Why are people preferring Blue Sky over Mastodon?

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Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Sunshine@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

Mastodon has been around since 2016 and has 804k MAU.

The platform has 57 third party apps.

The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.

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Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because centralized services are easier to use.

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- Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This exactly. I didn’t join Lemmy for a long time, because I would search for “Lemmy”, get confused when I see a page asking me to “pick an instance” instead of seeing a front page, and then leave because I thought that they were all independent from each other.
  
  It wasn’t until reddit killed my favorite app that I finally decided to put in the effort to figure it out.
  
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leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The people leaving Twitter right now want Twitter minus Elon. That’s Bluesky. They’ve heard a couple of their Twitter follows mention it and they’ve gone to their app store where they find an app called Bluesky, install it and easily join and start using it. Once they do they are finding it pretty straightforward to find people they used to follow on Twitter.

That’s all people want.

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BT_7274@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You have to understand we are not normal users. Anyone even remotely interested in federated software are not normal users.

Bluesky may not have 57 third party apps and that’s why people are flocking to it. It’s easy. The signup process through the app involved no selecting of servers, no understanding of what it actually is under the hood, and users are greeted by a default algorithm that feels very much like old Twitter before Musk.

Basically, regular users do not care about the fediverse and just want a competent and polished app and site experience.

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Berin@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We’ve had this exact conversation in this community two months ago already, in case you want to back read the comments from back then, nothing much has changed

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- cholesterol@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What is HOA?
  
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  - S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Home Owners Association a group or people that “polices” neighbors and has a hisyory of doing shady things. But he’s referring to the actitude of “coming outta nowhere to tell you what to do” they have in common.
    
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TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Average users do not even remotely care about federated software and/or decentralisation. That is techno-babble to them and their eyes will glaze over if you try to market that to them.

That being said: Mastodon does a shit job at explaining how it works, how to use it, and what it’s advantages are. The Joinmastodon landing page just assumes you already know how a fair bit about instances work and what federated software is and does a very poor job explaining it. And even then, most users won’t care either way. They just want to click a Join button and be done.

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- Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s exactly what drove me into seeking out Lemmy instead. I hopped on Mastodon and it made me feel like I was being coralled into following some niche hobby forum exclusively, and I wasn’t into that. It didn’t explain that the instance itself was largely irrelevant and that the rest of the platform would open up to me after choosing one.
  
  Lemmy still had a learning curve, but having experience with reddit I was able to pick it up easily enough.
  
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adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m dabbling in Bluesky atm. Having run my own Masto server for over a year at this point. Here’s things I’ve found that Bluesky does just plain better - mostly cause it’s not beholden to the whims of the ActivityPub protocol.

Shows me all replies to any post I happen to come across.

Lets me see all posts about things I happen to search/look for, including hashtags.

I don’t have to worry about being unable to see content I haven’t personally blocked (not so much of an issue on a small/single server like mine though).

I can repost things (not actually too bothered with this one but many people want it).

I can set per post reply permissions to a very granular level (no-one, mentioned, followers, specific followers)

It handles video in a way that works i.e. I can post them, and people can watch them with minimal buffering/waiting.

Gives me access to community built collections/algorithms that expose the content I want to see.

It defaults to providing an additional feed driven by what the people I’m following are liking/interacting with.

Finally, a big one for new users, it provided a default feed of content when I first logged in so that I had something to look at.

The first two are huge on a small/single user server. By default we get nothing, following a single account will get us the content of just that account and the replies that they happen to reply to. A post may get 200 replies, but unless I go looking on the original server I will see a fraction of that. Technical solutions exist to help with this but the Fediverse’s penchant for privacy and control (quite rightly) limits the effectiveness (Fedifetcher, GetMoarFedi).

3 is something most people won’t think about. But if they become aware they’re not seeing something they thought they’d be able to they then have to deep dive into who’s defederating who and why.

Most all the other points just make the whole thing a much more seamless experience for your average user. Bootstrapping a list of people to follow on a small server is hard (I’d absolutely recommend creating a Fediverse account somewhere large first to build up some sort of list before migrating)
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58008@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s the path of least resistance to achieve Musklessness. The second two of the positives you listed are actually negatives to the average Joe. Choice paralysis, overwhelming number of apps and servers, these are things that put people off even trying, especially if there are easier-to-use alternatives that are familiar and instant.

