this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Could bluesky have won over Mastodon because of the fediverse barrier where people doesn't know which server to choose?
Bluesky is being run by a funded professional startup team and is aimed at the masses. Mastodon is run by activists and software devs and brings in other like minded folks.
Bluesky has an advertising budget. Bluesky has an entire team just working on User Interface.
The fact that people are so lazy that they keep going for the corporate-sure-to-enshittify options shows how little people actually care about escaping corporate control of their lives.
"It's not my job to contribute to a community project" is just another way to say "it's not my job to make the world a better place."
It's generally easier for the layperson to pay a gym membership than it is to have the upfront cost of a barbell set and coordinating a schedule with their neighbor who owns a treadmill.
I don't want to sound too pro-corporate, I just don't want to fault others when they fall for the veneer of a "cohesive product." It takes a lot of work to organize a community project and why it's so special when they do come together.
Mastodon is confusing as shit though. They could have made is not as confusing, but this is what happens when you get backend only developers designing the front end of a product.
It's not that deep.
People want to go where other people are. A tiny minority of them are even aware of the things that are influencing your decisions. Not a single moment is spent thinking about whether X or Y is more 'corporately controlled' before deciding to join a new platform.
Most importantly, Mastodon doesn't have the funding. It always astounds me how people miss that part.
Money lets you fix a lot of problems. Not all. But many.
Of course, it doesn't mean they'll succeed. Google+ had lots of money, too.
Ugh, Google+ was so much better than Facebook. The whole circles concept was a game changer for social media that no one else has really adopted in a meaningful way. Half the reason millennials began to leave Facebook was not wanting their parents seeing what they're posting, so being able to decide which group can see a particular post was an awesome idea.
Sadly it just never got the adoption
That concept was actually pioneered by a Diaspora (where they were called "aspects"). The strange thing was that Google kept removing functionality from the circles and making them harder to use. I think towards the end they removed them entirely.
Bluesky offers better access to the content people want with less effort. Mastodon was always going to lose that battle.
I use both. I've been on Mastodon for the better part of a year and only actively tried Bluesky the last couple months. My Bluesky feed is thriving, whereas Mastodon not so much. IMO this is due to Mastodon is missing the major quality of life features of Bluesky.
These things make Bluesky very easy to get started with and more powerful even than Xitter was. It's simply a better product if you have any requirements other than federation. Getting a good feed up and running doesn't take more than an hour or two. Mastodon is a lot more work.
The "starter packs" of Bsky is good, too. (Maybe that's your 'add lists' though.)
Yeah it's rhe add lists
Subscribable block lists... I'm making an account.
Yeah this solves a lot of problems straight off the bat. Add me, I have a few posts at the beginning of my timeline that will help you get started.
I go over there and search for stuff, and the page is always broken. It's been like that for weeks. You only get one page of results, and then you get an error. The infinite scroll doesn't work.
I just tested it in the app and it worked fine, scrolled for days with a common term like Ukraine.
Weird I never noticed. For me the amount of results depends on the search term. There may just be a few items with your term. Have you tried making a feed for it?
There is starter packs now but not many have been made and I forgot the website that you find them.
Yeah, not many, only 184,281 have been made
I was talking about mastodon starter packs.
Ah...
That was part of the reason. I tried explaining Pixelfed to my photographer dad and he completely lost interest when I mentioned instances and equated them to e-mail providers. Non-technical people don't like having to understand a technical aspect, and the nature of federation can't be avoided.
Keep in mind that these are the people who stayed on Twitter after it was infested by the musk. They're leaving because it's turned into a dogshit service, not because of any kind of moral stance. They won't choose one service over another because it's libre or decentralized or community-operated. They'll flock to one that has a low entry barrier and high population.
Speaking of which: Bluesky is where the people are. The merits of a social media provider are worthless if it has a fraction of the population of a direct competitor.
We should just point normal people to the biggest instance and never mention anything until they're settled in.
It is the most viable strategy, but we did that with lemmy.world and now a third of the fediverse is screeching about censorship on the largest instance and directly shitting on LW users.
A third? Are you sure that you aren't in an echo chamber?
Lemmy world is good I barely ever see people mad about it.
Top posts on Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
I think that's a good part of it, to be honest. Plus I think also helps that Bluesky's handles look visually less confusing and unusual than the conventional double @ sign for the fediverse
@user.bsky.socialvs@user@bsky.socialPlus other things like having starter packs
Yes, I think the main problem of Mastodon is that it looks and behaves like if engineers designed it, not designers.
That’s exactly it. People are bad at tech and do not understand it. If you even give them an additional option, this may confuse a tremendous amount of people enough to simply lose interest.
That's the thing, though. Bluesky gives you that option, too. And you could always just sign up with the one big official Mastodon server.
IIRC, they got hammered with new users back when Mastodon was more popular, and they couldn't keep up (since every server is run on a shoestring). So, they put s moratorium on new accounts, forcing people onto other instances. That might've been what hurt adoption.
Not really. Bluesky has a server option, but it's filled with their main instance by default and you can just ignore it.
Mastodon, on the other hand, doesn't have a single entry point for registrations. Everything is more convoluted for the layperson.
Mastodon also has a main instance. It's mastodon.social.
Its also able to pay for advertising and marketing
Do bluesky advertise itself?
Through influencers and social media marketing yes. Through running ads I don't think so.
Do you honestly believe that they don't?
Now someone have to write a server to federate to Bluesky, if for nothing more, as a reality check.
Bridgy Fed exists to act as a bridge between AP and ATProto/blue sky if you want to use ATProto from Mastodon. Sadly, though, the bluesky user has to also follow the bridge for you to be able to see their posts from mastodon.
Also helps it was created by Jack Dorsey.
Who's now left Bluesky which is probably for the better given his views on a lot of things
Agreed. Twitter was still a shitshow, when he sold it. Just not as bad as now.
I don't know how many not tech savvy people know this, but it helps too.
I think it was mostly that Mastodon wouldn't send referer headers.
So when people look at where their traffic comes from, 50% would be unknown, 20% would be Twitter, 10% would be Bluesky, and most importantly, Mastodon would never show on that report.
(Numbers made up and inaccurate.)
You can choose a different server on Bluesky, too.
Can you? I thought you could in theory, but it was all one server, theirs.
I joined Mastodon and it sucked, I didnt know where I was or what the significance of it was. Not a fan, lemmy is similar but seems to have less compartmentalisation relative to youe server.