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:
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.
- 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.
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.
BlueSky doesnt club you with nonstop Linux nerds
Mastodon being federated is absolutely not a flaw. This is how the internet was meant to work in the first place. The fact that people got used to using centralized platforms is an aberration and this needs to be actively fought against.
the discovery on bsky is pretty nice, i dont see an equivalent on my masto instance
You have to pick a Mastodon server, before you know anything about anything. The acquisition funnel probably drops 90% of the people checking it out right there.
This, when I decided to join Mastodon I was prompted to choose a server and had to research which one should join and understand how it works.
It is called UX friction and is well studied in sign up and checkout processes, the more steps the user has to perform the more likely it abandons it.
Just pick one, you’re thinking too hard. I just picked one that’s open because I didn’t want to write an essay about myself to prove my worth and get someone to accept me, because I know that there isn’t any reason why anyone would accept me over someone else (I’m a nobody). I hate the idea of someone else having to review my worth before being allowed to sign up, what a disgusting concept. “Oh it’s to stop spam 🤓” All the other sites have been dealing with Spam good enough without asking me to prove my worth to them, maybe the Fediverse should take some pointers from the big boys at Big tech, they seem to be doing better than you are when it comes to this.
Felt the same about Lemmy when I signed up.
Just pick an open one, that’s the easiest choice. No essays, no worrying about being denied, easy.
The only reason I actually wound up signing up on Lemmy is that there is one “main” instance by appearance, and it lets you participate in others(?). (Lemmy.world)
You don’t need to know any of the more esoteric stuff to get going.
Is Mastadon different?
I don’t know, I use BSKY.
Lol, fair enough.
☝️ This. It’s why I put off signing up for Mastodon for a long time, even though I am a big supporter of the Fediverse.
That definitely makes a difference, you can choose which but by default it already selects one so some people won’t even change it for convenience, however, that’s not a thing on Mastodon so… Also, a lot of those are mobile users and BlueSky has a lot more Twitter-like familiar UI than Mastodon apps (maybe I’m wrong and if so, point me to which one because there are so many… there goes another issue and convenience out of the window for people who just don’t care about searching and wants something to be done quick - so basically most of Twitter users that still didn’t leave it or went to BlueSky)
How is picking a Mastodon server different from signing up for email, finding a discord server, signing up to follow channels on youtube, and so on. Somehow people have no problems figuring those things out, but when it comes to Mastodon this is constantly brought up like some insurmountable challenge.
Email has taken 25 years to get people that comfortable with it, and most folks either go with their ISP email, or one of 3 or 4 providers. Discord, you’re already in the tech savvy population.
Having to make an informed decision is a barrier to entry. it took me a while because I wanted to make sure I didn’t join (and waste time/effort) something I didn’t align with.
You don’t have to make an informed decision. Signing up for an instance isn’t a blood pact. If you find the instance you singed up for isn’t to your liking, You can easily migrate your account to another. Meanwhile, if you’re worried about something you don’t align with, then you don’t even get that choice with a centralized platform like Bluesky. For example, I don’t align with any of this shit https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476788536250587
Personal answer: I draw art for a stupidly niche internet community. I’m a less popular artist so I go wear the community already is. I found one other artist on Mastodon and several on Bluesky.
It’s lack of marketing since it is not a business, and people conflating useful optional features with confusing usage.
Everyone I know moved to bluesky, after which bluesky basically immediately sold out to crypto people. I brought up the idea of “hey, this is why I think mastodon is a lot better, because it’s impossible for it to sell out entirely”, to which one person lost their fucking shit and responded stating that I was “fear mongering”.
This person also said they didn’t care if a business owned all their data and controlled their entire life because “all their data is owned already anyway”.
This same person also said that after the recent US election they “spent the night throwing up until they were dry heaving and crying”.
Why they claim to not care about their life being controlled by corporate entities, but claim to care so hard about their life being controlled by a government that they say they have a physical reaction to it is a subject I haven’t broached because I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to see their hypocrisy if they pointed the James Webb telescope at themselves.
In a nut shell, many people are incredibly stupid and not at all interested in their best interests unless the news tells them which interests they should care about.
basically immediately sold out to crypto people.
Wait what? I know very little about BlueSky and even less about the people behind it, so I didn’t know that. Could you send me a link to more info?
https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a
They announced a series A in which they stated they are implementing paid features through a subscription model and took 15 million dollars from Blockchain Capital.
They say in this statement they won’t “Hyper Financialize” the platform, which is corporate doublespeak for “We are now monetizing this platform”.
The additions to their board are people who come from crypto/NFT companies.
As a result, the clock is now ticking on Bluesky and its destruction is inevitable due to the laws of capitalism.
Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.
