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

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• JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  where pleroma where akkoma where misskey where firefish where iceshrimp where sharkey where cherrypick where catodon where mitra

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  • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What’s cherrypick

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    • JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Another feature-rich Forkey from before Firefish’s first “death” which, as I’ve read somewhere, must have managed to iron out more of Misskey’s original issues than the other Forkeys.

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• derf82@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Bluesky is far more user friendly and that’s why the people are going there. I get it, y’all love federation and ActivityPub, but no one wants to pick an instance, much less read a manifesto on decentralized social media. (Frankly, Lemmy has much of the same issues.)

  I have had a Mastodon account since Elmo Muskrat bought Twitter, but it’s practically useless as few outside some specific IT-oriented users are on it. I got Bluesky, and it’s been way better as it attracts a larger variety of people.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s not too hard to understand. Some people just like to pretend it’s complicated. It’s literally the same system email uses, and almost everyone has figured out how to use that. There’s no marketing for it though. It’s only word-of-mouth, and let’s be honest, us fediverse users often aren’t the best at communicating simply.

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    • derf82@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I have yet to see any marketing for Bluesky. The fediverse still takes effort, even if it isn’t necessarily complicated.

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  • SeattleRain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think the bigger problem is that there’s no universal search that will find something on any of the instances you aren’t blocking.

    Search is not authoritative like it is on centralized social media.

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• mosscap@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mastodon is never going to be That Platform and that’s ok. It doesn’t need to be. The ActivityPub protocol is the highest value aspect of Masto, and there are a handful of other, larger, easier to use platforms that are adopting it.

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  • SeattleRain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Really? What other platforms?

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    • mosscap@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Threads is implementing it in phased rollouts and I think they saw the writing on the wall with X that Bluesky was the next “big thing” and wanted to jump on a competitor protocol that had already been developed and already had an active base of both users and developers.l, whereas Bluesky is building everything in house from the ground up with the AT protocol.

      WordPress has a plugin that is developed by Automattic (as close to core WP as you can without actually being core WP) which essentially turns every WordPress site into an ActivityPub feed. Its really cool and an incredibly powerful tool for publishers.

      Flipboard is also implementing ActivityPub as we speak, and it seems like they are quite bought in on the concept. Their CEO hosts a podcast about the Fediverse.

      Ghost is a publishing platform similar to Substack that is also working to implement ActivityPub and is doing a lot of the heavy work in terms of trying to figure out what longer-form publishing could look like within the fediverse, as opposed to being a network of different Twitter clones.

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There’s this weird one I’ve heard some crazy people use called Lemmy or something. I don’t know. They’re too niche for me to consider thinking about.

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• WarshipJesus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Bluesky is weird to me. I tried to use it for all of 15 minutes. One of the recommended feeds was called “Blacksky”, which is a feed specifically tailored for black users of Bluesky. I’m perfectly fine with that. I was, completely innocently, asking if there were other feeds based on race, similar to blacksky. I was threatened with a ban for racism. My question was very literally phrased “I see that blacksky exists, does the platform also have other race-specific feeds for users? Or only this one? It’s the only one that was recommended to me which seems strange for a new user.”

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  • JaymesRS@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There’s been a large-ish influx of maga users, looking for people to harass in the last week as the other normies have left Twitter too because they are sad and lonely people, so people’s ban fingers especially those with large accounts, are a bit heavy right now. So yeah, it probably completely came off wrong (like someone asking when white history month is) vs asking if there was a specific other ethnic starter pack that drew your interest. Sorry that was your experience.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Being threatened with a ban goes way too far, but your question(s) as phrased does seem very much like sealioning even if that wasn’t the intention, so I can see why a moderator might think it was. Obviously, they should have clarified first.

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• drcabbage@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mastodon is better than Bluesky, but unfortunately everyone is flocking to Bluesky. You have to go where the people are

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  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, mastodon simply doesn’t have an advertising budget, and having to pick an instance, while trivial, is still enough to stop a lot of people from joining.

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  • vetehinen@lethallava.land ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    @drcabbage@lemmy.ml people still seem to be flocking more to Threads since it is growing by more than million users per day for the past three months. Have to accept there isn't just a single place people are going.
    
    
    
    @fediverse@lemmy.world

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    • drcabbage@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s fine by me. It’s good to have choice.

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• ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The name “Mastodon” sucks as much as “X”. I’ve never had a Twitter account nor do I want to open an account in any of the services, but Mastodon does not sound catchy to who they need to attract.

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  • Prethoryn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    As someone who uses both. I think Mastodon also just doesn’t have the users, it is not as easy to setup and I think understanding instances and its UI are less user friendly.

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    • micka190@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Every time I see non-tech people talk about Bluesky vs Mastodon, they talk about how awful the user experience is on Mastodon, and how it’s been an issue for years and they keep ignoring it, so people just go to Bluesky instead.

      It definitely feels like a “Us tech folk who care about the tech love it, we don’t mind the user experience as long as the tech is here” vs the “I just want the same thing I have over here, the tech aspect could not be any less relevant to my choice of platform” kind of issue.

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• x_pikl_x@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The advertising industry used to call this an Advertorial, now it’s known as native marketing. All the same, it’s an ad disguised as news. You pay the journalist to make it look like there’s some crazy spike in traffic and the piper plays his pipe as the mice fall in line behind him to see what the hype is.

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• DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mastodon is better.

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• burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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

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  • Infomatics90@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    NGL I’m old enough now that I’d rather not see random tits in my feed.

