Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week / A ‘majority' of the new users are from the US, indicating that people are searching for a new platform as an alternative to X.

We're seeing a substantial increase on the Mastodon instance I help moderate too, but there's no aggregate marketing department at Mastodon so we don't get any headlines.

I'm using both platforms through Openvibe when I'm on my phone.
- Thanks for letting me know about this. Just installed it. Now if they supported multiple mastodon accounts, I'd really be cooking.
- Thanks for reminding me of this app. Really wish 'open'vibe would be on Foss stores like fdroid though.
  
  Has 3 trackers too. Google Analytics, firebase, and sentry.
  
  Edit: Downloaded it and it is pretty cool but I wish it had more support for bluesky feeds. It supports the ones I already have but I can't search for more.
- ditto
Seems like there should be. I bet people would donate to a marketing fund
- You have now taken your first steps to the dark side and becoming a corpo overlord. It is a subtle but slippery slope.

Going from one shitty capitalist business to another shitty capitalist business.

I think this is the crowd that tried Mastodon and then abandoned it when they realized it required a modicum of effort.
- I doubt this sort of attitude helps, too. Mastodon developers know at least some of its failings. Migrating to Bluesky is not effortless.
- Whatever will they do without algorithms recommending their low effort posts to other users?
- Honestly I can’t figure out how to find people I’m interested in… or maybe there isn’t much academic/buddhism stuff on there? :/
- bluesky has a couple disability friendly features both mastodon and X don’t have.
I just learned that before their fundraising round Bluesky called themselves a "public benefit LLC" and I thought thats nice of them to benefit the public 😅 , then I found out about US corporate law and what it actually means...
- It means that they are getting funds from the public, I'm guessing…

Everything is better than Twitter I guess.

Is this running on a modified version of Mastodon?

BlueSky is its own thing with its own federated protocol called ATproto. They have an explanation in their docs on how it works, different features. There's a bridge between the two as well, a bit janky but effective.
- It's a federated protocol, but the network itself isn't meaningfully federated, and is basically just Bluesky (the company) infrastructure. Hopefully that changes, because until then, it's still a centralised social media platform, despite the underlying technology
- So you can see mastodon posts on bluesky and bluesky posts on mastodon?
And I still to this day don't get the appeal of the twitter model
- Yes, I much prefer following topics over people. Every time I glance at microblogging, there is just so much noise. At least lemmy-style forums have upvotes to surface quality content rather than the jumbled mess that microblogs are. No matter how much I like someone (even IRL friends/family), I won't be interested in their every passing thought, it's just exhausting.
- Me neither, but I guess once you start following enough people, or the platform has a large enough amount of people posting there, it becomes "interesting" by quantity, if not quality.
  
  I think I tried twitter for a week back in 2018, didn't "get it", deleted the account. Tried Mastodon last year, enjoyed the much larger character limit, but didn't feel like staying.
- "The number of characters is limited based on old SMS standard! Lulz!"
  
  Yeah, good way to have meaningful conversations where you can bring convincing arguments! /S
- It's good for when you want to keep up with what people or organizations you're interested in are up to. Artists, authors, game developers, etc.
  
  It sucks for any kind of in-depth content or conversation, including politics.
No, and it doesnt federate even though they promised that a long time ago. Unless they do, they will inevitably also go to shit, there is no way around the enshittification pipeline. Just stick to mastodon and invest in a long term future.

For a slightly more detailed explanation: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
- Maybe offtopic, but does anyone has a good guide on how to join Mastodon? I'm still trying to find a good instance.
- No elon involved so it has an enormous advantage over Twitter

I honestly don't understand why people waited so I don't use mastodon but I did cancel my Twitter account literally the first week he bought it. It wasn't hard to see this coming and I just don't get the delay.