Mastodon is great, but it’s not quite there yet in terms of convenience. Too much copying and pasting and clicking through to different instances in order to read old posts etc. It needs to be more cohesive in a way that doesn’t require constantly leaving your timeline or going into the settings.

It’s also the case that the Twitter diaspora who are famous tend to choose BlueSky, and that brings a lot of people along with them.

And it’s also the case that Mastodon doesn’t have much of a marketing campaign outside of word-of-mouth, whereas BlueSky does.

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ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because it pretends to be different to the centralised corporate social media platforms

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- sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Best answer yet IMO. The cohesive experience is essential to the branding, and low threshold for entry.
  
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glimse@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve got an idea as to why.

I went to mastodon.social and see a Linux meme, some heavy political commentary, and a bunch of posts about mastodon being better than Twitter.

I then went to bluesky.app and see some political riffing, cute animals, a comic, some jokes, a company, and even Don Lemon.

The average person checking them both out for the first time, mastodon is nerd shit and Bluesky is normal shit.

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- unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Feels like deciding in 2010 between Twitter and Reddit in some ways…
  
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It's shiny, they advertise, put in a lot of money to spread the word. And the onboarding process probably is way easier?!

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- pBaesse@bolha.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  @hendrik do they advertise? Honest question :blobBone_dance:
  @fediverse @Sunshine
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I wouldn't know, I have a lot of adblockers etc. But it gets to me via word of mouth. And it's been in the media a lot this year. Due to their business decisions, new approach, novelty... Mastodon has also been in the news. But that was yesterday's news and I suppose everyone forgets yesterday's news.
    
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ObstreperousCanadian@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s just easier. I have both but I almost never use Mastodon anymore. Federation there doesn’t seem to work right. I didn’t know what an instance was so I joined mastodon.social. Finding and following people in the app doesn’t always seem to work right if they’re on another instance. Doing it in a browser is even more painful.

The people I liked to follow and interact with on X, many tried Mastodon and abandoned it, and many more are now on Bluesky. This creates momentum to “follow the crowd” as it were.

Additionally, you only have one chance to make a first impression. A lot of us tried Mastodon earlier and it wasn’t ready. Bluesky started as invite-only, which drummed up interest before catching this zeitgeist of people leaving X.

Lastly, and maybe it’s just me, but the font sizing on the official Mastodon app on Android is generally too small and can’t be changed. Bluesky allows me to change it and make it more comfortable to use.

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- ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨29⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Evidentially mastodon makes it hard to find people on purpose unless you know their name “to stop harassment” I’m told, except I’m not sure how it does that at all and it just makes it harder to use the damn platform. That’s my one real complaint about mastodon.
  
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xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Bluesky allows me to use my domain as my identity and make my own moderation decisions without having to run my own instance.

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- BruisedMoose@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I was really impressed by this feature when I signed up recently! It baffles me a little bit to see newspapers and things not taking advantage of it.
  
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ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Mastodon is a pain in the ass to get signed up for anyone under room temperature IQ, so, like, most of Twitter’s users, even the ones smart enough to leave.

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TORFdot0@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
57 different 3rd party apps is probably a good start. Mastodon has to be easy to on-board and it isn’t for someone with no technical understanding what domains, servers or instances are. To that group Bluesky makes sense. You are signing up for Bluesky. Try to onboard that group to mastodon and they don’t understand if they are on mastodon.social or mastodon.world or any other instance.

Why would they be on one of those fringe services with less users than bluesky? That’s what a non expert understands

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noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
it’s been better marketed, and people struggle with the concept of federation and picking a server. and I guess the invite-only, artificial exclusivity strat has actually paid off for them initially, unlike for Google+.

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- TexasDrunk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  people struggle with the concept of federation and picking a server
  
  This is a HUGE reason. I didn’t know when I first signed up for Lemmy that I was on what is essentially a tankie instance. I didn’t know when I signed up for Pixelfed that I wasn’t going to be able to see shit because the first server I signed up for wasn’t really federated with anyone and I’ve mostly given up on it. I still can’t see a bunch of stuff on Mastodon without switching through several accounts with no rhyme or reason.
  
