Hey, I wanted to ask someone who has probably more knowledge than me about it - what’s the difference about these two services? I know Mastodon has ActivityPub, so it works with Lemmy, and BlueSky has it’s own kind of federation, but does it even has anything to federate to?
I’m asking not which one is better, I’m searching logical argument for one or other. I’m obviously more leaning toward Mastodon since I’m here, but I wanted to give my friend, who is thinking about joining, some real arguments.
Blue sky is for people who want something that works. Mastodon is for people who think they know how to make it work.
Unfortunately, fair point, yeah. I wish it weren’t like this. I’m here, and both those places, and I have to say that my engagement with BlueSky is far higher. That said, Lemmy and Mastodon have the potential to be something very special.
Bluesky is the first app built on the ATProtocol, its protocol for federation, sort of like how Mastodon was among the first to use ActivityPub after the overcomplexity of OStatus. The ATProtocol is a few years younger than ActivityPub, so its landscape isn’t fleshed out yet. Currently Bluesky caters more towards creators, artists, and social togetherness, whereas ActivityPub tends to lean harder into attracting techies. Both protocols can be run as independent instances, but most people are still using bsky.social for now until more instances pop up and federate together. The process for hosting a Bluesky instance is still undergoing development, but all features of it have been opened up. There exist multiple bridge systems that can interweave ActivityPub with ATProto.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/entries/Notes on Running a Full-Network atproto Relay (July 2024)
This sums it up
Bluesky is the Microsoft Word of social media, which I mean in the derogatory sense, as the fediverse is the LaTeX of social media, which I also mean in the derogatory sense
Bluesky is cool and trendy. Mastodon isn’t.
Damn. I knew I belonged on Mastodon but you didn’t have to be so blunt about it…
To be fair, Bluesky has been a really good and positive experience for me so far. And I’ve used Mastodon and Twitter.
I keep trying to want to use Mastodon. But I’m using Bluesky far more. Heck, maybe more than here at this point, just because it’s been so…refreshingly positive.
And I had absolutely no interest in Twitter at any point.
Used Mastodon for a while. It wasn’t bad at all, but for me it was mainly a lack of people that made me stop using it. I still think Mastodon has a lot of potential though.
Bluesky is easy on the beginner and mimics X as a whole world in your single feed. Mastodon (fediverse) carry way to much technical concepts to understand and get the most out of it.
Is Mastodon Lemmy? Is bluesky Twitter alternative? I just want reddit alternative.
I think the biggest end user perspective difference between mastodon and Lemmy is mastodon is designed more for following people and organizations and the occasional hashtag topic like Twitter, Lemmy is closer to reddit in that is more organized for topics and communities where individual identities are less important, less people use legal names, etc. I also see more advertising on mastodon but that may just be an instance or moderator thing and not a general difference.
Mastodon has a certain level of federated connectivity with Lemmy, but it’s also a Twitter alternative, similar in that way to BlueSky. Lemmy (or mBin) is the Reddit alternative.
Mastodon is like if Twitter could read reddit, Instagram, and various other social media network posts as Tweets, except every social network is a much tinier version of it.
