this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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I's heard news that BlueSky has been growing a lot as Xitter becomes worse and worse, but why do people seem to prefer BlueSky? This confuses me because BlueSky does not have any federalization technologies built into it, meaning it's just another centralized platform, and thus vulnerable to the same things that make modern social media so horrible.

And so, in the hopes of having a better understanding, I've come here to ask what problems Mastodon has that keep people from migrating to it and what is BlueSky doing so right that it attracts so many people.

This question is directed to those who have used all three platforms, although others are free to put out their own thoughts.

(To be clear, I've never used Xitter, BlueSky or Mastodon. I'm asking specifically so that I don't have to make an account on each to find out by myself.)


Edit:

Edit2: (changed the wording a bit on the last part of point 1 to make my point clearer.)

From reading the comments, here are what seems to be the main reasons:

  1. Federation is hard

The concept of federation seems to be harder to grasp than tech people expected. As one user pointed out, tech literacy is much less prevalent than tech folk might expect.

On Mastodon, you must pick an instance, for some weird "federation" tech reason, whatever that means; and thanks to that "federation" there are some post you cannot see (due to defederalization). To someone who barely understands what a server is, the complex network of federalization is to much to bare.

BlueSky, on the other hand, is simple: just go to this website, creating an account and Ta Da! Done! No need to understand anything else.

~~The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest flaw.~~

The unfamiliar and more complex nature of Mastodon's federalization technology seems to be its biggest obstacle towards achieving mass adoption.

  1. No Algorithm

Mastodon has no algorithm to surface relevant posts, it is just a chronological timeline. Although some prefer this, others don't and would rather have an algorithm serving them good quality post instead of spending 10h+ curating a subscription feed.

  1. UI and UX

People say that Mastodon (and Lemmy) have HORRIBLE UX, which will surely drive many away from Mastodon. Also, some pointed out that BlueSky's overall design more closely follows that of Twitter, so BlueSky quite literally looks more like pre-Musk Xitter.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Mainstream tech adoption needs a neat clean wrapper imo. I think that's the biggest missing piece to fediverse, people want pretty, simple, plug and play.

If a wrapper like that could be put on top of/combined with all the good qualities that the fediverse offers, I think it would create optimal conditions for slow adoption.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Agreed. There should have been a default place to sign up from the beginning. Leaning on federation as a feature is something very few people care about until they really care about it. The mass adopter just looks at where their favourite celebrity or talking head is and then move there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

It's the raison d'etre. Saying "don't federate" is like saying "don't put images and rich hyperlinking on the WWW, just make it like Gopher." If you don't want to federate, don't. But saying that it was a bad move for ActivityPub is just nonsensical.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago

same reason we just elected donald fucking trump. people will always take the easy option that makes them feel good.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 15 hours ago

BlueSky doesnt club you with nonstop Linux nerds

[–] [email protected] 28 points 23 hours ago (7 children)

Mastodon being federated is absolutely not a flaw. This is how the internet was meant to work in the first place. The fact that people got used to using centralized platforms is an aberration and this needs to be actively fought against.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 day ago (12 children)

You have to pick a Mastodon server, before you know anything about anything. The acquisition funnel probably drops 90% of the people checking it out right there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

You have to pick a microblogging service. What's the difference? Truth Social is just a mastodon instance, but it's commercial and it has marketing. That's all that's "missing" from any other fediverse instance, and thank fucking god.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

This, when I decided to join Mastodon I was prompted to choose a server and had to research which one should join and understand how it works.

It is called UX friction and is well studied in sign up and checkout processes, the more steps the user has to perform the more likely it abandons it.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

Felt the same about Lemmy when I signed up.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

The only reason I actually wound up signing up on Lemmy is that there is one "main" instance by appearance, and it lets you participate in others(?). (Lemmy.world)

You don't need to know any of the more esoteric stuff to get going.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

☝️ This. It's why I put off signing up for Mastodon for a long time, even though I am a big supporter of the Fediverse.

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[–] [email protected] 173 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (11 children)

Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.

Back when there was any question of what platform to migrate to? Threads and bluesky were "Get an invite and make an account"

Mastodon was people insisting that EVERYONE needed to understand what federation is and the underlying philosophy. When really they should have just said "Sign up for one of these instances. It is like email where it doesn't really matter what provider you have". Countless times I tried to explain to folk on a message board or discord and would say "Just make an account on one of these four or five instances". And, like clockwork, someone would "well ackshually" me and insist that people can't use Mastodon without understanding the fundamental concept of federation and how picking the right instance is important and people can just delete and remake their accounts until they are satisfied.

