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.
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.
It’s more difficult to run government psyops on mastodon.
I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.
I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.
Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.
Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.
People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.
My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.
For me a lot of those toe dippers were subsequently found to have settled on BlueSky.
Same here, which is why my Bluesky feed is much better. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is (that isn’t X), and it seems like that’s Bluesky.
Mastodon just sucks as a user experience. Your average Joe doesn’t give a fuck about federation, yet it’s the whole Fediverse crap that harms the UX.
I made the mistake of signing up to a smaller Mastodon instance. Place was virtually empty aside from the lead admin (bit of a pretentious asshole) and a few other guys, and if you decide to browse the All Instances view, you’re flooded with posts from hentai reposting bots. And when I saw the #loli hashtag in one of those posts I immediately noped out.
Threads is still in a really bad state well over a year later. Meta still haven’t implemented hashtags and trending topics (even Mastodon has these), and my feed is full of thirst traps.
Bluesky has it all, and was created by Twitter’s original founders.
People expecting a new Twitter when switching to Mastodon were met with weird behavior and nerds who told them the awful search function or weird comment count is working correctly because that’s how federation works. Well if that’s the case then federation is shit.
This is unfortunately the world of open-source.
- Nerd tells you to use the open-source thing.
- Non-technical tries it and asks questions
- Nerd proclaims it’s not a real problem/your fault/not applicable/fix it yourself
- Some company takes that open-source version or idea, makes it easier for end users and monetize it
- Nerd gets angry and repeats step 1
Source: I am nerd and I contribute to open-source.
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
Mastodon is ideologically sound, but has not nailed the UX
Lemmy has terrible UX too. I only find it useable because of third-party apps.
God yes. I used to share Lemmy links until I realized what a horrible UI I’m sending them.
Bluesky is more similar to Twitter and has what most people were used to, like an algorithm, quote tweets, etc I found it extremely boring, but tbh it’s a more polished experience. One of my biggest annoyances with Mastodon is how threads and replies look weird. Sometimes I see the reply to a post before I see the post, especially in the “lists” view. Also not having an algorithm is both good and bad. It’s great because it’s organic, but it also means many posts get buried and it’s dependent on the time. As someone not living in the US and Europe, it’s tricky because sometimes you’ll post something when most people are asleep and no one will see it. I ultimately love Mastodon more because of the openness and the federation. But most people will find Bluesky more approachable
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.
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.
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.
Crucially though, for a very long time they forced you to choose a server instead of just set you up on the default on.
The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest flaw.
Just to be devil’s advocate, perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well. Isn’t part of the point of all of this to avoid too much centralized control of social media?
Sure, Mastodon may never have as much mainstream appeal as BlueSky, but I use both. One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform. To interact with the masses on a platform that is more centralized, I use BlueSky.
perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well.
I should have been more clear. I meant “The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest obstacle to it achieving mass adoption”.
The post was about why Mastodon isn’t receiving as many user as BlueSky, or in other words, why it isn’t achieving mass adoption. It was under this context that I chose to use the word “flaw”, as in, flaw towards reaching mass adoption.
One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform.
I agree. Mastodon being niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
In two word, Jack Dorsey
Howso?
Also he hasn’t been involved for a while.
His Notoriety is still associated with bluesky
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.
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.
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.
Because federation is confusing to the general populace
I will confirm my confusion
