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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
I think the problem is Mastodon makes it hard to find people to follow. I can’t even find mainstream media official accounts, let alone an actual celebrity. The discovery features need to be improved.
Meanwhile on BlueSky I instantly see every major news outlet in my main feed.
For me, this is a feature. The last thing I want is celebrities and news outlets clogging up my feed of nice people’s sandwiches and cat pictures.
Maybe you just arent the main target and thus be more suited to Mastodon rather than BlueSky.
Problem with that is that is catering to a certain set of people while ignoring a whole larger user base that Mastodon could appeal to.
The absolutely delightful feature that you can use block lists, where you can block all of the MAGA trash with a click and effectively silence them from your life. The ability to collectively silence them is golden.
Yhea your first mistake is thinking that 99% give a flying fuck about federation
It just makes it’s more complex to adopt
Bluesky ?
Go on there, sign-up, done
Everything works.
Nothing else to do. Nothing to understand.
The lemmy devs should add a feature to their website where you can just create and account and it creates and account on an instance that is closest geographically to the IP address you are connecting from and is federated with the most servers.
Single place for normies to make an account and they don’t have to think about the federation bits, but if they get interested they can always make an account manually on another instance.
Probably some filter would be needed. Like a list of curated instances.
Imagine if the geographically closest is the Furry instance.
Perfection.
That would be helpful.
This is the only correct answer.
It’s easy to get on and it works just like Twitter. People don’t even need to understand what Federation is to get up and running on the platform.
Two things I don’t see anybody saying:
- BlueSky is has venture capital funding, giving it greater marketing capabilities. Capitalism isn’t won by having a better product, it’s won by convincing people they should buy your product.
- Dumb luck. Sometimes things just go viral, and you can try to figure it out in hindsight, but even that’s just a guess. If people could accurately predict what was going to be popular, venture capitalists wouldn’t have like a 90% miss rate.
I can’t tell for BlueSky because I have not joined yet, but I did create a Mastodon account months ago and I’m not sure what to do with it or how to interact with others. I find it confusing.
On Twitter I was mostly following a bunch of like minded people, liking their stuff, and I could see what they liked too. But on Mastodon there’s uuh, boosts and favorites?! I’m not sure of how it works or what I’m doing. I can’t just “like” posts? I have to boost them?! I found the people I liked that were on Twitter, but on Mastodon I feel like there’s nothing I can do aside from seeing posts and it’s just not attractive.
There is no algorithm spying on you across the web and recording your actions and behavior to try and force you to engage with an automated sub-optimal content stream, you have to manually curate your own (hopefully optimal) content stream, which you then engage with. That’s basically the difference between Mastodon and the rest of them.
Boosting is retweeting. Favoriting is liking.
I don’t think federation has to be an obstacle for non-tech people. They don’t really have to know about it, and it can be something they learn about later. I really don’t know if federation stops people from trying it out. Don’t people think, “I don’t know what instance to join, so I’m not going to choose any?”
Personally, having no algorithm for your home feed is what I don’t like about it. Everything is chronological. Some people I follow post many times a day, some post once per month, some post stuff I’m extremely interested in sporadically, followed by a sea of random posts. Hashtag search and follow is also less useful because there’s no option for an algo.
The UI seems fine to me. I guess I’m not picky about UIs. The one nitpick I have is on mobile, tapping an image will just full-screen the image instead of opening the thread.
federation could be abstracted away, much the same way filesystems are right now
Perhaps… But how exactly?
i wish i had that answer
its usually how corpos and ux people seem solve these issues
Initial log in in the apps should default to mastodon.social with other servers buried under a menu
Defeats the whole purpose tbh. Federation means decentralisation, single point of failure architecture in that is asking for trouble.
Techies who are comfortable with federation can use the menu, no? The vast, vast majority of people don’t and I do believe things should be as frictionless for them as possible. Even a big fediverse server is better than yet another walled garden they can’t easily migrate off of.
Thing is (me personally speaking) i have an ideological preference towards decentralisation and I’d prefer if people more got used to having decentralised infrastructure rather than sticking to the old model (in form, not function).
Not a solution. Defeats the point of decentralisation, putting most (like 90%+) users in one instance. Big instance is sold to Venture Capital Firm because a bunch of amateur moderators call moderate the whole of twitter… and just like that enshitification shall commence.
How so? Folks who care about decentralization can use the menu, no? A common theme in the comments is that most users do not care about decentralization and don’t want to have to pick a server. All that scares them away to centralized platforms like Bluesky and Threads. Even a big centralized fediverse server is better than yet another walled garden they can’t easily migrate off of.