I still don't understand why people even use Twitter or mastodon or blue sky. It all just looks like a Facebook feed to me.
- I joined bluesky a year ago to check it out. There wasn't much happening on it at the time, so I got bored of it real quick. It was like the original version of Twitter. The day after the election, I got on X to see what kind of shit show was going on there, but my account was permanently suspended. I was just on there the day before the election with no problem. I rarely posted anything on it, but I have made some left leaning posts in the past. Like, 2 years in the past. Kinda weird to suspend my account right after the election. Whatever, I was never a big X user. So, I opened bluesky to see if it improved at all, and holy shit, it's bopping. It's still like old Twitter. It's open source, no ads at all, and they make it really convenient to find accounts to follow with "starter packs". I gotta say, I love it. There are almost no fake accounts or bots. They get weeded out pretty quick. That's become my new Twitter, and Lemmy is my Reddit.
- Probably to avoid "Facebook" people (angry middle aged Republicans and easy to swindle old folks).

FWIW there's a way to bridge Bluesky accounts to Mastodon

https://fed.brid.gy/

Why don't people want to use mastodon?

Are they following rasputin again?

Does Mastodon refuse to deal with its issues, like Lemmy?
- Anecdotally, I joined Mastodon, found it difficult to find people who I personally know that were on different instances, kind of lost interest and thought kbin might be a better solution for both forums and microblogs all in one place, then my Mastodon instance shut down, and then kbin died too. Hence me being on lemmy.world, as default and stable of a server as there is here.
  
  Bluesky felt fun and familiar right off the bat, my only issue was that it was still so small when I joined. Now that there's an influx of new users, many of whom I followed on the bird site, it just feels like Twitter 2, which I suspect is what most people want.
  
  FWIW I have a highly technical job and consider myself pretty tech literate, so I don't think any of the issues I had with Mastodon weren't things I could've figured out or worked around, I just didn't feel incentivized to bother. I suspect they've smoothed out a lot of the federating issues I saw before, but at this point I'm happy enough on Bluesky to stay put.
- Mastodon does refuse to deal with its issues but i wouldnt say that about Lemmy. Lemmy just has a very small dev team working off no funding.
- Why don't people want to use mastodon?
  
  Because it doesn't have a proper discover feed.
- Because the concept of federation is still impenetrable to a layperson
- Not enough people on Mastodon are into the things I was using Twitter/use BlueSky for.
- which mastadon instance to join?

Bluesky is not as decentralized as you think.. Just saying.

That is actually an advantage. Centralized platforms are able to achieve larger audiences, increasing the chance that I will be able to find content I actually care about.
- Only as long as the centralized authority stays aligned with you. Then you have the same problem.
- Something something bittorrent.
It just has to be better than the Nazi bar.
- That's a very low bar.
  
  I'll show myfself out.
Is bluesky not instanced? Cant you just run Bluesky PDS?

What aren't they joining Mastodon and Lemmy? Or even Threads?

Mastodon or Lemmy, because you would have to choose an instance and a client. Threads, because why would you?
- Choice is a good thing, though.
Bluesky is a lot easier to use vs fediverse stuff, discovering stuff is also easier in my experience vs mastodon.
- the problem is its easier to use because there is virtually no federation. Ive yet to see a user thats not from the flagship bsky.social instance
I'll use Bluesky before I use Threads. I don't want to get sucked further into the Zuckerborg.
Do not use threads
For me there weren't enough people on Mastodon in my hobby to make it worthwhile.
I've been stupidly trying to convince them to use Mastodon on the same thread on reddit yesterday.

Some prefer the interface, but I guess the real issue is what stopping them from selling it to another Musk like they did with Twitter.
I was on Mastodon, but host or whatever you call it, didn't like what I said and got banned.

Feel like bluesky wouldn't have that kind of power and control by one person and be more open and popular.
- I think it's the opposite. On Mastadon you can make a new account on a better server ie mods more aligned with you. On bluesky if you make a new account and say a similar bannable thing again you'll be banned again.

Soon Twitter will complete its transition to Nazi Bar of Social Media.

