this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025

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Bluesky now has 30 million users. (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 day ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

To anyone bemoaning BlueSky's lack of federation, check out Free Our Feeds.

It's a campaign to create a public interest foundation independent from the Bluesky team (although the Bluesky team has said they support them) that will build independent infrastructure, like a secondary "relay" as an alternative to Bluesky's that can still communicate across the same protocol (The "AT Protocol") while also doing developer grants for the development of further social applications built on open protocols like the AT Protocol or ActivityPub.

They have the support of an existing 501c(3), and their open letter has been signed by people you might find interesting, such as Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I feel like the reason the reason why it's taking off so much is because it's not federated.

It's like people hear the term federation and they get afraid. I know it's not that simple but still.

In other words, people don't know what they actually need.

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

I don't personally think it's because of that. Sure, federation as a concept outside of email has a bit of a messaging problem for explaining it to newbies, but... everyone uses email, and knows how that works. This is identical, just with it being posts instead of emails. Users aren't averse to federation, in concept or practice.

Bluesky was directly created as a very close clone of Twitter's UI, co-governed and subsequently pushed by the founder of Twitter himself, who will obviously have more reach than randoms promoting something like Mastodon, and, in my opinion, kind of just had better branding.

"Bluesky" feels like a breath of fresh air, while "Mastodon" just sounds like... well, a Mastodon, whatever that makes the average person think of at first.

So when you compare Bluesky, with a familiar UI, nice name, and consistent branding, not to mention algorithms, which Mastodon lacks, all funded by large sums of money, to Mastodon, with unfamiliar branding, minimal funding, and substantially less reach from promoters, which one will win out, regardless of the technology involved?

[–] cozyfuel 1 points 2 hours ago

Exactly, it's just packaged in a way that consumers are more familiar with with the backing of major celebs

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

People are not afraid of the term “Federation.“ They literally have no clue what it is.

It’s the instance concept I find consistently to be an issue. It’s an extra layer/barrier to entry. You don’t just create an account. You have to understand what an instance is and then determine which one you’re joining and what that means for your moment to moment usage of the platform.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I was confused on if it was connected, if I was explaining it to myself id say that the fediverse has interconnected forums that all serve the same content and can be accessed by making accounts on different websites or apps.

Lemmy, mbin, piefed, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected forum/threads side of the fediverse.

Mastodon, sharkey, plaroma, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected microblogging slide of the fediverse.

They all have different features, like mbin has account reputation, piefed has topics which let you sub to multiple related communities at once, etc., but the content is shared between those that serve the same type of content.

Since they're all built ontop of the same protocol ppl can always come in and build on top of it or make hybrids while still letting everyone access the same content. Like mbin having both microblogging (tweets) and threads, letting you post and view both from the same account/website.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

And it legit takes 5 minutes to sign up for 5 instances and see the differences, mine showed the same content for the most part, only lemmy.world was missing the piracy community, other than that it was all the same and any nervousness I had about it went away after seeing the feeds being the same.

[–] scarabic 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Is this 30 million accounts created? Active user numbers would be a lot more meaningful.

As an illustration, if you have a platform that’s gaining 100,000 users each month and losing 100,000 other users each month, it’s basically going nowhere. But it will eventually reach this “30 million users” milestone too if all it means is account creations.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Active user numbers is probably less than 1 million, but still, 30 million accounts created is quite likely pretty good even if most of them aren't active.

[–] scarabic 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It’s something, but there’s really no frame of reference to know if it’s good or how good. Because companies rarely talk about this number. Twitter might have billions of accounts created if we look at all time.

Actives are what count.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 hours ago (6 children)

As a former mastodon believer, Bluesky is so much better. I'm sorry but the kind of content I wanted on mastodon was never there. Bluesky feels good. Things change, for sure. For now though? This is the best we have for a replacement for Twitter.

[–] QualifiedKitten 2 points 2 hours ago

I never actually used Twitter, but recently made accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed.

Pixelfed has been my favorite of the three so far... I'm finding that the image-based focus means my feed is mostly fun stuff, that leaves me feeling happy, not gloom and doom of news, snark, etc.

I'm not sure how long I'll use Mastodon, but I've been finding hashtags and users that I'm interested in following and interacting with, and the keyword filters have allowed me to limit (but not eliminate) the depressing stuff.

Bluesky pissed me the fuck off since I couldn't find a way to follow hashtags, only users, and the Lists thing was just not what I wanted either. Bluesky's filter is disappointing compares to Mastodon's too, since Mastodon allows you to hide filtered words behind a content warning or hide them completely, while Bluesky seems to only hide them completely.

[–] naught101 4 points 4 hours ago

Bluesky has the network effect, at least for some domains of content. Mastodon has about 50% coverage of my domain of interests, but that's probably way less for many people.

Mastodon has the guaranteed lack of enshittification via decentralisation. Bluesky is promising it, but it seems far from guaranteed, and if it doesn't happen, I'm betting it'll enshittify about 4 times faster than twitter, because everything does these days..

So Bluesky is probably a better bet in the short term for general users.. I'm glad people are escaping twitter at least. But I'm sticking with Mastodon, 'cause fuck going through all that again in a couple of years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

I dont like either, but then again I couldn't get into twitter. The microblogging is not for me. I made accounts on mastodon, bluesky, pixelfed et al just to improve the numbers

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

I tried to figure out Mastodon a few months ago. I'm with you.

Someone asked me to follow them on Mastodon. I couldn't find them in the app. He sent me the direct link and it opened up a browser on my phone, refusing to recognize the app.