Back when there was any question of what platform to migrate to? Threads and bluesky were “Get an invite and make an account”
Mastodon was people insisting that EVERYONE needed to understand what federation is and the underlying philosophy. When really they should have just said “Sign up for one of these instances. It is like email where it doesn’t really matter what provider you have”. Countless times I tried to explain to folk on a message board or discord and would say “Just make an account on one of these four or five instances”. And, like clockwork, someone would “well ackshually” me and insist that people can’t use Mastodon without understanding the fundamental concept of federation and how picking the right instance is important and people can just delete and remake their accounts until they are satisfied.
So when it was time for the big influencers to move? They went to where people were already congregating and where they didn’t need to host an educational seminar to tell someone how to make an account.
You literally cannot search for Mastodon without getting a weird ass 2-paragraph manifesto about The Fediverse.
End users just want to use shit.
Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.
Yeah that’s another thing, Mastodon is kinda nice, except for its userbase. :P
Honestly?
I vastly prefer almost everyone I have interacted with on mastodon over basically every lemmy user. Because lemmy still thinks it is reddit but also is totally over their ex but do you think he is thinking of me and can I send him a picture of your dick to show it is bigger?
Whereas mastodon? People kind of just want to talk. We largely understand that twitter has been a shithole for… most of its existence. So rather than try to reinvent it (bsky and threads) we are learning from it in the same way cohost learned from tumblr (and died even faster…).
And the lunatics who need to scream about what federation is and why it is The Future? They aren’t talking about basically anything else. They are keeping to themselves and talking about how amazing the community can be… while the rest of us are actually being a community.
I mean, Lemmy is basically a big discussion forum to share links or get an argument going. You’re obviously gonna get more confrontations.
Bsky/Mastodon/Threads is strangers yelling their thoughts into the void in between posts about their cats or pictures of themselves. Not exactly a place where most people will go in with the intention of dissenting.
My interactions on Mastodon are far fewer than on Lemmy, though.
IMO, Lemmy is like a CoOp video game where you’re supposed to interact together, and Mastodon is like watching someone else play a solo video game.
Both can be good, but they serve different purposes to me.
I think thats by design. Microblogging vs Forums.
Ths former, like the bird app is to yell into the void and hear what others yell while lemmy and reddit is built around it’s comment sections.
redditors are the fucking worst.
A big issue with the 2022 signup wave was the influx of new Masto websites, run by new admins. The subscription model of ActivityPub meant they were mostly contentless, and they weren’t seeded by knowledgeable users. People needed to understand the basics of federation to find anything because nothing was being syndicated on those sites.
And then a bunch of them shut down when admins who were ok hosting hundreds of like-minded users suddenly had thousands of generalist users flooding their sites.
It was major human infrastructure failure.
And that was as a whole bunch of tenured users started getting hostile over people not adopting the idiosyncratic nettiquite of the was-niche-only-yesterday space. The server blocks started rolling out, and people needed to understand the idea of “federation” (and, apparently, “the Internet”) to understand why they were being “denied access” to the cranky people, trolls, and unmoderated spaces.
The truth is, most people don’t like the internet. They like the simple, streamlined process of just being owned by corporate interests. Walles gardens work for them in a way public parks never will.
The difference is that you won’t find yourself unable to send an e-mail because the admin of your e-mail server doesn’t like someone from the recipient’s e-mail server.
Well, you know that by desing wassap, telegram, etc can communicate with each other but they intentionally cut that feature to only be able to menssege server internally?
No? There are a lot of mail providers that are listed as spam on other providers „just because“. So yes, that literally does happen.
I mean, that is a possible thing for your e-mail admin to do. They just generally don’t.
Why not?
Because it’s virtually never a thing that happens.
I see you never had to jump through the hoops to get Gmail to not silently drop all your emails.
That is a completely different issue.
Bluesky is way more approachable than Mastodon. Most people don’t want to have to learn what an instance is.
People are less tech literate and considerably stupider than they were 20 year ago. It’s shocking.
Blame Apple I guess
People expecting a new Twitter when switching to Mastodon were met with weird behavior and nerds who told them the awful search function or weird comment count is working correctly because that’s how federation works. Well if that’s the case then federation is shit.
This is unfortunately the world of open-source.
- Nerd tells you to use the open-source thing.
- Non-technical tries it and asks questions
- Nerd proclaims it’s not a real problem/your fault/not applicable/fix it yourself
- Some company takes that open-source version or idea, makes it easier for end users and monetize it
- Nerd gets angry and repeats step 1
Source: I am nerd and I contribute to open-source.
I’m on both Mastodon and Bluesky. To me, Mastodon’s biggest problem is its refusal to have an algorithm to surface popular content. Yes there are problems with algorithms, but I don’t have the time or inclination to read every post in chronological order. A good algorithm would show me popular posts without manipulating me for profit.