Even a big centralized fediverse server is better than yet another walled garden they can’t easily migrate off of.
No it’s not. If a single server holds a critical amount of the fediverse’s content, they can enshitify.
The reason why the fediverse is resilient to enshitification is due to the fact that it makes migration less painful: If you want to abandon Xitter, which is centralized, you will be unable to access Xitter’s content, which is why it took so long for people to abandon it; but if you want to abandon… let’s say… mastodon.world, you can just make an account on another instance and still access the same content. For enshitification to occur, user’s must be locked in, the federation stops that.
However, this system has one major vulnerability which can completely subvert the fediverse’s ability to resist enshitification: centralization of content. If one instance holds a critical amount of content, they can pull up the drawbridge, that is, de-federate from all other instances. You might think this would upset the users, but it wouldn’t. Most wouldn’t know what federation is, all of mainstream is on the default instance, only the computer nerds are on other instances, so if suddenly, the default instance de-federated from everyone else, and thus becomeing a walled garden just like Xitter, few would notice and fewer would care. And now the default instance is centralized just like Xitter and the enshitification cycle repeats.
If you want an example of this look no further than Gmail. More or less 95% all emails are Gmail. If Gmail de-federates from your instance, you are removed; that means Google can basically dictate what other instances are and aren’t allowed to do. If you do something Gmail doesn’t like, they can de-federate and you instance is now basically useless, since you can’t email 95% of people. Gmail could easily kill Proton Mail by de-federating.
Let’s say I was on a giant Mastodon instance. And they defederated. At that point, would I be able to easily migrate to a smaller one? Or would I have to start up from scratch on the smaller instance?
For me it’s that more people I wanted to follow are now on blue sky but I have both. I have been liking the community on blue sky a little more.
I never used twitter though so what do I even know lol
Probably easier for social graph exploration TBH, it’s one of Mastodons main handicaps.
tried to register on first mastodon instance that popped up. couldn’t because I have a Russian email. that summed up my experience.
Bluesky has brand recognition (founded by the same dude as Twitter), more people and “feels like twitter”, in the sense of what you see, more than mastodon. Also, news outlets seem to be migrating there.
Mastodon (and pleroma, misskey, etc) is seen as a place for weirdos and techies, with “nothing interesting going on”. Several people mentioned this already one way or another, but that most servers/instances are “specific” about whatever means that people will feel that they might miss out on something by choosing the wrong server.
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.
Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.
Yeah that’s another thing, Mastodon is kinda nice, except for its userbase. :P
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.
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.
I think thats by design. Microblogging vs Forums.
Ths former, like the bird app is to yell into the void and hear what others yell while lemmy and reddit is built around it’s comment sections.
This is exactly why I never got into Xitter or Mastodon. I’ve tried them, but it’s a lot of work sifting through stuff to try to find somebody you want to follow. And newsflash, I don’t find many people that interesting that I want to hear what they say repeatedly.
Whereas forum style I can more easily find content I enjoy, then also possibly enjoy the comments as well.
Neither is right or wrong, it’s just a different approach to online engagement.
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.
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”.
redditors are the fucking worst.
You literally cannot search for Mastodon without getting a weird ass 2-paragraph manifesto about The Fediverse.
End users just want to use shit.
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.
The difference is that you won’t find yourself unable to send an e-mail because the admin of your e-mail server doesn’t like someone from the recipient’s e-mail server.
No? There are a lot of mail providers that are listed as spam on other providers „just because“. So yes, that literally does happen.
I mean, that is a possible thing for your e-mail admin to do. They just generally don’t.
Well, you know that by desing wassap, telegram, etc can communicate with each other but they intentionally cut that feature to only be able to menssege server internally?
Why not?
Because it’s virtually never a thing that happens.
I see you never had to jump through the hoops to get Gmail to not silently drop all your emails.
That is a completely different issue.
On Mastodon, you must pick an instance, for some weird “federation” tech reason, whatever that means;
On email, you must pick a server, for some weird “server” reason, whatever that means;
It’s literally no different than deciding “should I go with Gmail or
hotmailmsnyahoo” fuck ok I guess there really is only one email provider now. Huh.Yahoo and AOL email are both still around and relatively widely used, and there’s plenty more that aren’t ran by large companies, like FastMail.
I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but that was a joke. I am indeed aware of the existence of other email services.
Most people don’t know much, and don’t care that they don’t know much. Half of US adults can’t read at a 6th grade level. They don’t care about and probably do not understand complex topics.
