Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky
Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky
It's weird to me how obsessed some people are with proving to the world that their social media platform of choice is superior. The Fediverse works, we have content, and anyone who decides to seek out a platform that offers what the Fediverse offers can join. Tell your friends about your experience if they might be interested but if they don't stick with it you don't have to be all salty about it.
im gonna be real, this guy sounds like a loser. he talks about the progressive political lean and the porn as if they're BAD things
Mastodon is lead by a singular developer that uses Ruby for his app that hasnt gotten a new feature in 2+ years and they dont accept pull requests from community members that have been adding features to third party apps that new users never learn exist because they get stufk between learning what a “fediverse instance” is
Meanwhile Bluesky has features twitter or any other platform dont have yet (custom algorithms, chronological feed with a couple posts from your custom feeds in between some chronological posts, adding custom moderators)
The protocol that Bluesky used also has a lemmy/reddit alternative too https://frontpage.fyi/ (in beta)
Mastodon would be fine if all I cared to follow was Linux news and if I understood German and Japanese.
Yeah swear. Gardening would be fine if all I cared about was dirt and weeds.
Fucking me the change you wanna see. Invite your friends to use the platform and post your own shit
Hell yeah! Sign me up!
Yeah maybe posting it here doesn't really help?
Nope. Every post I've seen about Bluesky has me confused for this exact reason. If it wasn't for people talking about Lemmy in mass on another platform, I'd have no idea what the Fediverse is.
While I generally avoid politics on this blog, it’s hard to ignore the political biases permeating X and BlueSky. X has veered heavily toward far-right ideologies, while BlueSky is often associated with far-left communities. This polarized landscape doesn’t work for those of us seeking a neutral space for meaningful interactions.
lol
That's it, pack it up. We're done here
As long as the fediverse has a barrier to entry for most people of mandating choosing a server first, it will never become the mainstream choice.
This is the exact reason email never took off. /s
Email was invented in 1983.
It was revolutionary, the utter example of a "killer app" that had people and businesses running out to buy computers just to replace paper memos. You setup your mail server to hook into that brand new, stunning ecosystem of near instant communication from across the world.
Now there are 6,000,000,000 "killer" apps you can install in seconds from your pocket computer. I can hit "install" and be talking face to face with a stranger in Singapore in 30 seconds, all from easy, low effort walled gardens.
Federation was and is a reasonable way to host things, but comparing current systems to email is a misnomer. People dealt with federation because they had to. If gmail has existed in 1983, no one would have had their own federated email servers. Hell, AOL tried to choke the internet itself to death and almost succeeded in the early 90s because it was an "all in one" solution. They had aol only webpages and everything, including email. Its a twist of fate that they failed, mainly due to the onset of always on broadband, not because people didn't want things easy.
Make things easy, people will use it. They will only do hard if they have to.
The best thing for on-boarding are topic-specific instances, it makes picking one much easier.
Hey... that just gave me a small idea... what if we made a "flock" or "herd" of Mastodon servers? The group of servers would all federate with each other, have the same block and allow lists, moderation policy and teams spread throughout them.
When you make an account you can be assigned a random instance name within the flock. If your instance goes down you could still possibly log in using other servers? Main benefit would be spreading server costs and maintenance effort and de-centralized operating, but still keep a centralized feel to it?
Let me see how you get instance admins to agree on what to defederate.
Honestly that’s probably the best sort of solution. A group that has some minimum standards of moderation and maintenance/upgrade management plan and just evenly distribute the load as people arrive.
Then as a second phase make it easy to transfer, that way at the point the user gets comfortable they can easily swap to a better* “home” for those that care, for those that don’t, make the server choice be virtually invisible.
Man, it feels like you guys haven't spoken to a real human in decades...
Yeah, most people wants an easy migration. If the interface was nearly identical to Twitter, there'd be a flood.
Yeah, things requiring choosing a instance like, say, email, are doomed to fail
At least in the early days of email before gmail, hotmail, or yahoo, you would get assigned an email from your work, university, or ISP.
I’m guessing you meant this sarcastically, but you may have been right for the wrong reasons. Look at this graph, by the metric of the way the fediverse works that is a failure. Apple and Google are massively dominant because people don’t want to think about it and most just go with their phone os maker who makes them create one when setting it up, and there is no fediverse server equivalent to that.
Not really. I mean, sure it’s the same concept, but email has been getting semi-centralized between the big players now, with gmail and maybe icloud getting the largest chunk of users. That would be similar to letting users choose between .world or .ml to sign up with, which is against the fediverse principle to spread the load as wide as possible.
When you present the lowest common denominator internet user with hundreds of instances to choose from and requiring them to think further than clicking through a sign-up page, you lose user interest pretty quickly.
I mean, I hear you (we’re both here after all), but honestly, I think this is a bad take and approach (if getting more users is a goal.
It’s not the 90s anymore. And even email services are given to you by your employer or selected from the closest big brand provider (Google etc).