Edt: a few people have misunderstood me. I’m not proposing “Mastodon shows me stuff from people I don’t follow,” I’m suggesting “Mastodon shows me stuff only from people I follow, but it shows me the popular stuff first.”
There’s a trending posts list which helps fill this want for me.
Problem with algorithms showing popular content is that once you have them, you’ll have people trying to use them to make money. And by extension people trying to manipulate you for profit. Doesn’t have to be the platform itself doing it for it to be harmful.
Yeah being manipulated by algorithm is a problem. The best solution I can think of is Mastodon adding the ability to choose your algorithm. Not just a list of approved ones since the admins could manipulate that list, but the ability to actually upload some code so you can either write your own algorithm or choose one written by someone you trust.
That comes with a lot of problems like potentially overworking the server so I don’t know if it’s actually a viable solution but it would be nice.
As a layman, I promise you “write your own algorithmic code” is not a feature that would compel me to sign up for a service
I was thinking along the lines of being given a list of popular algorithms, but if you find an algorithm you like on another instance you can copy it over to your instance. So it is not necessary to write code and nearly nobody would do it, they would just use ones that other people created.
But I realize this is an extremely difficult request so I’m not really serious when I propose it.
I think it would be an awesome feature but like you said, just not something that is going to sway a typical social media user to give it a shot. But I can see it being a really cool way for advanced users to really customize their experience.
Oh yeah this has little to do with the original question about why bsky is more popular. This suggestion of “let people write their own algorithms” is for the devs who think algorithms are harmful. They aren’t harmful if you give users the power to choose their own algorithm. Techie people can write the algorithms and non-techie people can choose them. Chances are a few algorithms would eventually become the most popular and very few would be written after that, but the point is you let the users decide instead of the Mastodon devs having to write the algorithms.
And now I realize bsky actually has something like this: Custom Feeds. If I understand correctly, they get around the “running untrusted code” issue by not running the code on bsky servers. Instead whoever wrote the custom feed gets the data from bsky, runs the algorithm on a separate server, then returns the custom feed. Pretty clever. https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
Of course, but good luck getting those 5% of users that actually produce nearly 100% of the content to move over if their business model cannot work. And once those move, you know where all the people following them move.
I don’t really think mastodon needs those 5% to produce content to entertain and advertise a userbase of 95% lurkers. For me it’s definitely a bonus that they’re not there - I don’t need influencer-shit in my feed.
If that kind of content creator and passive user goes to Bluesky that’s fine. If they went to mastodon we’d just see calls for an algorithm, which would be directly against what I want in the platform.
I’m inclined to agree that’s a problem. Everyone’s first encounter with a social media content recommendation algorithm was one designed to manipulate them into clicking ads, so it caused some backlash. Recommendation algorithms can be tuned to show things people care about and want to engage with.
Exactly, a lot of algorithms on for-profit sites are manipulative trash but refusing to have any algorithm at all is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Exactly I had difficulty finding content and any “guide” or anything I seemed to find was too confusing or not practical for me. I don’t use Twitter, blue sky, or mastadon regularly but when I checked them all out, blue sky was the best in all round; “Ease of use” and “easy to find content”
That sounds more like a feature than a bug. I remember when Twitter was actually useful. You could sort by “new” as the default and your feed only included stuff from people you followed. And then it went to complete shit with the sort defaulting to “fuck your preferences”, sponsored content and your feed being littered with click bait, paid content and all the other bits of enshitification. And that is all built on the algorithmic selection of content.
I didn’t say it was a bad thing, I just said it’s one reason Bsky is more popular. People are busy and want algorithms.
To me, Mastodon’s biggest problem is its refusal to have an algorithm to surface popular content.
Isn’t Explore - Posts on the desktop web client exactly what you’re looking for? It was always there and it’s where I spend most of my Mastodon time.
It looks like that’s popular posts by anyone, not just by people I follow. So it’s a start, but different people want to see different things so having a single firehose like Explore doesn’t really meet the need. For me, I want to see popular stuff by people or hashtags I follow. Other people might want to see other things.
Yes, that’s true. I am under the impression that “the algorithm” on the popular platforms mixes in posts from people you don’t follow. The only one I was somewhat familiar with was the Twitter one from when I was there.
thats the entire point of mastodon.
literally why it was built. Edit :
It’s not supposed to be a place you go to get served content. You pick who you follow, and that’s your feed.
The problem has been lack of adoption by popular news and culture . So you go there, and you cannot easily find high volume content provided like the bbc, nfl, Real Madrid, Activision, etc etc
I think people are misunderstanding what I mean by algorithm. An algorithm could show you stuff from people you don’t follow (yuck), but it could also show you popular stuff only from people you follow. That used to be how Facebook did it.