That’s it. They just want cat gifs, and that’s the end of the thought.
I knew someone who was smart and successful and politically aware. She didn’t care about any of this. She was tired from work and just wanted the familiar ease or twitter. Trying to figure out which server to sign up for and finding content was too much work.
A lot of people have executive dysfunction. Making a choice is hard.
I honestly don’t get the whole “picking an instance is hard” thing, especially with masto. “Just use the default instance, mastodon.social, unless you have a reason not to,” bang problem solved. Then it’d become a larger point of failure but if it went down “well now that you sorta understand it make an acct on the server most of your follows were on,” bang 'nother problem solved.
Hell I have been diagnosed with executive function disorders and I can figure it out, it’s not as hard as people pretend, we’ve all done it with email since like '95. “It’s hard” is just twitter/bluesky propaganda!
Some instance have different rule as well as block other instances which will throw anyone off especially if it a big well-known instance like
Mastodon.socialwhich alienate large userbase of Fedi.Tbf, some people want that. I prefer my instance which federates with anyone willing making you choose what to block yourself (aside from the reactionary instances that don’t like that we don’t block their enemy instances by default so they block ours, of course), but not just anyone can join my instance, so I can’t recommend that unless they qualify. If you have a better general instance I can recommend instead of .social I’ll definitely check it out!
My point is that it not everyone (newcomers especially) would know about various Fedi instances having a blocklist and some even blocking much popular instances. You are assuming that they would at least read usually large list of blocklist or admins even share the blocklist in the first place and check to see if it doesn’t block the instance which has the user they want to follow and interact with.
Sure, but if they don’t know about it it isn’t influencing their choice. What I’m assuming is they’ll sign up for the one I tell them about and later if they have a reason to switch, like they find out “oh my instance blocks something I want to see” they’ll have learned enough to fix that on their own by virtue of using the thing teaching you about the thing. You seem to be ascribing some permanence to this choice, where there is none, you can simply make a new account, or another account and keep both, or 500 accounts if you’re a weirdo, it literally does not matter, there’s account migration. Furthermore there’s guides if you’re really struggling with the concept that pop up when you google “what is mastodon.” Like sure, my grandma couldn’t turn the computer on so she probably couldn’t figure it out, but it’s really not as hard as people make it out to be.
I’ve heard that there’s some problems with picking up only the most popular servers, and that mastodon.social has some moderation issues
Like I said “sure that makes it a bigger point of failure, but if it ever goes down just make one on whatever server most of your follows are on.”
As for the moderation issues, maybe, idk, but then again if you’re unhappy with the moderation by the time you get to that point “federation” is no longer a big scary word and you’ve likely found an instance you’d like to move to by virtue of just seeing it on your feed in .social, and on top of that masto lets you migrate accounts even, so it makes that a lot less painful to do.
I get the impression that some people have such decision fatigue, asking them to do something seemingly trivial is akin to asking someone without limbs to pick up a spoon.
People’s brains don’t work good.
Then they shouldn’t be able to decide to move to blusky either if they’re that paralyzed by choice.
And tbh I get it, I’ve been debating myself on just trimming my beard for like 6mo, and that much like “what masto instance should I join” is a preeetty consequence free decision, but imo the masto choice is even less consequential, you could make an acct on literally every instance that’ll take you if you wanted for free and lurk them and/or abandon them at will and remake another at will too whereas the beard has to grow for a while.
Also I gotta link this song since it’s so relevant lol.
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.
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.
Just pick one, you’re thinking too hard. I just picked one that’s open because I didn’t want to write an essay about myself to prove my worth and get someone to accept me, because I know that there isn’t any reason why anyone would accept me over someone else (I’m a nobody). I hate the idea of someone else having to review my worth before being allowed to sign up, what a disgusting concept. “Oh it’s to stop spam 🤓” All the other sites have been dealing with Spam good enough without asking me to prove my worth to them, maybe the Fediverse should take some pointers from the big boys at Big tech, they seem to be doing better than you are when it comes to this.
Eww no, I definitely don’t want them to take any pointers from big tech. Their anti-spam methods are way too restrictive and invasive to your privacy. I don’t want to give my phone number to websites just to sign up. And I cannot even view Youtube videos or Instagram posts because they are blocking the IPv6 address of my 6in4 tunnel which I need because my ISP doesn’t have IPv6 yet. I have to sign in to “confirm you are not a bot”.
