively select and curate what you want. So if you want new music, games, comedy - follow new music, games, and comedy. Sure, those accounts might then post other things sometimes, but by and large, that’s my understanding of BSky.
In the first paragraph I mentioned that I don’t have an account, I never had one on Xitter mastodon or BS. That’s my point of view, and from what it seems it’s always politics.
I think you need to curate your feeds better. My experience doesn’t match yours.
I haven’t used Mastodon, but if it’s anything like Lemmy, most people won’t want to bother learning what an instance is or what federation means.
FOSS enthusiasts regularly overestimate how much hassle regular people are willing to put up with to do something, and how much they care about corporations.
To me the biggest issue with federated platforms is defederation: deliberately breaking interoperability.
Like, imagine if email servers (the original federated network) blocked whole domains as aggressively Mastodon or even Lemmy servers do? It never would have worked.
most people won’t want to bother learning what an instance is or what federation means.
What have you seen that convinced you of this? Has this been studied?
They planned ahead to make it popular, twitter developed it while losing money, my conspiracy theory is their goal was always to transition to bluesky since its model is more sustainable for long term control
That isn’t a conspiracy theory. That was, in fact, the original plan. Jack Dorsey explicitly stated this from the outset. However, due to reasons (Wikipedia doesn’t go into specifics), the project lead decided to make Bluesky independent from Twitter. When Musk bought Twitter, he severed all ties.
When you sign up with Bluesky, it gives you the choice to sign up with the big main server or with an auxiliary server. Just like Lemmy does.
The problem is that when Lemmy got hit with a big influx of users, the main server couldn’t handle the load, so they quit accepting new users. This confused and upset a lot of people, because now they had to go shopping for another instance to apply to, and many of the bigger ones weren’t accepting new users, either, because of the same problem. This was a crucial moment for the adoption of the platform, and the infrastructure just wasn’t there to handle it.
EDIT: Shit, I think I’m misremembering that. That’s what happened with Mastodon. Although, it could’ve happened with Lemmy, too. In fact, it’s a problem with all of these social networks that aren’t run by gigantic corporations. People expect a certain level of service, and you can’t provide that unless you have a ton of money.