So when it was time for the big influencers to move? They went to where people were already congregating and where they didn't need to host an educational seminar to tell someone how to make an account.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago

You literally cannot search for Mastodon without getting a weird ass 2-paragraph manifesto about The Fediverse.

End users just want to use shit.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.

Yeah that's another thing, Mastodon is kinda nice, except for its userbase. :P

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Honestly?

I vastly prefer almost everyone I have interacted with on mastodon over basically every lemmy user. Because lemmy still thinks it is reddit but also is totally over their ex but do you think he is thinking of me and can I send him a picture of your dick to show it is bigger?

Whereas mastodon? People kind of just want to talk. We largely understand that twitter has been a shithole for... most of its existence. So rather than try to reinvent it (bsky and threads) we are learning from it in the same way cohost learned from tumblr (and died even faster...).

And the lunatics who need to scream about what federation is and why it is The Future? They aren't talking about basically anything else. They are keeping to themselves and talking about how amazing the community can be... while the rest of us are actually being a community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, Lemmy is basically a big discussion forum to share links or get an argument going. You're obviously gonna get more confrontations.

Bsky/Mastodon/Threads is strangers yelling their thoughts into the void in between posts about their cats or pictures of themselves. Not exactly a place where most people will go in with the intention of dissenting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

And yet?

Mastodon is full of actual conversations between people. Someone says something. Someone else replies and an actual conversation happens where people respond to each other.

Lemmy? It almost always devolves into people trying to one up each other and aggressively talk at each other. It is like we speed ran reddit and went from "How dare you have a different opinion" to "I am going to cherry pick a sentence and build a whole fucking straw city from that".

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (3 children)

My interactions on Mastodon are far fewer than on Lemmy, though.

IMO, Lemmy is like a CoOp video game where you’re supposed to interact together, and Mastodon is like watching someone else play a solo video game.

Both can be good, but they serve different purposes to me.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago

A big issue with the 2022 signup wave was the influx of new Masto websites, run by new admins. The subscription model of ActivityPub meant they were mostly contentless, and they weren't seeded by knowledgeable users. People needed to understand the basics of federation to find anything because nothing was being syndicated on those sites.

And then a bunch of them shut down when admins who were ok hosting hundreds of like-minded users suddenly had thousands of generalist users flooding their sites.

It was major human infrastructure failure.

And that was as a whole bunch of tenured users started getting hostile over people not adopting the idiosyncratic nettiquite of the was-niche-only-yesterday space. The server blocks started rolling out, and people needed to understand the idea of "federation" (and, apparently, "the Internet") to understand why they were being "denied access" to the cranky people, trolls, and unmoderated spaces.

The truth is, most people don't like the internet. They like the simple, streamlined process of just being owned by corporate interests. Walles gardens work for them in a way public parks never will.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 22 hours ago

the discovery on bsky is pretty nice, i dont see an equivalent on my masto instance

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People expecting a new Twitter when switching to Mastodon were met with weird behavior and nerds who told them the awful search function or weird comment count is working correctly because that's how federation works. Well if that's the case then federation is shit.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is unfortunately the world of open-source.

  1. Nerd tells you to use the open-source thing.
  2. Non-technical tries it and asks questions
  3. Nerd proclaims it's not a real problem/your fault/not applicable/fix it yourself
  4. Some company takes that open-source version or idea, makes it easier for end users and monetize it
  5. Nerd gets angry and repeats step 1

Source: I am nerd and I contribute to open-source.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (17 children)

I'm on both Mastodon and Bluesky. To me, Mastodon's biggest problem is its refusal to have an algorithm to surface popular content. Yes there are problems with algorithms, but I don't have the time or inclination to read every post in chronological order. A good algorithm would show me popular posts without manipulating me for profit.

