this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024

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247

Why do People Choose BlueSky Over Mastodon? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

225 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

"Everyone is joining BlueSky so now i am too i guess lol"

I doubt anybody knows what Mastodon is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

tried to register on first mastodon instance that popped up. couldn't because I have a Russian email. that summed up my experience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I can't stand all the edgy fascists on mastodon

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have been on Mastodon almost daily for 5 years, and I've got absolutely no idea how you have found "all the edgy fascists" on there. I mean sure, if your only experience is on truth.social i expect you'd see that type of content and nothing else. But besides truth.social, I don't really know where you'd manage to dig it up. Must be hard work lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

When Mastodon launched i tried it and there were almost exclusively edgy children whining about how they couldn't say the nword anymore while saying the nword

That was easily 70% of all content and i can't use a site that refuses to moderate its users

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

That's not something I see on masto but maybe I'm missing something

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Probably easier for social graph exploration TBH, it's one of Mastodons main handicaps.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Boosting is retweeting. Favoriting is liking.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Maybe you just arent the main target and thus be more suited to Mastodon rather than BlueSky.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

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

[+] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Perhaps... But how exactly?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Initial log in in the apps should default to mastodon.social with other servers buried under a menu

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Defeats the whole purpose tbh. Federation means decentralisation, single point of failure architecture in that is asking for trouble.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

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).

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