All of which is a far cry from “nerdygardeners.io” administered by some rando anonymous account you’ve never heard of before.
For mainstream success, the instances thing was dead on arrival. Just was and is. Which is fine, the Fedi can be and arguably should be something else.
IMO the success of BlueSky is good for the Fedi. It can take the “let’s be the next mainstream thing” monkey off of its back and just be itself.
So what, should we have a website where you push a button and it sends you to a random instance to sign up?
Yes honestly, we can manage what instances are pooled for on boarding.
The idea would be the servers would have shared ban/block lists and similar rules so that they can share the load of having open sign ups.
Basically a coop of instances to improve on-boarding. If you join the coop then you get added to the pool of instances that get assigned normies at random.
If the authentication was federated it’d be ideal as well but I assume this would be outside the scope of AP and would cause issues if you tried to post from your mastodon.social account from mastodon.world’s server for instance.
See my reply to u/Rentlar, but for most users, yes, the easier the onboarding, the more accessible it is; the more people won’t immediately run away because they’re afraid they’ll make the wrong choice.
Why can't mastodon influencers create content on how easy it is to pick a server.
Ah make it like a food hall and anthropo the servers as food.
Just log onto mastodon.social and be done with it. That's the one that will still be running until the they turn out the lights on the service, I figure. And then go kick in a buck or two a month on Patreon to help defray development and server costs. (Not being the product is worth a donation by itself, I figure.)
Mastodon isn't even the best micro-blogging service on the Fediverse.
Which would you say is best?
Now there's an argument to be had. I ave tried Mastodon and Firefish and found the latter to be far superior, feature-wise. I think Iceshrimp will be the *key fork that will finally the big breakout hit, especially with the Iceshrimp.net rewrite.
All these "why are people using Bluesky and not Mastodon" topics are starting to give me a headache. You've been told and on some level, I have to assume you understand the reasons, but are simply unwilling to address them. When people say, "it's difficult to use" instead of understanding why they think that way, you just dismissively wave your hands and say, "no it's not".
If you want people to use Mastodon, you need to SHOW people the power of federation while HIDING all the rough bits. People want to go to where the friends, writers, artists, scientists, etc. they want to follow are and sign up for an account there. Simple as. In this way, they very much want at least the appearance of centralization. I don't want to have to get balls deep in an instance's politics to understand their moderation, who they're federated with, if they have the funds to operate into the foreseeable future, and how to migrate my data if any of those things goes sideways.
I remember when I first tried to use Mastodon and struggled with how best to make it work, so I asked what was probably a basic question to the Enlightened™. Instead of being helped, I was met with "it's easy, maybe you're just dense?".
Then I thought that maybe Mastodon doesn't have the kind of people I'd want to interact with on it.
I think that if you want BlueSky like growth for activity pub... You federate with Threads. Or another hypothetical flagship where everyone is sent. Stop worrying spreading users around so much. People who join that network on the flagship can learn about federation and instance switching later.
I'm sure many people on activitypub would prefer that it grows more like it has though.
rolls eyes
I thought the whole point of the fediverse was that it doesn't matter which service you use, just as long as you're in the pool.
I do not see Twitter, Threads, or BlueSky as any part of the Fediverse since they are all for profit corporations. Fediverse is about being free of the corporate overlords.
Well.....I don't know why you included Twitter on that list, as they've NEVER been part of the fediverse.
Threads is fully integrated. You can personally block them from your end, but thats all you.
It would be like saying "Dominos doesn't make pizza. It has never been a pizza company". With your logic being that you don't like their pizza. Doesn't make it true just because YOU don't eat the pizza.
Bluesky I hear conflicting reports on. Some people say it is, because it can be, others say it's not, because it's not official. I get both sides on this.
But the last part......is objectively not true. It happrns to work that way FOR NOW. It just isn't profitable enough for the major players to sink any real resources into.
The fact that it's adfree has more to do with the fact that 60k people on all of Lemmy with most instances having a few hundred people "on" it, and also advertising companies not understanding the concept of federation.
I could start my own instance, and sell ads to corporate overlords. The biggest problem I'd face is the idea of trying to convince any company with money to spend that money on me putting an ad on for such a small audience.
If/when the fediverse ever gains momentum and becomes mainstream, you can guarentee that ads will be everywhere.
Because nobody owns the fediverse. Which means if I sell an ad on my instance, all federated instances will see the ad. Sure, you could defederate from my instance. But what would happen right now if lemmy.world sold ads? Is every instance going to defederate from the biggest instance, with the majority of communities? That would essentially break the fediverse.
We're all on a service that you think is immune to centralization, but forgot the core concept that humans like to socially congragate. Which means it's inevitable that there will always be one big dominant instance. Which means if this thing ever goes mainstream, the ads are coming, and they'll be on all the big instances.
The problem is partially that bluesky isn't really the Fediverse. It doesn't use the standard, and isn't truly interoperable. Accounts can be bridged, but that's a hacky workaround, not actual intercompatibility.