I finally added them directly from a browser by by remembering which server I was in, log into that, visiting their link again, adding them from my logged in server, and then it finally appeared in the app.

And if I'm dealing with thet level of monkeying around, how many others are? How the hell are we supposed to contribute and add content and find social circles when we're fighting with the UI?

Lemmy seems to have figured out how to not make a sucky experience with multiple servers.

[–] PetteriSkaffari 3 points 6 hours ago

On Mastodon I have no trouble interacting with other users there. I have 2 accounts running on different instances - one global and one local. No trouble at all finding an account on either of them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

Yep, if even tech-savvy folks struggle with following people via links, the average user is going to feel totally lost. It's these minor UX issues that keep holding federated platforms back.

[–] anon593839 7 points 10 hours ago

I find Lemmy to be a better reddit alternative than Mastodon is a twitter alternative.

The lack of an infinitely scrollable algorithmic feed in Mastodon is definitely better societally, but let's be real, the algorithmic feed is just way more fun to scroll in blue sky.

[–] Saltycracker 3 points 9 hours ago

I think I might use both

[–] SocialMediaRefugee 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

6 more months before it monetizes...

[–] naught101 3 points 4 hours ago

Then a rapid decent into profit maximisation at the expense of user experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

Im one of them

[–] Siegfried 7 points 11 hours ago

Man does not learn

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Activitypub or gtfo

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

I tried Mastodon two times in the past. I love the idea of federation and really want it to work. There's just too much friction though.

First you have to choose an instance. If there isn't a sensible default preselected when you download an app you already lost almost all non-technical people.

But I'm a technical, motivated individual, so I managed. Next I wanted to follow some creators I know. I couldn't just look them up, I had to find them on twitter or other places and manually copy their name@instance or whatever into mastodon.

Cool. Now I can press follow and it'll follow, right? Wrong. I press follow and nothing happens. I find out It's pending? I'm guessing both instances have to accept federation between them?

Let's follow some more creators I know. What do you mean I can't follow someone because their instance is straight up blocked by my instance because their instance mods think everything anime-related is for pedos? So I can't follow creators from both instances because they don't like each other? So I need to find an instance which isn't blocked by anyone, doesn't block anyone? Or host my own one person instance and hope other instances accept my federation?

At this point you already lost 99.9% of people. I want mastodon to work, but it straight up sucks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Time for the fediverse to reflect on this lamentable failure to capture the zeitgeist. The future could have been glorious. Instead we have infighting, defederation, owner class privilege with their delegates (moderators) as the first class citizen. And of course, hiding the structures of power has already begun in the name of harmony, so no, you can't have frictionless account migration. Don't step out of line if you don't want to lose your fediverse relationships and history...

[–] naught101 3 points 4 hours ago

What... are you talking about?

[–] oshu 3 points 10 hours ago

I've come to realize that bluesky already had all lot of what I'm happy to not see on masto. Good that there is a place for it to exist without me.

That content is also probably what the majority of people like about it.

[–] HairTransplants 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Something similar is going to happen with lemmy if reddit keeps caving in to Elon

[–] Siegfried 1 points 10 hours ago

Na, we are a reduct... it's a miracle we are on indexed web*

*/j

[–] Spaniard 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I never had a twitter account, not because of political beliefs but because the core of that social network is bullshit and the internet should be better than that.

[–] Psythik 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's literally just Shower Thoughts: The Website.

I really don't understand the appeal.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It is a decent format for businesses, organizations, musicians/comedians/touring acts etc. to announce events and goings on to the general public. For discourse, it's complete garbagepuke.

[–] TehWorld 3 points 6 hours ago

Which of those are not “advertising” of one sort or another? Twitter was a dumb idea to start and I still just don’t see any appeal.

FB had my friends (now is a stupid cesspool of echo chamber idiocy.

Insta was photo-based FB Lite.

Fark>Slashdot>Digg>Reddit>Lemmy was/is about community and sharing of ideas and thoughts. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses, but the anonymity gave everyone an equal opportunity to participate.

The early days of Twitter seemed to be 10,000 people yelling in a room and nobody listening. Then celebrities took over and companies followed. Enshittifying it early on in the process.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 day ago (4 children)

What annoys me is that people are buying the idea that BlueSky is federated.

Not only is it not federated, the very architecture they designed means that it's probably not federateable, at least not by normal users.

The way they designed it, a relay is required to collect and forward every single BlueSky post. That means, as the service grows, it becomes more and more impossible for anybody but a company to run a relay. Someone did some calculations back in November when it was a significantly smaller network, and they calculated that at a minimum it costs a few hundred dollars, possibly as much as 1000 bucks a month just to handle the disk storage needs for a relay on a leased server. The more the network grows, the more those costs skyrocket.

What good does it do to have a network that theoretically can be federated, but practically costs so much to run a single node that nobody except a for-profit company can manage it?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with Blue sky, do they advertise as federated or how exactly do they claim to differ from a regular platform like original Twitter?

[–] MimicJar 9 points 15 hours ago

https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-architecture

And reading an article from TechCrunch,

"The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation."

"Is Bluesky decentralized? Yes. Bluesky’s team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol, which Bluesky was built atop."

"However, the launch of federation will make it work more similarly to Mastodon in that users can pick and choose which servers to join and move their accounts around at will."

So it definitely is pitching that is it decentralized and federated. Maybe the argument is that it "will be", but at the moment it is not and at the moment it does not look like it will be an actual possibility.

Now people leaving Twitter is great, don't get me wrong, but it's possibly just kicking the can down the road. In a few years we'll likely have articles complaining about missing "Old Bluesky" and how "new Bluesky" has the exact same problems that "Old Twitter" had.

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