Still waiting for Bluesky to start forcing ads in your feed… at some point it is inevitable.
We’re seeing a substantial increase on the Mastodon instance I help moderate too, but there’s no aggregate marketing department at Mastodon so we don’t get any headlines.
I’m using both platforms through Openvibe when I’m on my phone.
Thanks for letting me know about this. Just installed it. Now if they supported multiple mastodon accounts, I’d really be cooking.
ditto
Thanks for reminding me of this app. Really wish 'open’vibe would be on Foss stores like fdroid though.
Has 3 trackers too. Google Analytics, firebase, and sentry.
Edit: Downloaded it and it is pretty cool but I wish it had more support for bluesky feeds. It supports the ones I already have but I can’t search for more.
Seems like there should be. I bet people would donate to a marketing fund
You have now taken your first steps to the dark side and becoming a corpo overlord. It is a subtle but slippery slope.
Going from one shitty capitalist business to another shitty capitalist business.
I think this is the crowd that tried Mastodon and then abandoned it when they realized it required a modicum of effort.
This man ran into the weirdos on Mastodon. I’m over there hanging out with people posting about ass-pennies and no one cries “content warning!” You’re the one who decides who you follow and who follows you. If your hanging out with folks too sensitive for your liking, that’s on you.
What being too dependent on the algorithm does to a mf
I don’t even know what Mastodon looks like and I don’t know who the guy is, but I’m just assuming he’s lying because it sounds like the usual “crazy pronoun libs” dog whistle.
wtf kind of lame criticism of mastodon is this…there are constantly cute pictures of pets being posted on mastodon… and like anywhere else with humans these posts are very popular on mastodon.
I would say these posts are MORE popular on mastodon because without an algorithm cute animal photos are going to stick out as popular even more.
This is all nonsense anyways, Bluesky is considered “cooler” by techy types with a childlike awareness of history, politics and power because the tech is cooler when considered in the abstract.
Coincidently none of these technical details have the capacity to make bluesky a truly open and free place otherwise those investors would sue bluesky for purposefully and willfully not pursuing profit for shareholders. This won’t stop certain types from pointing at pictures in the sand and reciting idle words thrown to the wind by the people in charge for now.
Bluesky exists as a legal instrument of profit, all else about bluesky is malleable and changeable and will eventually be bulldozed or undermined in the pursuit of profit for shareholders.
edit 2 this is a real human, and I was grumpy and while it was satisfying to point fingers it just makes me into the asshole so I removed that, but my broader point still stands
Being complicated will keep the Facebook moms, and my casually racist uncle away.
Unfortunately a lot of our peers are also tech illiterate :(
I doubt this sort of attitude helps, too. Mastodon developers know at least some of its failings. Migrating to Bluesky is not effortless.
That’s probably fair. There’s an abundance of smug assholery in the world right now. Apologies.
Whatever will they do without algorithms recommending their low effort posts to other users?
This smug attitude is why the fediverse will stay niche. People get jobs from twitter and Bluesky showing their posts to people. Its why im on the platforms as an artist. But sure lets talk shit at everyone who doesnt want to post to the void on mastodon.
Also your feed is chronological by default on bluesky and you can stay chronological and enable some posts from your custom feeds to show in your chronological feed. Best of both worlds
There’s a lot of artists selling stuff on Mastodon but I don’t think you can have a job as a mastodon influencer
People get what they deserve.
Honestly I can’t figure out how to find people I’m interested in… or maybe there isn’t much academic/buddhism stuff on there? :/
You just search hashtags or set up a column so you have a feed giving you everything under a given hashtag, though it may be those communities are so niche there isn’t much on the Mastodon instance you chose. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a specific instance for Buddhism itself, though, given that it’s such a massive world religion.
Thanks for sharing! :)
bluesky has a couple disability friendly features both mastodon and X don’t have.
I just learned that before their fundraising round Bluesky called themselves a “public benefit LLC” and I thought thats nice of them to benefit the public 😅 , then I found out about US corporate law and what it actually means…
It means that they are getting funds from the public, I’m guessing…
Sounds like a classic “To Serve Man” type of situation to me… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)
I think I will avoid spoilers…
Everything is better than Twitter I guess.
Is this running on a modified version of Mastodon?
BlueSky is its own thing with its own federated protocol called ATproto. They have an explanation in their docs on how it works, different features. There’s a bridge between the two as well, a bit janky but effective.
It’s a federated protocol, but the network itself isn’t meaningfully federated, and is basically just Bluesky (the company) infrastructure. Hopefully that changes, because until then, it’s still a centralised social media platform, despite the underlying technology
They have no reason to change that. They will long term want the exact same thing that twitter has, access to all user data and control of the platform.
