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.
People have to choose a server with mastodon, and you can’t just pick any server because of the mess of defederations.
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.
Boosting is retweeting. Favoriting is liking.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Maybe you just arent the main target and thus be more suited to Mastodon rather than BlueSky.
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
federation could be abstracted away, much the same way filesystems are right now
Perhaps… But how exactly?
Initial log in in the apps should default to mastodon.social with other servers buried under a menu
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.
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.
i wish i had that answer
its usually how corpos and ux people seem solve these issues
Simple - because it’s not Twitter.
The only reason is the sign up/UX thing. Maaaaybe. And now a critical mass is there
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.
Crucially though, for a very long time they forced you to choose a server instead of just set you up on the default on.
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.
the instances I join keep collapsing and getting deleted
Nice profile picture!
ah thank u, it is a bit silly
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.
Twitter is evil
Mastodon has bad UX
BlueSky is fresh
In two word, Jack Dorsey
Howso?
Also he hasn’t been involved for a while.
His Notoriety is still associated with bluesky
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.
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.