  I’ve said before that I obviously like it here because I’m using the services, but it’s not easy. Most people don’t know about the fediverse, and most of those that do want to be passive about maintaining their social media. Most of the fediverse is built for nerds.
  
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- moe90@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Language filter in bluesky is much better than Mastodon as well
  
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  - noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Mastodon relies on users setting the language their post is in manually, so if someone posts in two languages and forgets to switch between them, they don’t get filtered out. I know there are some other pieces of software that switch it automatically, I’m fairly sure Calckey automatically recognized the language you were writing in.
    
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SuperSleuth@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Every platform and app I’ve seen does a piss poor job of explaining what federation is and how to sign up. “Wtf is mastodon.social?, Why is this one in German?, Why can’t I login after signing up?” New users just get confused and give up.

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maplebar@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You want the bullshit “Mastodon is too complicated and hard to use!” answer or the real answer?

BlueSky has rich people behind it.

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- _pi@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They’re the same answer.
  
  You need money to market applications to users.
  
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  - maplebar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They aren’t really the same answer.
    
    People suggest that Mastodon is too complicated for the average knuckle-dragging moron to use (and it might be, but frankly I consider that a pro, not a con) because it has “servers”, as if the entire point of the internet wasn’t to have a global network of communication across a multitude of clients and servers. Do these same people think the concept of websites and email are also too complex for the regular person? Maybe… But again, if the regular person is that fucking dumb do we really want have them in our community at all?
    
    What’s more, BlueSky is supposedly federated (or "will be"™), and as such it’ll have to deal with all of the same challenges around federation that Mastodon deals with, and people are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.
    
    Otherwise I agree with your last sentence. Social media is about money and fame, first and foremost. The average person will always go where the most money and fame are concentrated.
    
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flamingos@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It has an algorithm that puts content in front of you, unlike Mastodon where it only puts what you ask for in your feed. I’m convinced that if Mastodon populated people with low following count’s feed with random posts it wouldn’t have bled as many users as it did.

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L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What is with all these wall of text answers guys?

Twitter people like Twitter and Twitter man for making it. Twitter now not Twitter is now X and no more Twitter man. Twitter people not like TeslaSpace man. Twitter man make BlueSky.

No elephant needed to make this story work. Remember: twitter brain cannot handle too many characters.

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timconspicuous@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Unpopular opinion here, but: as opposed to other twitter clones like Hive Social and such, that also look sleek and are simple, but didn’t go anywhere, Bluesky did manage to attract a sizeable crowd of creative and talented open source indie devs that are passionate about it and build cool stuff on atproto. Whether it’s custom feeds or star sign labelers or alternative clients that add more features or entirely new appviews like the oekaki board PinkSea, you get the feeling it is a pretty vibrant ecosystem and this has sustained it all these months.

While this is true for the Fediverse as well, I think it’s fair to say that there have been rumblings here about lack of direction and proper stewardship of the Fediverse and if you want this place to succeed you can’t just sweep it under the rug, shrug your shoulders and say “well, people who pick Bluesky over Mastodon are just stupid”.

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captainastronaut@seattlelunarsociety.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sign up process is easier. No existential decisions to be made to get started.

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Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
All those federated platform will only become popular if the backend is dumb and the frontend is smart, i.e. you create your account on a frontend but can use the same credentials to connect via another frontend and no matter which frontend you connect to, all content for the platform is accessible to you, there’s no admin having control over your experience, only people offering different UI experiences. Federation/defederation/deciding to host NSFW content, that’s all taken care of behind the scene just like on Reddit, for the user they’re just using Lemmy via frontend X or Y and they decide what communities and users they want to block.

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- communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Bluesky s federated and mit licensed
  
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  - _pi@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    This practically means nothing tbh. Social networks when they gain economies of scale due to the network effect will effectively shed all the pretense of open source and open platform etc.
    
    We’ve seen it with Facebook, Google, etc, during the 2010’s with closing of chat standards and destruction of XMPP. We’ll see it again.
    