If there's openly Nazis in your bar and they aren't being kicked out, you're in a Nazi bar. They completed that transition a while ago.

An even better alternative is to replace it with nothing. The Twitter-like messaging paradigm is only good for trivia and rumor-mongering.

Some use/used it as an RSS feed for researchers sharing papers.
- Know what else is great for that? RSS feeds.
I used Twitter for emergency updates, saved me multiple times.
...or following people and interests you want to follow and keeping up with their updates.

ffs stop gatekeeping social media
- The facebook/mastadon format is much better for individuals, no? And Reddit/Lemmy for niches, as long as they're supplemented by a wiki or something.
  
  And Tumblr. The way content gets spread organically, rather than with an algorithm, is actually super nice.
  
  IMO Twitter's original premise, of letting novel, original, but very short thoughts fly into the ether has been so thoroughly corrupted that it can't really come back. It's entertaining and engaging, but an awful format for actually exchanging important information, like discord.
- If i ever wan tto know what Natalie Portman ate for breakfast, i'll walk into the ocean

Bluesky is popping off lately it feels even more lively and the block tools are great.

Sigh, here we go again. I jumped on board because it’s where my friends are. Was pleasantly surprised that most of my old twitter follows are already there. Still, given the history I’m being careful and ready for the next enshittification exodus.

I wish folks would just embrace self hosting and decentralization but we obviously love to make the same mistakes again, and again, and again…
- Decentralization is a bit like showing people "Here's how to make friends. I won't actually introduce you to anyone, though." I kind of want to at least get a starting point off a general topic.
- History repeats itself. Stay on Mastodon
- I feel you. I really hope things turn out this time around.

Impressive, since "network effects" are what keeps people on a platform. Why move off Xitter or FB when everyone's on there, and not on the new place? Keep moving a significant fraction of a million people every week, and pretty soon, it'll be where everyone is.

My partner, who is very non-technical, signed up for a BlueSky as well this week: "all the teacher blogs have declared that they are moving over". Looks like everyone has had enough.

I made an account yesterday to see how it is, however, I never used Twitter and so I don’t really understand how BlueSky works (since it suppose to be the same as Twitter?).

I followed 8 people and a couple of “#” but I barely see a thing of the people, I follow.

You can also search for "starter packs" of helpful people to follow in whatever you are interested in, e.g., history, cooking, overthrowing the government, etc.
On Web and official app(android) there are two pages Discover and Following, by default you will be on "Discover" page. To see post from people you followed, you need to switch to the following page.
Same boat my friend. Never ever had a xitter account but I made a Bluesky account last week to check things out. My husband deleted his Twitter account quite a while back and has been sorely missing seeing people he followed. I tried getting him here but he really doesn't understand the whole set up. So I'm trying to convince him to join Bluesky. I have no idea what I'm doing over there but the folks there are much like we were here in the beginning in that everyone is helping each other learn. I do think that the platform will serve as a good bridge to get people learning about Federated platforms. We all have to start somewhere.

I've seen the effect. It's just like after Brazil cut Twitter off. My very niche account has been gaining new followers by the hour.

I have no idea how people interested in Heathcliff are being found by new people. Much less people interested in Heathcliff without Heathcliff.

I have never seen Heathcliff, I have no idea what they or it looks like. But I have seen your work.
- That's an opportunity to make a community that adds their own concept of Heathcliff.

as a Bluesky / Mastodon user, Mastodon is wayyyy better.

How so?
- Federation is one, it really helps but the problems that come with the type of media persist but more controllable
- it has more features then bluesky
I think that for the average Joe Mastodon looks too confusing and unpolished, compared to Bluesky.
Also, a Bluesky and Mastodon user, although I use Mastodon significantly more. Both have upsides and downsides. Mastodon's onboarding experience has improved, but it's still worse than Bluesky's. Also, the fact that Mastodon doesn't federate likes is honestly very strange. It makes the platform look dead at first glance, which really hurts first impressions.