Your example with YouTube is not an anti-spam measure, it’s them trying to restrict and create exclusivity with their content, they’re just lying and calling it anti-spam. I think it’s better to have some annoying automated spam defense like Reddit and the gang does than it is to be judged on my worth and denied because I’m not interesting enough or meet some dumb criteria to join the exclusive clubs Lemmys are slowly becoming fuck that.
Felt the same about Lemmy when I signed up.
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.
Is Mastadon different?
I don’t know, I use BSKY.
Lol, fair enough.
Hint: https://mastodon.social/
I already have BSKY and am not currently interested in picking up yet another account for something but thank you
Just pick an open one, that’s the easiest choice. No essays, no worrying about being denied, easy.
You’ve stated this at least twice in this thread. People aren’t like that, just in general. Heck, I understood it and still had trouble picking a server for Lemmy and mastadon.
Do I want a single topic or domain to define me? Will a small server have popular posts? Will it have popular people? I can’t find this popular account because I’m typing in username instead of user+domain.
I created and deleted at least 5 before I gave up and just picked one. Is that what most people would do?
I don’t think you’re wrong, but I think you are not putting yourself in the shoes of most users who want to follow a celebrity or a train station or space agency and can’t even find their account.
I’m sorry I wasn’t entirely clear, BIG server, with open sign-ups. The complaints about finding people aren’t really valid when we have big servers like this one or mastodon.social. Such servers have the best reach and the easiest onboarding. Pick those.
There are at least three viable commercial microblogging sites right now. So you already have all these problems, without even considering the Fediverse. The Fediverse is the SOLUTION to these problems, not the cause.
☝️ 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.
How is picking a Mastodon server different from signing up for email, finding a discord server, signing up to follow channels on youtube, and so on. Somehow people have no problems figuring those things out, but when it comes to Mastodon this is constantly brought up like some insurmountable challenge.
Email has taken 25 years to get people that comfortable with it, and most folks either go with their ISP email, or one of 3 or 4 providers. Discord, you’re already in the tech savvy population.
Yet, the fact remains that people did get comfortable with email, and even the least tech illiterate people are able to use it.
Having to make an informed decision is a barrier to entry. it took me a while because I wanted to make sure I didn’t join (and waste time/effort) something I didn’t align with.
You don’t have to make an informed decision. Signing up for an instance isn’t a blood pact. If you find the instance you singed up for isn’t to your liking, You can easily migrate your account to another. Meanwhile, if you’re worried about something you don’t align with, then you don’t even get that choice with a centralized platform like Bluesky. For example, I don’t align with any of this shit https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476788536250587
You don’t have to make an informed decision.
Correct, but you are still presented with a decision that adds friction to the onboarding experience. I was aware of how Mastodon works and that I could migrate and it took me a while to create an account because I didn’t want to “waste my time”. I can’t imagine a regular user being prompted to “select an instance”, decide to go with the first one they see, and registration is either closed or invite only. That’s a huge barrier to entry compared to being forced into a single login that is always open.
Meanwhile, if you’re worried about something you don’t align with, then you don’t even get that choice with a centralized platform like Bluesky. For example, I don’t align with any of this shit https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476788536250587
100000% agree with you. I would never create a bluesky account because of that. Unfortunately people aren’t as informed and most really just don’t care.
What I’m saying is that the amount of friction this adds is completely blown out of proportion. It’s just not that hard, and people acting like it’s a huge barrier are not being serious. If this was the case email would’ve never taken off. The fact that we’re at the point where it’s hard to imagine a regular user going outside a walled corporate garden is really the problem here.
Unfortunately people aren’t as informed and most really just don’t care.
The flip side is that we shouldn’t care too much either. Fediverse already has millions of users, and it can just keep growing organically at its own pace.
I agree with you, but to be fair, people don’t really choose an email provider. They chose gmail, because anything else is disallowed by everyone’s anti-spam measures.
That’s a recent phenomenon though, and it’s effectively been forced on people by the largest email provider making it difficult to use others. My original point was that people didn’t find it confusing to register for different mail providers when that was easy to do.
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.
That definitely makes a difference, you can choose which but by default it already selects one so some people won’t even change it for convenience, however, that’s not a thing on Mastodon so… Also, a lot of those are mobile users and BlueSky has a lot more Twitter-like familiar UI than Mastodon apps (maybe I’m wrong and if so, point me to which one because there are so many… there goes another issue and convenience out of the window for people who just don’t care about searching and wants something to be done quick - so basically most of Twitter users that still didn’t leave it or went to BlueSky)
