this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024

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Why do People Choose BlueSky Over Mastodon? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] macarthur_park 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.

[–] baronvonj 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

For me a lot of those toe dippers were subsequently found to have settled on BlueSky.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A lot of people are offput by having to choose a server before creating an account. If that could be automated somehow I think Mastodon would be more popular.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Yeah... but I think it's too late for Mastodon to be popular. Bluesky is already at the tipping point.

Mastodon just needed to sign you up to their own default server, power users could sign up to different ones and they would have still got the regulars in the door. Mastodon also needed twitter feature parity, something Bluesky also managed much faster.

Once people are in and settled, then they would start asking questions about that URL after their username, people would slowly become comfortable with the federation and understand it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

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.