Rumors are indicating that they want to offer some subscriptions to users(domain registration and hosting of various bluesky components).
The company is currently TINY, under 50 employees. So as long as the infra costs stay low, it won’t take much. If enough users get vanity domains, and they get some govt/enterprise accounts for hosting bsky.cnn.com and such.
So the idea is that they want to get to some ethical monetization strategy before releasing the software to aggregate content is released, and federation is enabled.
I would happily bet money that federation keeps getting kicked down the road. “Oh, we have to do X first. Also Y just came up, and you know it was a waning moon last night so…” They have no reason to enable it as long as things go their way.
So you can see mastodon posts on bluesky and bluesky posts on mastodon?
No, not unless the person whose posts you want to see opted into bridging their account.
If both parties bridge their accounts they can follow eachother, or if one person bridges their account others can follow them.
I don’t think you can see boosts of stuff not on your platform though, and I don’t know how interacting with a bridged account works if both of you are bridged. If only the person you’re following is bridged they definitely won’t see it, but I don’t know if that changes if you’re both bridged
How do you opt-in to that?
You opt in by following the bridgy fed account for your platform, so for Mastodon that’d be: https://bsky.brid.gy/bsky.brid.gy
There’s one on each platform, and when you follow it it’ll create you a bluesky/mastodon counterpart and send you the link to that bridged account
And I still to this day don’t get the appeal of the twitter model
Yes, I much prefer following topics over people. Every time I glance at microblogging, there is just so much noise. At least lemmy-style forums have upvotes to surface quality content rather than the jumbled mess that microblogs are. No matter how much I like someone (even IRL friends/family), I won’t be interested in their every passing thought, it’s just exhausting.
Me neither, but I guess once you start following enough people, or the platform has a large enough amount of people posting there, it becomes “interesting” by quantity, if not quality.
I think I tried twitter for a week back in 2018, didn’t “get it”, deleted the account. Tried Mastodon last year, enjoyed the much larger character limit, but didn’t feel like staying.
“The number of characters is limited based on old SMS standard! Lulz!”
Yeah, good way to have meaningful conversations where you can bring convincing arguments! /S
The amount of internet spaces with generous character limits and shit discussions makes me think that’s far from the biggest issue.
It becomes a pretty major issue when it’s one of the main sources of information for people though…
That’s a different thing, and I don’t think bigger character limits would help with a culture of not reading past headlines, not verifying and sharing sources, lacking moderation, and so on. Bigger issues.
It’s good for when you want to keep up with what people or organizations you’re interested in are up to. Artists, authors, game developers, etc.
It sucks for any kind of in-depth content or conversation, including politics.
But that’s just Facebook, why would I have twitter if that is my only motivation?
I feel like Facebook is much worse for that, but I haven’t touched Facebook in many years so I couldn’t tell you why I feel that way.
deleted by creator
No, and it doesnt federate even though they promised that a long time ago. Unless they do, they will inevitably also go to shit, there is no way around the enshittification pipeline. Just stick to mastodon and invest in a long term future.
For a slightly more detailed explanation: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
Maybe offtopic, but does anyone has a good guide on how to join Mastodon? I’m still trying to find a good instance.
The best guide isn’t written down: don’t be afraid to try a few instances until you find one you like!
Once you’re on Mastodon and following people, you’ll start to notice the servers and gravitate towards the ones you like.
I would advise against mastodon.social since it is the biggest and also has some problems with moderation. But some people like it, so maybe it is good enough also.
To choose a server, check out https://fedi.tips/which-server-should-i-join-how-do-i-find-out-more-about-a-server/
The fedi.tips account also posts a lot of helpful tips and themed lists of accounts to follow/discover so I recommend following them too!
Appreciate the info!
No elon involved so it has an enormous advantage over Twitter
Thats an advantage so thin it is almost invisible. Its a centralized platform, it could be bought by Elon or shutdown for whatever reason at any second. Being this shortsighted about the future of global communications systems is not a great idea when Trump is about to take office.
That’s the same advantage all the other options have, too.
So you are of the opinion that the bluesky devs are currently lying about working to get it federated?
I wasn’t thinking about that at all, but they probably aren’t trying very hard, if I had to guess. What’s their current monetization model?
Not sure. You can run your own instance right now so they have enabled that but you can’t yet federate with the main instance. I believe you can store your own data in your own instance though but I’m not sure.
I honestly don’t understand why people waited so I don’t use mastodon but I did cancel my Twitter account literally the first week he bought it. It wasn’t hard to see this coming and I just don’t get the delay.
I still don’t understand why people even use Twitter or mastodon or blue sky. It all just looks like a Facebook feed to me.