And threads is run by a company whose human rights violations would take a week just to read out loud.
The idea that the specific platform doesn't matter isn't a blanket statement, it's a description of being interoperable, nothing more. Bluesky isn't truly interoperable, and threads is run by Meta who facilitated ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and the burning of whole villages in Myanmar despite countless explicit warnings that these things would happen if they didn't take safety measures (not to mention all the other garbage Meta has done or enabled)
Yeah but they're fighting over the inevitable ad revenue.
Just to add to the many responses here with a simple quip on this issue (which I’m taking from one else)
The fediverse presumes people care more about independence than socialising. For most it’s the other way around.
IE: it’s about the socialising “stupid”.
Even for us techy types happy with the system here … it means we get to socialise with like minded people. The independence we have here is often secondary, I’d wager, to what we all get out of this.
Mastodon emerges as the clear winner. It’s free from investor influence, ad-free, and controlled by a community that values user autonomy over profit.
That's a gross assumption that people care about any of this. The tech-abled and tech-writers are in as much of a bubble as the Democrats were this past election.
The vast majority of people using social media do so for entertainment and passive news consumption and a ton of rage bait. Who owns or controls it is entirely irrelevant - ex., TikTok.
Ads? You think people in 2024 still care about ads? I think a lot of them enjoy it. Moreover, if you're a small or local business, you want a platform that allows you to promote your goods and services. This kind of opportunity is what made social media explode. If you were a community business, would you prefer to operate on a platform that was strictly chronological or one that allowed you to pay to get noticed? What if you were an "influencer"? While normal people may dislike this stuff, it's this stuff that generates revenue for the platform and, like it or not, increases engagement.
This lack of openness confines users to BlueSky alone, making it difficult to connect with friends on other platforms without creating a separate account.
How has this prevented Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube from succeeding?
You're trying to force a platform to do what you want it to do. You're not objectively looking at what the majority of social media users want. When I tell people about interconnected platforms, they have no clue what that means or why they would want that. They just want one platform.
You and I recognize the benefits of the Fediverse meaning one application to access many platforms. That may be a reality we observe one day but for now, nothing is fully developed. You're trying to convince people that robotaxies will replace vehicle ownership today when they're not done deploying them.
Mastodon’s structure, lacking an algorithm to push specific content, gives users freedom to create a feed that genuinely reflects their interests. For those who are politically inclined, Mastodon has communities and accounts covering all sides, but there’s no algorithm driving you toward any specific viewpoint.
If Bluesky has an algorithm, I haven't seen it. I get chronological posts from the accounts I follow with an occasional and subtle suggestion to follow other similar accounts. Many of the accounts I follow are news outlets, journalists, civic leaders, etc. Some of the accounts I followed on Twitter are finally joining Bluesky while less than a fraction of those are on Mastodon.
I've been using Mastodon more than Bluesky. I like the instance I'm a member of which is operated by people in my physical community. Today I saw that more and more members of my community have joined Bluesky, including my local paper. I can not express the joy I've felt this afternoon seeing a platform blossom like the Twitter of old.
Betamax was superior to VHS. DVD Audio was superior to SACD. You may think the flexibility of Windows or Android makes them superior to MacOS or iOS. Ultimately, it comes down to marketing and convenience.
How do you make Mastodon better? You have to get brands over there. You have to get journalists and news outlets over there. When CNN reports that someone said something on Twitter, that's marketing for that platform. When [the news] starts reporting that [celebrity] or [president] posted on Mastodon - then maybe you'll start getting some traction. But why would that person post something so important on a platform with so few users?
i know so many ppl that purchase products: “from an ad i saw on (whatever social media they use)” it blows my mind, seriously.
Yeah absolutely. I have never clicked through an ad on the internet. My click through rate is literally zero. On the incredibly rare instance that I see something I like from an ad, I do some research first then go to the relevant website.
That’s why they’re so pervasive, they work on the majority of people (that’s not us).
We cannot win by changing the fediverse into something like what we left behind because it will no longer be the fediverse we know and love, all we have is the good fight of educating people on why it is better and ourselves as an example - a city on a hill to which others may flock if they see the shine, and it may not be a fight we can win but it is the only fight worth fighting.
Having actually read this now, the biggest valid complaint is the same one rehashed in the past. It’s VC funded to start and the future there is uncertain. The board has openly discussed funding plans and There are some mitigations like having the code be open source from the start and almost completely self host-able with improvements to come at this early stage that try to fend that off though.
Saying Mastodon is better because there’s no algorithm is true of Bluesky too. And if they are seeing as much porn as it sounds like (unless you’re talking about Alf’s Hog or Tom Bombadill’s Big Naturals which were a bit like when Lemmy Shitpost goes gets on a bean streak) their feed was built by who they followed.
Just some hours ago I read a post about how Bluesky will be the one to defeat Twitter.. who should I believe?? ;_; XD