Edt: a few people have misunderstood me. I'm not proposing "Mastodon shows me stuff from people I don't follow," I'm suggesting "Mastodon shows me stuff only from people I follow, but it shows me the popular stuff first."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago

There’s a trending posts list which helps fill this want for me.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Problem with algorithms showing popular content is that once you have them, you'll have people trying to use them to make money. And by extension people trying to manipulate you for profit. Doesn't have to be the platform itself doing it for it to be harmful.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bluesky is way more approachable than Mastodon. Most people don't want to have to learn what an instance is.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People are less tech literate and considerably stupider than they were 20 year ago. It's shocking.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

The year is 2034 and 96% of the population is unemployed because they are all forced to "do their own research" on literally everything and there's no time to work. We all must research every niche topic to fully understand it before using it or the other 4% calls us stupid and lazy.

No longer are we allowed to just buy a shower head, or bike or sign up for email without sources cited and proof we know everything about said thing.

Have kids? Do their research too, no chocolate milk unless I've proven why it's good.

Elderly parents? Don't let them touch that Roku remote. I need a research paper on all the options I explored.

Sorry for all the sarcasm. I fix my house, I work, I mow the lawn and shuttle children to sports, and my friend says check this bluesky thing out, 30 seconds and I'm signed up and have a friend and a discover tab and a search that works. Life's chaotic and I don't want to be defined as stupid because I can't spend hours figuring something out in place of something I think is more important.

All this not directed at you specifically but I guess it hit a nerve.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

There are reasons that they have spent thousands or tens of thousands of working hours to make uptake as easy as possible. Those reasons are not in your interests. It is such a small price to pay. It is a necessary feature of ANY distributed service. The irony of complaining about it from your niche little Lemmy instance.

Look at it this way. You still had to pick an instance!! You just picked an instance that cannot talk to any other instances. If you were not so (forgive me but I guess it's the term we're using for lack of a better one) stupid, you would have realized that you had just had a meaningful choice taken from you, and made for someone else's benefit instead of yours.

Throughout our entire global culture, convenience is killing us. I happen to believe free and healthy public forums outside of capitalist exploitation is of vital importance. I think this is a place our governments have abdicated responsibility to their citizens, and the Fediverse is the next best thing to public infrastructure. It's so worth it when everything you need to know can be expressed in a one page FAQ that fits on your phone's screen.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago

Blame Apple I guess

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

It's lack of marketing since it is not a business, and people conflating useful optional features with confusing usage.

Everyone I know moved to bluesky, after which bluesky basically immediately sold out to crypto people. I brought up the idea of "hey, this is why I think mastodon is a lot better, because it's impossible for it to sell out entirely", to which one person lost their fucking shit and responded stating that I was "fear mongering".

This person also said they didn't care if a business owned all their data and controlled their entire life because "all their data is owned already anyway".

This same person also said that after the recent US election they "spent the night throwing up until they were dry heaving and crying".

Why they claim to not care about their life being controlled by corporate entities, but claim to care so hard about their life being controlled by a government that they say they have a physical reaction to it is a subject I haven't broached because I'm sure they wouldn't be able to see their hypocrisy if they pointed the James Webb telescope at themselves.

In a nut shell, many people are incredibly stupid and not at all interested in their best interests unless the news tells them which interests they should care about.

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

basically immediately sold out to crypto people.

Wait what? I know very little about BlueSky and even less about the people behind it, so I didn't know that. Could you send me a link to more info?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

They announced a series A in which they stated they are implementing paid features through a subscription model and took 15 million dollars from Blockchain Capital.

They say in this statement they won't "Hyper Financialize" the platform, which is corporate doublespeak for "We are now monetizing this platform".

The additions to their board are people who come from crypto/NFT companies.

As a result, the clock is now ticking on Bluesky and its destruction is inevitable due to the laws of capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Because in Bluesky, you open the app, create an account, and you’re good to go.

Federation is way too complex of an idea for the average person. Picking a server and then understanding instances is much too complicated.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago

.....BlueSky does not have any federalization technologies built into it, meaning it's just another centralized platform, and thus vulnerable to the same things that make modern social media so horrible.

Ask your average social media user what any of that means and you'll get blank stares.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just because BlueSky isn’t federated doesn’t mean it’s (totally) centralized. It uses the AT protocol which means user data lives in a separate place than the app itself. While the BlueSky app is centralized all the user data (your posts, likes, etc) live in a separate place and can be self-hosted. This means that if BlueSky went bust or something, users could easily just move to a new platform that someone would inevitably create and all of their data, likes, follows would all be there.

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