I think it's because businesses tend to focus on super easy access, user interface and user engagement first, while open source projects tend to focus on tech and often forget about the end user experience.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (21 children)

I guess but with mastodon I literally cannot imagine it getting any easier.

Download app -> make an account (the app will default to some instance, at least it did for me) -> use it exactly like Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Bluesky:

Download official, fully featured app and not something utterly crippled
Looks and feels like Twitter
No weird tech mumbo-jumbo (WTF is a server, is that like a Discord server, what's that gotta do with Twitter) confusing you because there are no instances to choose from
Make an account
UI, UX, look & feel 100%, 1:1 fully identical with immediate pre-Musk Twitter
No need to get used to anything because literally everything stays precisely the same as what you're used to, only that it's no longer "Twitter" or "X" or "tweets"
Use it literally precisely the same as Twitter
Pretend you're still on Twitter, it won't make a difference

If Mastodon wanted to compete with this, it would have to

replace its default Web UI with an even more faithful clone of the immediate pre-Musk Twitter Web UI,
replace its official app with something that's absolutely identical to the immediate pre-Musk Twitter app in all but name and branding
remove the instance chooser without introducing any other option of joining any other instance than mastodon.social
completely hide decentralisation and instances from newbies, ideally for a few months or years after they've joined
introduce a content-forwarding algorithm like the one on X, but better
forcibly ban Mastodon's user-grown culture and force pre-Musk Twitter culture upon everyone
mollycoddle its users for months or years so that Mastodon really feels like "literally Twitter without Musk" by shielding them from not only all hints that Mastodon is different, but also from the entire rest of the Fediverse

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe wasn't that way before, but when signing up on Bluesky now you are asked to choose a instance (bsky.social being the default), and the username contains the instance name, exactly like any Fediverse account.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Good to know.

Strangely, people don't seem to mind.

I guess then a key difference is that Bluesky is presented to 𝕏 users as the same kind of monolith as 𝕏 whereas Mastodon is presented to them as a huge number of instances from which they absolutely have to pick one.

load more comments (18 replies)