It really comes down to this. So many time’s I’ve discovered a cool FOSS project years after it’s existed simply because I hadn’t thought to search for it. Imagine if Linux had the advertising budget of Microsoft or Google. The “Year of the Linux Desktop” would have arrived in '99.
This aspect is one thing that makes me optimistic about the fediverse. A communication platform without ads and where the spread of information is dependent on network effects and word of mouth, means that it’s much harder for a company to force themselves in front of everyone at once using dollars.
Easier sign up. On BlueSky you can just sign up for an account and go. You don’t have to worry about picking an instance or anything like on Mastodon, which can be a bit off-putting for someone not familiar with federation.
Onboarding to Mastodon is actually identical to BS/Threads now. They’ve made huge improvements. It’s a shame that most of the news media’s experience discovering Mastodon for the first time was in Oct '22 because it’s left a bit of a “techie” aura around the whole thing they’re still trying to shake off. If Mastodon was then where it is now, I don’t even think BS or Threads would try to compete.
FYI- Signing up and following people on the Mastodon app now is literally just as easy as it is on BS. All the Federation stuff is hidden unless you want to look for it. It’s very nice.
You can just click Follow and start following someone. You don’t have to perform a copy-paste dance to bring the username back to your instance and do the following there.
In the Mastodon app you can just click “follow”. Since BS doesn’t have a web interface at all, it’s probably safe to assume that this is not a major reason a BS user would avoid Mastodon. Since they’re not on desktop anyway.
When federation is live on the main node on bluesky there will still be some similar effects when you follow links from other servers, in that you’ll need to bring that over to your own server somehow to follow and interact.
With Mastodon when you follow another’s link you’re asked to specify your own instance, in Bluesky you’ll enter your domain based username and it will find your instance.
Also with the CDN like BGS caching servers being shared across instances you’ll be able to find more content from your home instance so it will feel more like Twitter. You can directly search for users on other servers.
I just learnt of bluesky a few hours ago. Wtf do they think it will be different than any of the other corporate social media? We are nearing 20 years since the start of MySpace, do they really think thus time it’s going to be different?
A place where normies can feel at home, knowing that they won’t feel out of place not having a fursona or favourite Linux distribution and won’t be scolded for not using alt text or some inadvertent picoaggression. Also, the promise of clout.
Portable accounts and being able to add third party layers to your feed for moderation and sorting algorithms. At least that’s their design goal, idk if it’s actually implemented because I never got an invite after like half a year.
3rd party feeds are live. Portability is technically live but federation isn’t live outside the sandbox so you can’t make use of it yet (as in once federation is on the existing protocol will immediately allow you to migrate your profile)
I mean, even Neil Gaiman is far more active on Bluesky than he is on Mastodon, even though probably a greater proportion of his fans are on Mastodon, and he was on Mastodon well before Bluesky. So he's getting something from Bluesky that he isn't getting from Mastodon, and that's noteworthy.
Not a lot. Simpler signup flow and ecosystem, more twitter-like timeline and features, better discoverability and some communities that aren’t on Mastodon. FOSS diehards can mince about it all they want and blame idiot users, but the simple fact is people who don’t live and breathe technology still have lots to offer a social network, and Mastodon continues to alienate them in design and in community. Lemmy does too.
I like Mastodon and Lemmy, a lot. I prefer them to the alternatives. But I just signed up for BlueSky and I’m enjoying it a lot even routed through the Mastodon bridge, simply because there are more diverse communities there, whereas my Mastodon feed is 90% tech and dev people despite spending hours and hours hunting for people I used to follow on Twitter. Getting big App.net flashbacks.
I think a ton of what’s wrong with lemmy and mastadon can be attributed to the bias of the user based. They skew very tech literate and liberal. Simple one click sign up and smooth onboarding into a user experience is the only way you will get the mass appeal of something like Twitter, reddit etc. I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing honestly… A person is smart, People are dumb.
I hate gatekeeping so much, but what I’m about to say is going to contradict that statement so much I should probably stop typing and start this post again…
Anywhoo…
If a troglodyte can’t figure out how to sign up for the fediverse, then they should stick to CorpoChat
I never got the argument that it’s hard to sign up to. I think the main issues are that people want content from media entities that may not be present or welcome - legacy media etc. This could be where threads.net fills the gap but then it sounds like they will be blocked from a lot of instances.
I have worked around it via press.coop but they don’t cover everything. I also follow more journalists directly than I did on Twitter. I don’t miss Twitter and find Mastodon more informative but I’m sure that’s because of the information I’m looking for.
When I first made an account I did it on Lemmy.ml because that’s what I had heard some people talking about and didn’t know it was one several Lemmy instances. I wasn’t aware that ml stood for marxist-leninist, and switched over to the the other I knew about .world.
I can see the average joe joining the wrong place and seeing an echo chamber or an essential empty isolated instance then forming their opinions on the fediverse around that.
From what I know they chose that specific domain because communists have a thing for Marx and Lenin (go figure). It might have been cheap/free but I’d imagine there’s other cheap free domains they decided against in favor of .ml because of the connection.
It’s also that ML was a very cheap domain because Mali (the country which the TLD belongs to) was not actively policing the use of the TLD until recently.
This isn’t really Bluesky specific, but the artists I follow are by in large, on Bluesky and not Mastodon, and that’s pretty much the only reason I want to use it
They have the main thing masses often look for: unity (as in the state of being united, not the company). Like it or not, federation is a brand new concept that regular users can’t wrap their heads around.
I can guarantee you regular users don’t ever think of email as a federated service nor even begin to understand how it works behind the opaque client page.
See my other reply. Regular users don’t understand, nor care, nor even think about it. To the mainstream, of everything you’ve listed, only email is a common concept, and even then you have some major congregation with very few providers. It doesn’t matter that your bubble is used to it, because it represents a risible percentage of the mainstream.
You have a point. I actually don’t want mainstream people in here. Because they suck so much as the youtube comments used to show before it implemented upvotes.
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