We get that it is the design philosophy for Mastodon to not have an algorithm serving content, but it appears to be a non-starter for a lot of users of Twitter like services.
In theory, a third party could write that algorithm and implement it in some form. Truth Social functions like that, but without federating to the rest of Mastodon.
This is a great commentary to me. I think it shows just how much of an appetite we currently have for a curated space. It’s almost like Mastodon is a service that’s about 15 years too late.
I remember going around to older forums and sites looking for specific content when I wanted it, and I wasn’t always guaranteed to find something I liked, but I would often see something interesting.
Now, though, I really want anywhere I go to knock me off my feet with good content because that’s what I’m conditioned to. Isn’t that what makes me an addict, though? I’m wondering if that chance of dissatisfaction isn’t a virtue to ensure no one platform takes control of all my attention.
The lack of an algorithm is a solution. Social media tends to be too addictive to the point it can be harmful to humans, so Mastodon was intentionally designed to be less addictive.
Algorithms makes me less addictive because it always suggest the same type of boring content
Oh, that’s interesting. Lucky you, I guess. The algorithms have been tuned to be as engaging as possible, and that seems to be working for most people. Obviously, it’s impossible to make it work for literally everyone, and you seem to be one of the few who can escape the algorithm.
I didn’t say refusing to have an algorithm was a bad thing, I just said it’s one reason Bluesky is more popular.
I think using hashtags with filters serve the same purpose
But it still won’t put my friend’s popular posts at the top, right? I don’t want to scroll past 20 pictures of people’s dinner and then find out one of my friends got engaged, I want the “I got engaged” post at the top because it’s probably getting the most interaction.
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
…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.
Ask your average social media user what any of that means and you’ll get blank stares.
the average social media user wants to know what face cream Kim Kardashian uses, follows Cristiano Ronaldo and thinks you should go back to your own country.
Oof. That is bleak, and all the more so because you’re probably dead on
Because in Bluesky, you open the app, create an account, and you’re good to go.
Federation is way too complex of an idea for the average person. Picking a server and then understanding instances is much too complicated.
I was going to reply with this. This is exactly one of the problems. I didn’t have a Twitter, but I wanted to join mastadon. I had to find a way to access it, and an instance to sign up on. In theory it’s good but for a new user it can be difficult to sign up.
Then ofc the difficulty of finding content, there is content, but part of the no frills meant most of the stuff I saw wasn’t in English (I am a mon-english speaker) and it was tricky to figure out how to juat get English content let alone content I was interested in.
I’m reasonably tech savvy. All my personal computers run Linux, I have a 2-node proxmox homelab with 10+ containers and virtual machines running self hosted services. I can hack other people’s code together from web searches to sometimes make things work.
I had to do a few web searches to figure out how to sign up and get started on Mastodon. If it was a bit of a challenge for me with my listed tech skills, it’s insurmountable to the average user in the general public.
The average person understands email pretty well. Mastodon doesn’t require much more understanding than that, but could probably use some UX and messaging work.
The average person understands email pretty well.
No, they really don’t.
No I’m sorry this is not correct. Most people don’t know how email works. They don’t understand federation, how servers work, or have the confidence or patience to learn it. They want to click an app and get content.
You are on an open source self hosted federated media platform exclusively inhabited by tech super users and developers. We are very much in an echo chamber here. I leave you this study that I keep posting here when Lemmy users lament over the lack of uptake from the general public:
Holy hell, 95% of people can’t figure out “what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.” That is absolutely wild to me, and I already thought my perception was skewed the other direction due to working with largely disadvantaged people. That’s an eye opener for sure, thanks for sharing
I don’t think many people have read RFC 5322 (I haven’t), but most non-technical people I know understand these things about email:
- There are different service providers, and people can email each other no matter which provider they use
- There are different email apps
- Some apps are tied to specific service providers and others are not
I do lament the overall level of tech literacy.
Do they though? To most of my peers email=gmail
I do agree that it’s a good way to explain federation, anybody willing to be openminded will get the concept very quickly (I mean the importance of federation, like for email, not simply the fact that it’s a thing / old tech but whatever who cares).
But will many be exposed to those posts or articles explaining the fediverse while staying inside of the walled gardens? I hope so, personally I’m not going there anymore myself :)
Just because BlueSky isn’t federated doesn’t mean it’s (totally) centralized. It uses the AT protocol which means user data lives in a separate place than the app itself. While the BlueSky app is centralized all the user data (your posts, likes, etc) live in a separate place and can be self-hosted. This means that if BlueSky went bust or something, users could easily just move to a new platform that someone would inevitably create and all of their data, likes, follows would all be there.
is that migration documented?
