Comment on The Social Network That Can't Sell Out: Understanding Mastodon vs. Bluesky
coacoamelky@lemm.ee 5 days agoFeeling like the mastodon crowd are preaching on soap boxes here. Not a bad product but will it attract the general public, probably not .
roofuskit@lemmy.world 5 days ago
When they are out of sinking ships to scurry to.
khaleer@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
People prefer to drown than pick option which is not corporate bullshit. Bluesky won because it’s centralized, and people don’t have to decide over instance.
naught101@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Why are you on Lemmy? Or, why do you think the decentralised model works here, but not on mastodon?
Or is it only working because there is no third party VC-backed reddit clone?
ameancow@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Lemmy is barely a thing. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
People do prefer centralized platforms with shiny front-faces and easy-to-navigate corporate bullshit. The reason why that stuff is so successful is because it works.
People fled to Bluesky because advertisers moved to Bluesky.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 5 days ago
As a user of both Mastodon and Lemmy, I think there are inherit differences between the format that make lemmy easily a capable replacement for Reddit, but mastodon not at all a replacement for Twitter.
To get into specifics, Lemmy is more meme and news based, and as long as there are a few thousand users using it and some percentage of those posting content…it largely scratches the same itch.
Twitter was very much an active global conversation forum. It was nicknamed the hell site for a reason because if someone took issue with or was very amused by something you posted and you became “the main character” of Twitter for even an instant (something I experienced only very slightly) it was electrifying and even sort of scary at times.
In addition, the people that were active on there were very active, and it felt at times like you could talk to anyone who had been twitterized…which was a lot of people including prominent politicians, celebrities, and even experts of certain fields.
It was just an entirely different thing altogether. Mastodon is like many of the Twitter alternatives that have popped up from time to time. It’s largely kinda the same with regards to functionality (though not having quote tweets is completely ridiculous IMO) but the engagement of it is very low, and the place largely feels very inactive. It feels like you’re talking to dead feeds posted in syndication and there’s nobody on the other end.
It’s not the same as Twitter, and I doubt that Bluesky will even be the same as Twitter. Honestly, maybe all of that’s a good thing. But the virality and the engagement and the discovery and everything on Mastodon is way turned down versus Twitter. Twitter was like the crack cocaine of social media…fast, cheap, addictive, and terrible for you. Mastodon is like a cup of tea by comparison.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 days ago
Lemmy users can subscribe to a community and get tons of posts. I’d have to find 100 people to follow on mastodon to match what a single Lemmy community provides.
Glitchvid@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I think it’s “the algorithm”, people basically just want to be force-fed “content” – look how successful TikTok is, largely because it has an algorithm that very quickly narrows down user habits and provides endless distraction.
Mastodon and fediverse alternatives by comparison have very simple feeds and ways to surface content, it simple doesn’t “hook” people the same way, and that’s competition.
On one hand we should probably be doing away with “the algorithm” for reasons not enumerated here for brevity, but on the other hand maybe the fediverse should build something to accommodate this demand, otherwise the non-fedi sites will.
kerntucky@infosec.pub 5 days ago
I feel that if the fediverse starts implementing algorithms like the big, corporate social media sites then they should make opt-out available.
coacoamelky@lemm.ee 5 days ago
That never seems to happen though
naught101@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Twitter is the first time a global social media giant has seen a major exodus (I guess the second if you count MySpace, but the reasons were pretty different). The sample size is very low… It’s easy to forget how new all of this is.
Muyal@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Even then, how many people actually left their Twitter accounts?
I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen people say “I’m leaving Twitter” only to come back after a month