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.
the instances I join keep collapsing and getting deleted
Nice profile picture!
ah thank u, it is a bit silly
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.
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.
Twitter is evil
Mastodon has bad UX
BlueSky is fresh
This confuses me because BlueSky does not have any federalization technologies built into it,
Bluesky is designed to be federated though. It’s just not fully available yet. Also, Bluesky is open-source, licensed under the MIT license.
Really? This is the first time I’m hearing all of this /g
Simple - because it’s not Twitter.
I’d say its because less people probably know of mastodon then bluesky, since on Twitter everyone seems to be making a bluesky account but no one a mastodon account which would result in less people knowing about it.
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.
Instead of comparing these smaller platforms together to find out why one is better or not people should be focusing on why xitter and Facebook are still two of the most popular forms of social media.
Network effects, boomers being unable to figure out how to switch
It’s not just boomers though. I work with a lot of younger people and they all still use xitter/facebook.
They either don’t know/care about alternatives because “everyone else is using it”
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.
Easy.
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No one outside of the fediverse bubble gives a fuck about federation. It solves a problem no one has, and offers no real solutions to problems users have.
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Mastodon offers nothing on the Twitter experience outside of “but it’s federated”
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Bro do you really think common people know all about this open source interconnected stuff. Get out of your linux bubble
Right, I’m super pro open source but most normal people don’t give a shit. Sure I think those people are stupid, but it doesn’t change reality.
“my taste is better than yours👆🤓” type vibes
Because they miss the algorithm
Nice profile picture!
same reason we just elected donald fucking trump. people will always take the easy option that makes them feel good.
Mainstream tech adoption needs a neat clean wrapper imo. I think that’s the biggest missing piece to fediverse, people want pretty, simple, plug and play.
If a wrapper like that could be put on top of/combined with all the good qualities that the fediverse offers, I think it would create optimal conditions for slow adoption.
Agreed. There should have been a default place to sign up from the beginning. Leaning on federation as a feature is something very few people care about until they really care about it. The mass adopter just looks at where their favourite celebrity or talking head is and then move there.
Like Mastodon.social? Afaik it has been around since the beginning and is basically the “default” server unless you’re a “hacker” and you’re on infosec.pub or whatever, an edgy 4channer and you’re on poa.st, a SubGenius on “Bob’s” server dobbs.town, or one of the many pervert servers, or one of the asain servers I can’t read, but if you’re on one of those (for instance dobbs.town) you’re joining dobbs.town and mastodon is just there incidentally. Anyone else can just use .social and call it a day until they find out they’re really into plants.space or some specific thing.
Hell all the people I’ve gotten on masto that’s how I did it, “Ok make an acct on mastodon.social, great now lemme follow you what’s your name? Cool, see there I am! Oh I’m not on mastodon.social, I’m on dobbs.town, but we can still communicate like how I email your gmail from my protonmail, is normal. Now, there’s some servers you’re gonna want to block…” I don’t even tell them about federation until they’re already there, unless I KNOW the server they’ll want (like when I recommended my Discordian friend hop on discordian.social instead of mastodon.social.)
The real kicker is that none of their precious celebs they follow are on there, as you mention. The weirdos I talk to don’t care about that so it works out for me lol.
It’s the raison d’etre. Saying “don’t federate” is like saying “don’t put images and rich hyperlinking on the WWW, just make it like Gopher.” If you don’t want to federate, don’t. But saying that it was a bad move for ActivityPub is just nonsensical.
I’m not saying don’t federate. I’m saying don’t talk about that as the primary feature when you’re enticing people to sign up to it.
It’s more difficult to run government psyops on mastodon.
No it’s not, it’s federated
