this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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Asklemmy

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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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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 1 day ago

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

I doubt anybody knows what Mastodon is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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] 40 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

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

Probably some filter would be needed. Like a list of curated instances.

Imagine if the geographically closest is the Furry instance.

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

Perfection.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days 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] 5 points 6 days 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] 6 points 6 days 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] 3 points 5 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

federation could be abstracted away, much the same way filesystems are right now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (9 children)

Perhaps... But how exactly?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

i wish i had that answer

its usually how corpos and ux people seem solve these issues

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

Boosting is retweeting. Favoriting is liking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days 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] 7 points 6 days ago

Two things I don't see anybody saying:

  1. 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.
  2. 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] 7 points 6 days 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] 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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 ~~hotmail~~ ~~msn~~ ~~yahoo~~" fuck ok I guess there really is only one email provider now. Huh.

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

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but that was a joke. I am indeed aware of the existence of other email services.

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

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.

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

the instances I join keep collapsing and getting deleted

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

ah thank u, it is a bit silly

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

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Twitter is evil

Mastodon has bad UX

BlueSky is fresh

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

Simple - because it's not Twitter.

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

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

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