Why are people preferring Blue Sky over Mastodon?

Comments

• glimse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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  • Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ve tried to stick with mastodon for a while and after using it for months, your description of checking it out is STILL what my feeds look like. That’s all there seems to be on Mastodon.

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  • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Feels like deciding in 2010 between Twitter and Reddit in some ways…

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• Today@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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  • sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It wasn’t why Mastodon. It was why Twitter or twitter-like apps.

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It isn’t one person that people go onto a micro blogging service for, but a variety of people.

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• nate@social.trom.tf ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• timconspicuous@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• oxjox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  Are you asking about “people” or “nerds”? People prefer Bluesky due to its simplicity and momentum. There are more popular outlets using it. If you’re assuming that People would prefer the complexity of the Fediverse and instances, if you think People know what a decentralized community run server is, you’re a “nerd” (for lack of a better term, I’m sorry).

  The battle has always been the same: Windows v. Apple, Android v. iOS, SMS Twitter v. App Twitter. Some people prefer flexibility and investing time in making things work the way they want (Nerds). Some people want an out of the box product that’s well designed and efficient (People).

  Fifty Seven Third Party Apps is not a selling point - that’s called anxiety inducing fragmentation. Some people want to walk down the grocery store aisle and choose between 57 options for toilet paper and some people just want “good”, “better”, “best”. The reality is that most people just want to be told what to do. They have too much shit going on in their lives to care about “decentralization”.

  Mastodon will never challenge well financed closed or semi-open platforms. As it’s designed, it’s apparent it never intended to. It will continue to grow at a slow rate as an alternative. Hopefully, the fediverse is realized and you can choose to host your own server and gain access to other social platforms.

  The reality is that this stuff costs money. In the near future, you’ll have the same three choices with social media as we do with other services: ad-subsidized, subscription, self-hosted. Anything with ads is going to have an algorithm. Anything with a subscription is going to have a board of directors. Selfhosting comes with a steep learning curve.

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• SuperSleuth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  whay, or rather who is Blue sky?

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• Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• Berin@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What is HOA?

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    • S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• grimer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Simplicity.

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• Intergalactic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I wrote an article on this last night.

  …medium.com/why-bluesky-isnt-the-alternative-to-x…

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  • communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Since bluesky is mit licensed, what’s to stop a fork if something goes wrong?

    what’s to stop a activitypub and atproto compatibility?

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• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I can only assume BlueSky feels more familiar.

  Mastodon requires a bit of effort, lacking an algorithm to drive content toward users, so you have to do a bit more yourself.

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• DaseinPickle@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    People hated him because he spoke the truth.

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• flamingos@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Because it pretends to be different to the centralised corporate social media platforms

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  • sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Best answer yet IMO. The cohesive experience is essential to the branding, and low threshold for entry.

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• djidane535@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think it’s much more difficult to find people to follow. I personally struggle a lot, and will likely either gave up the micro-blogging system or try another platform. It was great on Twitter before Musk bought it, but since I left, I have yet to find an alternative.

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• xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Language filter in bluesky is much better than Mastodon as well

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    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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• hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    @hendrik do they advertise? Honest question :blobBone_dance:

    @fediverse @Sunshine

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    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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