I still prefer Mastodon, federation is great and I've had an easier time finding people to follow there. Bluesky's feature of following community made feeds is really cool though.
- Oh mastodon doesn't publicly display likes?
}

eh it is good to leave that shit hole behind but Elon already got very high returns from his investment on Shitter (got his daddy elected) so it's too late.

Naw, that was Starlink hacking the voting machines
- I'm sure any rural broadband initiatives are going to be scrapped, all the more better for business for Starlink.
- Proof?

People doing anything to not use mastodon...

I am always a little surprised that everyone is surprised as if people are intentionally avoiding Mastodon.

I like Mastodon but it is empty by comparison to BlueSky people want a social media app where there are people to talk to on quantities. BlueSky is also user friendly by comparison, IMO. Easier to setup.

"Well Mastodon would be busier if people would stop going anywhere else."

No one is avoiding Mastodon I think it is odd it has never occurred to anyone that BlueSky is talked about way more. I had never heard Mastodon before Lemmy but I saw talks of BlueSky everywhere.
At least it can be bridged, and people can partially self-host. If you take a look at Mastodon and Bluesky, you'll quickly realize the gap between Twitter-like feel between Bluesky and Mastodon, maybe a different interface that puts it more close to Twitter and mobile apps with it would help.. a lot of Twitter users used it on mobile app.
People doesn't understand mastodon fragmentation/federation. They can only cope with simple concepts like "the whole thing is HERE ---> X"

700,001

Go to Mastadon you tards

I use(d) Twitter for niche interactive hobbies that didn't have enough people on Mastodon to engage with.
- It has to start somewhere. Blue sky started from nothing too

The most important, how many people will stay.

Been there for over a year now and fwiw, this wave feels more sustainable than before. In previous waves, a lot of people went back to Twitter after a week because Twitter still had "the juice" and Bluesky didn't, but with 15 now million members and decent engagement, this is starting to turn around.

I wonder how long it'll last before it gets all spammy.

My wife signed up and immediately got spam followers peddling their grindset business growth hacking bullshit, a porn bot, and an “inspirational quotes” karma farming bot.
- Yeah, I got all those plus a bunch of furry stuff and all kinds of kink accounts. Blueskys block and filters are really good though and it took me all of 30 mins of marking posts as "show me less of this" and blocking obvious bots. Haven't had an issue since, really.
The good news is that users can create block lists you can subscribe to, so if there becomes a lot of spam, I'd assume some good lists will start showing up.

For example, there's a great MAGA block list. Don't want to see any MAGA garbage? Just sub to that list and you'll never see them.

I just made a new account on BS, I haven’t done anything at all yet, no comments, likes, etc. Immediately followed by a woman with an OF link in her bio. Is that not against the rules? How did she find my account?

You're just that hot 🔥
It's a bot. It's another DAMN bot. Many used to follow me on Tw###er before I made my account private. Though they were just random names and pictures of women (most of the time not sexual), and their profiles were basically empty. Before I figured it out, it was really weird to experience.
FWIW you can probably report that. While trying Bluesky, I reported some crappy stuff and I can't remember any that was still up when I checked later.

How did she find my account?

Just like Mastodon/AP, data is mostly public by default. I assume it doesn't take much to find new accounts to spam. We're usually talking about bots here, not normal user accounts, just to be clear.

I might give Bluesky a shot, but it better not end up like f'n Reddit.

It will be.

I got like 10 follows in three days from actual accounts. I've posted/replied just a few times and my avatar is Richard Simmons. I figured something was up

I use both Mastodon and BlueSky and I don't really care for platforms like Twitter. Both Mastodon and BlueSky are good in their own ways but I think BlueSky is user friendly. Easy to setup looks super similar to Twitter, easier to navigate.

Plus, I have heard about it pretty much everywhere. It is commonly compared to Threads. I only know and heard about Mastodon on Lemmy.

Bluesky? What even is that? Mastodon all the way

Would be hilarious if Musk buy that too.