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    • JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Curated tits then?

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    • JaymesRS@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’ve been on Bluesky since February. I have yet to see any nudity that I didn’t actively seek out. It’s not too difficult.

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  • matcha_addict@lemy.lol ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Porn industry is certainly a bad thing though. It is quite hostile to women, and many have been harmed by it and wished they had a good exit.

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    • jmsy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I know women in porn who say the opposite.

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    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The modern porn industry is much more independent than it used to be. Most creators control and own their content and choose where it gets uploaded initially. In the past, the porn business was absolutely abusive to their stars but I think it’s much less the case these days. Filmmakers have to fight for actors because if they don’t treat them well or pay them their worth, they’ll just post their own content directly to their fans. I’m sure there are still huge negatives but I just don’t think it’s as bad as it once was and I certainly don’t think the porn industry is something to be upset about these days.

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• OlPatchy2Eyes@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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• xnx@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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 snd 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 reddit alternative too frontpage.fyi (in beta)

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  • Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The fact that the fediverse has been mentally limited to “Mastodon and Lemmy” is so sad. The features many people complained weren’t on Mastodon were right there on Akkoma, Misskey, Friendica, Hometown, and others. But nobody would even look at them.

    Even on the fediverse nobody wants to discuss the sea of alternative services.

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    • JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Because nobody knows they exist. Especially not on Mastodon. And even less outside the Fediverse, tech media included.

      And truth be told, way too many Mastodon users don’t want to know. They want the Fediverse to remain what they thought it was when they joined: only vanilla Mastodon.

      Really goes to show that Lemmy is full of tech-curious geeks: Tell a Lemmy user about a Fediverse project that’s neither Lemmy nor Mastodon, and it’s much more likely for the reply to be something along the lines of, “where public instances.”

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• NorthWestWind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yeah maybe posting it here doesn’t really help?

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  • KenTheEagle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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 had no idea the Fediverse is.

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• Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mastodon would be fine if all I cared to follow was Linux news and if I understood German and Japanese.

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  • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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

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    • Stern@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or I could go to bluesky where that change is already in place.

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    • Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If all Mastodon wants is linux shit then only linux people are gonna stick around. Never mind that I get the exact same linux posts on bluesky from the same people on top of other topics I care to follow.

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  • jg1i@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hell yeah! Sign me up!

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• Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mastodon isn’t even the best micro-blogging service on the Fediverse.

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  • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Which would you say is best?

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    • Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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• timconspicuous@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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

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  • Bremmy@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Gives big “both sides are bad” energy

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  • B1naryB0t@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s it, pack it up. We’re done here

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• LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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• maegul@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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• audaxdreik@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Jackthelad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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  • bilb@lem.monster ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You federate with Threads

      Nice try, fed.

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• oxjox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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?

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  • thehatfox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s a gross assumption that people care about any of this.

    For any form of federated community to be sustainable, its users have to care about that. Otherwise those communities will eventually be consumed by whichever instance gains the critical mass to close itself off and become another Twitter or Reddit.

    To achieve the benefits of federation, users must be educated on principles of federation, not be obfuscated from them. The question is how the Fediverse can do that.

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  • R3D4CT3D@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    i know so many ppl that purchase products: “from an ad i saw on (whatever social media they use)” it blows my mind, seriously.

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    • Jimbo@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s why they’re so pervasive, they work on the majority of people (that’s not us).

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• JaymesRS@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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. 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 I built by who they followed.

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• JaymesRS@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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  • JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It actually doesn’t.

    Install the official Mastodon app on your phone, launch it, scroll past the instance selection box that railroads you to mastodon.social anyway, and it’s no more complicated than Twitter. It’s just that nobody knows that.

    Fun fact: The official Bluesky app has a selection box for a PDS, too. It’s no more and no less complicated than the official Mastodon app. Nobody knows that either.

    Granted, of course, if you let yourself be railroaded, the place where you land in the Fediverse won’t be the bee’s knees, and you won’t know that there are not only better Mastodon instances (or more Mastodon instances in the first place), but also better server applications than Mastodon (or anything else than Mastodon in the Fediverse in the first place). But hey, it’s easy-peasy.

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  • madjo@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    As long as email has a barrier to entry for most people of mandating choosing a server first, it will never become the mainstream choice.

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  • Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean, it’s a network of indeoendent websites. I’m not sure what kind of solution to this people want.

    People seem to be able to choose which wrbsite they’re signing up for when looking at Twitter, BlueSky, and Threads. It’s not like it’t that weird of an idea.

    They even grok the idea that different Wordpress-based websites are different from each other!

    Maybe if we stopped treating “Mastodon” as a space, and talked about it like the webhost software it is, people would understand.

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  • unrushed233@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    mastodon.social exists

    It’s literally there to take the choice away from new users

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  • matcha_addict@lemy.lol ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You don’t have to choose. Joinmastodon.org chooses for you, and you can choose one yourself as well but only if you want to.

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  • halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is the exact reason email never took off. /s

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    • mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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 stunning ecosystem of near inatant 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 with easy, no or low effort walled gardens.

      Federation was and is a reasonable way to host things, but comparing it 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 servers. Hell, AOL tried to choke the internet itself, including email, to death and almost succeeded in the early 90s because it was an “all in one” solution. They had aol only webpages and everything.

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  • Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The best thing for on-boarding are topic-specific instances, it makes picking one much easier.

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  • ghostface@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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  • heavyboots@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.)

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• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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