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  - Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m talking about Mastodon and Lemmy and such since that’s what OP is complaining about
    
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hamFoilHat@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have a friend who has had a mastodon instance since it was gnu social, and there are two reasons I stopped using it.

First, the UI sucks. He installed 3 or 4 different skins and they were all barely usable. I don’t want or need something flashy, xfce is my favorite windows manager, but it needs to at least work and not be confusing.

Second, the people suck. It went from being okay to by the time I left I don’t think I was seeing any exchanges that didn’t have antisemitism or racism.

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Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
People want to leave X, but they still want the same old, rather than new stuff to make things better as a whole. They don’t want to have to do this “pick a server” thing, they want to have an algorithm spoonfeed them popular content, and it would be best for them to have to put in zero extra effort. In Masto you have to put in the hashtags to get found, and search/subscribe to hashtags to find stuff you want, and that seems to be too hard for people.

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nate@social.trom.tf ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
@Sunshine I've shared my thoughts a couple times in similar threads 1 and 2, but to summarize:
One reason is because I think other protocols have some advantages. AT is better end user ease of use wise, and plans to let you control your account via a keypair (already possible with your own PDS). Nostr is more heavily decentralized and considerably more flexible than the other two. That can siphon off existing users or have new users drawn to those spaces. Not to say that ActivityPub doesn't also have its own advantages too, but everybody has different preferences and there's now more choice.
There's also some Activity Pub specific toxicity issues. Too aggressive defederation leads to a point where you can't communicate with most people, and there's some opinions in the space that have turned some people away.
But of course things go up and down, and are never a strait line. I'm guessing all three big protocols will continue to grow, and as they get more interconnected everybody wins, and even if Activity Pub has hit a slump the ecosystem of people you can talk to using it has grown 10x+.
Outside if summarizing my previous takes, there have been some new(ish) things I've seen that don't quite sit right. Things from the top down like the social web director refusing to go to conferences that people from other protocols will be present and encouraging people to not even talk about other protocols. Or - anicdotally - seeing random users happy that the influxes are going to others because they don't want 'normies' on Activity Pub or declaring anybody still using Twitter/X a Nazi sympathizer if not an outright Nazi. If the Activity Pub scene is getting really protectionist it could start also having a negative effect.
Again, overall I expect it to continue trending upwards, and there's a plethora of factors that are unrelated to anything negative regarding Activity Pub's community, but the above (and previous two posts) are the stuff I figured worth bringing up and potentially factors in why ActivityPub has seen weaker adoption compared to the other two big ones more recently.
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Sergebr@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because people will choose convenience over their vey own survival. Also, in this case, they apparently don’t see a problem with leaving Twitter because it’s MAGA to join BS which is backed by MAGA money. Convenience über alles. Ethics be damned. I’m fine with people like that not joining the fediverse.

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DaseinPickle@leminal.space ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Americans love to pretend they are cowboys. In reality they love centralised power and bureaucracy. They are deeply afraid of each other so they flock to platforms that pretend to be for freedom, but is actually highly regulated by centralised power. That’s why they love tech-oligarchs that pretend to be self made geniuses. It allows them to fantasise about freedom to succeed and submit to power at the same time.

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- spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  People hated him because he spoke the truth.
  
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Today@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Can you guys help explain it to someone completely inexperienced?

I had Twitter but only used it for following music venues to see upcoming events and bars for happy hour updates. I have a Mastodon account but only played with it for a few minutes because i didn’t really get it. I don’t understand following a person. What can one person have to say that i would care enough about to download an app. What am i missing?

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- HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It isn’t one person that people go onto a micro blogging service for, but a variety of people.
  
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- sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Imagine if there were two twitters, and you only sign up for one but you can read and comment on posts for both.
  
  Now imagine if anybody can install their own Twitter, and anybody else can sign up on either one, and they can all talk to each other like that.
  
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  - Today@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It wasn’t why Mastodon. It was why Twitter or twitter-like apps.
    
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Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s because of the connotation with an overrated metal band of the same name.

/s for the overly serious

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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because no one made a droolproof guide to migrating to Mastodon and Bluesky put money into it.

For people who can’t remember their password, it’s preferable.

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