Oh hey I'm one of them!

I signed up, out of curiosity but I don't have any friends there that I know about. Kinda like Lemmy, but Lemmy but works great for not having friends.

Leaving the musky fields for where the sky is truly bluer.

Still waiting for Bluesky to start forcing ads in your feed... at some point it is inevitable.

What's Bluesky going to do to combat Russian bots and misinformation, and essentially keep it from becoming Twitter/X?

By not letting a Russian asset buy it

But the format is open ass.

Is this why the app is worthless trash? I just tried it and while scrolling through artists and trying to like posts to prime the algorithm the whole app will just stop responding. I can scroll but none of the buttons work. Can't favorite, go back to home, anything until it suddenly does all the taps backlog at once.

Makes sense as it's react native trash. I fucking hate that name. There is nothing native about react native it's just web code garbage

Shakes fists at clouds
- No, im a sysadmin that regularly hosts open source alternatives
  
  I've got quite a few
  
  https://short.kitsuna.net - url shortner
  
  https://paste.kitsuna.net - pastebin
  
  https://piped.kitsuna.net - yt front
  
  https://pixiv.kitsuna.net - pixiv front
  
  https://imgur.kitsuna.net - imgur proxy
  
  https://search.kitsuna.net - whoogle
  
  I used to have a matrix home server but ended up just using an existing one in the long run. I would actually love an alternative to Twitter, mastodon just never really took off. This looks really good but i legitimately have nothing but problems with bluesky app. It's performance is horrendous and I've watched it be horrendous on other people's phones so it's not just mine.
  
  To be a little bit more specific I can easily trigger the behavior by let's say browsing a specific art tag and then attempting to favorite multiple posts in a row. After I favorite one or two it'll suddenly lock up stop accepting input other than letting me continue to scroll and I have to wait until it processes whatever it's processing and then all the inputs suddenly catch up at once

That don't indicate shit

For a sense of perspective, Twitter has 106 million users in USA. 700 000 is 0.67% of that.

This is additional new users not total users. Growing by 0.67% of the user count of the largest microblogging platform in the world in a week is absolutely massive.
- I think the poster wants to say it means not that many in the US are leaving twitter or looking for alternatives, contrary to what the headline suggests.
- If it keeps going for a year, then it'll truly be a large number (over 36 million to be precise). But if this was just a one-off protest kind of jumping the ship, then it's not going to mean much.
Also for a sense of perspective, Twitter is owned by a Trump salesman that lies about everything (including user numbers that affect ad revenue). I've seen Bluesky users mention that actual engagement with real people is already higher than Twitter. It definitely feels more "alive" to me as well.
- Relevant video from PirateSoftware talking about the difference in engagement between them.
Twitter has 106 million users in USA.

Prove it

Bluesky was started by the same nazi who sold twitter to elon.. I will not ever be using bluesky.. Threads was started by the same nazi that owns facebook so I will not ever be using threads....

Dorsey left Bluesky precisely because the other people there felt they had to implement the old-Twitter-like checks and balances that caused him to leave Twitter in the first place. As such, it's completely out of his influence.

Yes, it's still one monolith waiting to be gobbled up by someone with a lot of cash, or to spiral down into what would seem to be almost inevitable enshittification, but it hasn't done either of those yet, and both the good and bad there mean it's the closest there is to old Twitter at the moment.

Please note that I'm not saying that everyone should go jump on there and use it, or even that we have to like it. Just pointing out that Dorsey has nothing to do with it any more.

Speaking of Dorsey, he went back to endorsing Twitter for a while, but now he's ~~started~~ Edit: endorsing yet another platform called Nostr. Probably the better candidate for being avoided right now.

I have no such "but actually" about Threads. Definitely worth avoiding, even if it is supposed to be able to Federate.
- I thought you could federate with Bluesky, too.
- For some reason I thought Nostr was started up by someone else and Dorsey just liked it