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 had to switch Mastodon instances because of leftist infighting.
its about blueskys volume reaching a ‘critical mass’ which will continue to then draw users.
huge groups (recently, brazil) moved there en-masse because it already had a ton of users.
its the same reason twiiter even still has users… they dont want to leave that volume of subscribers.
That’s a bit of a circular reference: “it got popular because it got popular”. The question remains: why did BlueSky reach that threshold and Mastodon did not?
yes, its a chicken and egg problem and a huge hurdle for literally anyone trying to create new platforms.
its about feature parity (even if they dont really exist, re:account portability), marketing among other things. bluesky is run buy a bunch of big names who were able to draw an initial load of users which got their ball rolling.
Easier registration and everyone is on the same server by default. Think it’s that simple.
Bluesky has brand recognition (founded by the same dude as Twitter), more people and “feels like twitter”, in the sense of what you see, more than mastodon. Also, news outlets seem to be migrating there.
Mastodon (and pleroma, misskey, etc) is seen as a place for weirdos and techies, with “nothing interesting going on”. Several people mentioned this already one way or another, but that most servers/instances are “specific” about whatever means that people will feel that they might miss out on something by choosing the wrong server.
Bluesky is more like Twitter, and Twitter users prefer Twitter to Mastodon
Mastodon just sucks as a user experience. Your average Joe doesn’t give a fuck about federation, yet it’s the whole Fediverse crap that harms the UX.
I made the mistake of signing up to a smaller Mastodon instance. Place was virtually empty aside from the lead admin (bit of a pretentious asshole) and a few other guys, and if you decide to browse the All Instances view, you’re flooded with posts from hentai reposting bots. And when I saw the #loli hashtag in one of those posts I immediately noped out.
Threads is still in a really bad state well over a year later. Meta still haven’t implemented hashtags and trending topics (even Mastodon has these), and my feed is full of thirst traps.
Bluesky has it all, and was created by Twitter’s original founders.
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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’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.”
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.
I didn’t say refusing to have an algorithm was a bad thing, I just said it’s one reason Bluesky is more popular.
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.
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.
There’s a trending posts list which helps fill this want for me.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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
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.
…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.
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Oof. That is bleak, and all the more so because you’re probably dead on
It’s more difficult to run government psyops on mastodon.
No it’s not, it’s federated
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”
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
The year is 2034 and 96% of the population is unemployed because they are all forced to “do their own research” on literally everything and there’s no time to work. We all must research every niche topic to fully understand it before using it or the other 4% calls us stupid and lazy.
No longer are we allowed to just buy a shower head, or bike or sign up for email without sources cited and proof we know everything about said thing.
Have kids? Do their research too, no chocolate milk unless I’ve proven why it’s good.
Elderly parents? Don’t let them touch that Roku remote. I need a research paper on all the options I explored.
Sorry for all the sarcasm. I fix my house, I work, I mow the lawn and shuttle children to sports, and my friend says check this bluesky thing out, 30 seconds and I’m signed up and have a friend and a discover tab and a search that works. Life’s chaotic and I don’t want to be defined as stupid because I can’t spend hours figuring something out in place of something I think is more important.
All this not directed at you specifically but I guess it hit a nerve.
There are reasons that they have spent thousands or tens of thousands of working hours to make uptake as easy as possible. Those reasons are not in your interests. It is such a small price to pay. It is a necessary feature of ANY distributed service. The irony of complaining about it from your niche little Lemmy instance.
Look at it this way. You still had to pick an instance!! You just picked an instance that cannot talk to any other instances. If you were not so (forgive me but I guess it’s the term we’re using for lack of a better one) stupid, you would have realized that you had just had a meaningful choice taken from you, and made for someone else’s benefit instead of yours.
Throughout our entire global culture, convenience is killing us. I happen to believe free and healthy public forums outside of capitalist exploitation is of vital importance. I think this is a place our governments have abdicated responsibility to their citizens, and the Fediverse is the next best thing to public infrastructure. It’s so worth it.
The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest flaw.
Just to be devil’s advocate, perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well. Isn’t part of the point of all of this to avoid too much centralized control of social media?
Sure, Mastodon may never have as much mainstream appeal as BlueSky, but I use both. One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform. To interact with the masses on a platform that is more centralized, I use BlueSky.
perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well.
I should have been more clear. I meant “The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest obstacle to it achieving mass adoption”.
The post was about why Mastodon isn’t receiving as many user as BlueSky, or in other words, why it isn’t achieving mass adoption. It was under this context that I chose to use the word “flaw”, as in, flaw towards reaching mass adoption.
One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform.
I agree. Mastodon being niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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.
For me, this is a feature. The last thing I want is celebrities and news outlets clogging up my feed of nice people’s sandwiches and cat pictures.
Problem with that is that is catering to a certain set of people while ignoring a whole larger user base that Mastodon could appeal to.
Maybe you just arent the main target and thus be more suited to Mastodon rather than BlueSky.
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.
Agreed. There should have been a default place to sign up from the beginning. Leaning on federation as a feature is something very few people care about until they really care about it. The mass adopter just looks at where their favourite celebrity or talking head is and then move there.
Like Mastodon.social? Afaik it has been around since the beginning and is basically the “default” server unless you’re a “hacker” and you’re on infosec.pub or whatever, an edgy 4channer and you’re on poa.st, a SubGenius on “Bob’s” server dobbs.town, or one of the many pervert servers, or one of the asain servers I can’t read, but if you’re on one of those (for instance dobbs.town) you’re joining dobbs.town and mastodon is just there incidentally. Anyone else can just use .social and call it a day until they find out they’re really into plants.space or some specific thing.
Hell all the people I’ve gotten on masto that’s how I did it, “Ok make an acct on mastodon.social, great now lemme follow you what’s your name? Cool, see there I am! Oh I’m not on mastodon.social, I’m on dobbs.town, but we can still communicate like how I email your gmail from my protonmail, is normal. Now, there’s some servers you’re gonna want to block…” I don’t even tell them about federation until they’re already there, unless I KNOW the server they’ll want (like when I recommended my Discordian friend hop on discordian.social instead of mastodon.social.)
The real kicker is that none of their precious celebs they follow are on there, as you mention. The weirdos I talk to don’t care about that so it works out for me lol.
Crucially though, for a very long time they forced you to choose a server instead of just set you up on the default on.
Well I’d just tell them if I was recommending it to a friend or making a post like “follow me to mastodon” or whatever, and someone curious enough to find mastodon without a recommendation oughta be able to figure out an instance to join, mastodon.social is the first result when searching “mastodon” so it’ll probably get them just based on that.
It’s the raison d’etre. Saying “don’t federate” is like saying “don’t put images and rich hyperlinking on the WWW, just make it like Gopher.” If you don’t want to federate, don’t. But saying that it was a bad move for ActivityPub is just nonsensical.
I’m not saying don’t federate. I’m saying don’t talk about that as the primary feature when you’re enticing people to sign up to it.
