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.
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.
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.
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.
Boosting is retweeting. Favoriting is liking.
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
federation could be abstracted away, much the same way filesystems are right now
Perhaps… But how exactly?
i wish i had that answer
its usually how corpos and ux people seem solve these issues
Initial log in in the apps should default to mastodon.social with other servers buried under a menu
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.
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.
That would be helpful.
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.
the instances I join keep collapsing and getting deleted
Twitter is evil Mastodon has bad UX BlueSky is fresh
Instead of comparing these smaller platforms together to find out why one is better or not people should be focusing on why xitter and Facebook are still two of the most popular forms of social media.
Network effects, boomers being unable to figure out how to switch
It’s not just boomers though. I work with a lot of younger people and they all still use xitter/facebook.
They either don’t know/care about alternatives because “everyone else is using it”
Because they miss the algorithm
Easy.
-
No one outside of the fediverse bubble gives a fuck about federation. It solves a problem no one has, and offers no real solutions to problems users have.
-
Mastodon offers nothing on the Twitter experience outside of “but it’s federated”
-
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.
same reason we just elected donald fucking trump. people will always take the easy option that makes them feel good.
It’s more difficult to run government psyops on mastodon.
No it’s not, it’s federated
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.
You have to pick a microblogging service. What’s the difference? Truth Social is just a mastodon instance, but it’s commercial and it has marketing. That’s all that’s “missing” from any other fediverse instance, and thank fucking god.
☝️ 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.
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.
I agree with you, but to be fair, people don’t really choose an email provider. They chose gmail, because anything else is disallowed by everyone’s anti-spam measures.
That’s a recent phenomenon though, and it’s effectively been forced on people by the largest email provider making it difficult to use others. My original point was that people didn’t find it confusing to register for different mail providers when that was easy to do.
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.
Yet, the fact remains that people did get comfortable with email, and even the least tech illiterate people are able to use it.
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
You don’t have to make an informed decision.
Correct, but you are still presented with a decision that adds friction to the onboarding experience. I was aware of how Mastodon works and that I could migrate and it took me a while to create an account because I didn’t want to “waste my time”. I can’t imagine a regular user being prompted to “select an instance”, decide to go with the first one they see, and registration is either closed or invite only. That’s a huge barrier to entry compared to being forced into a single login that is always open.
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
100000% agree with you. I would never create a bluesky account because of that. Unfortunately people aren’t as informed and most really just don’t care.
What I’m saying is that the amount of friction this adds is completely blown out of proportion. It’s just not that hard, and people acting like it’s a huge barrier are not being serious. If this was the case email would’ve never taken off. The fact that we’re at the point where it’s hard to imagine a regular user going outside a walled corporate garden is really the problem here.
Unfortunately people aren’t as informed and most really just don’t care.
The flip side is that we shouldn’t care too much either. Fediverse already has millions of users, and it can just keep growing organically at its own pace.