I joined bluesky a year ago to check it out. There wasn’t much happening on it at the time, so I got bored of it real quick. It was like the original version of Twitter. The day after the election, I got on X to see what kind of shit show was going on there, but my account was permanently suspended. I was just on there the day before the election with no problem. I rarely posted anything on it, but I have made some left leaning posts in the past. Like, 2 years in the past. Kinda weird to suspend my account right after the election. Whatever, I was never a big X user. So, I opened bluesky to see if it improved at all, and holy shit, it’s bopping. It’s still like old Twitter. It’s open source, no ads at all, and they make it really convenient to find accounts to follow with “starter packs”. I gotta say, I love it. There are almost no fake accounts or bots. They get weeded out pretty quick. That’s become my new Twitter, and Lemmy is my Reddit.
Are… are you me?
Because that is my exact experience.
Really? You got booted off of X during the election too?
I had an old Twitter account I barely used but I sould still hop on here and there to troll some chuds. After the election that account was booted, yeah.
That’s crazy. Wtf. I thought it was just coincidental at first. I guess he cleaned house of all the non-believers.
So you follow people you don’t know, instead of people you do know? I don’t really understand what your story has to do with my comment, I’m sorry.
You said you didn’t understand why people use Twitter, mastodon, or bluesky. I explained why I, and a bunch of others, use bluesky and why Twitter sucks. Is that ok?
That’s fine. It skips the entire question of why use any of them in the first place though.
🤦♀️omg
“omg” yeah. You said you use it because it’s like old Twitter. That means nothing when I was asking why would you use Twitter.
Probably to avoid “Facebook” people (angry middle aged Republicans and easy to swindle old folks).
FWIW there’s a way to bridge Bluesky accounts to Mastodon
Bluesky is not as decentralized as you think… Just saying.
Bluesky is not decentralized at all.
That is actually an advantage. Centralized platforms are able to achieve larger audiences, increasing the chance that I will be able to find content I actually care about.
Only as long as the centralized authority stays aligned with you. Then you have the same problem.
Pretty much how Bluesky took off at all. It’s just the polarization of the platform style reflecting the polarization of society: Twitter/X went right-wing so the (center-)left made their own platform. It’s the same thing the right did when Twitter was politically censoring right-wing content before Musk bought it and Trump made Truth Social, the only difference being that Bluesky got the Big Tech and mainstream media blessing. Musk said he would stop that sort of censorship but just reversed it to censor left-wing content. Nobody actually wants a truly free platform, they just want their echo chamber.
Centralized platforms get top-down control. You’re trading your freedom for convenience.
Stop pining for the algorithms. They’re making you stupider by guaranteeing that you only see the content you want to see, and never the content you need to see.
That’s giving the algorithms too much credit. They don’t encode user desires they encode user engagement bait. Like everything under our capitalist system the motivation is profit: in this case ad revenue. Sometimes positive things or agreeable things drive engagement, sometimes negative or divisive things. As long as users spend time scrolling on the platform they’ll both be given equal weight.
As with anything profit motive driven it’s just about what makes more money not what makes more sense or what makes better outcomes. The core assumption of capitalism (at least how it’s sold) is that profit causing activity correlates with improvements to human well-being. How anyone still believes that, I’m not sure.
On Bluesky you can choose which algorithm/s you want to see though and even create your own.
Something something bittorrent.
what?
An example of a non centralized network that has no issues with discoverability.
It just has to be better than the Nazi bar.
That’s a very low bar.
I’ll show myfself out.
Is bluesky not instanced? Cant you just run Bluesky PDS?
An even better alternative is to replace it with nothing. The Twitter-like messaging paradigm is only good for trivia and rumor-mongering.
Some use/used it as an RSS feed for researchers sharing papers.
Know what else is great for that? RSS feeds.
Yeah but no. It’s not an RSS feed per se. It’s researchers sharing what they publish and what other publish with ints or resumes sometimes. Then people would comment and researchers reply.
Man what evet happened to those
Never went away, they’re still used by independent websites. A potential hurdle was that Firefox dropped native support at one point
…and a lot that are not that independent. I never stopped using RSS. It’s only because it’s not so easily monetized that it’s not more widely known, I bet.
I used Twitter for emergency updates, saved me multiple times.
…or following people and interests you want to follow and keeping up with their updates.
ffs stop gatekeeping social media
The facebook/mastadon format is much better for individuals, no? And Reddit/Lemmy for niches, as long as they’re supplemented by a wiki or something.
And Tumblr. The way content gets spread organically, rather than with an algorithm, is actually super nice.
IMO Twitter’s original premise, of letting novel, original, but very short thoughts fly into the ether has been so thoroughly corrupted that it can’t really come back. It’s entertaining and engaging, but an awful format for actually exchanging important information, like discord.
If i ever wan tto know what Natalie Portman ate for breakfast, i’ll walk into the ocean
Everyone knows it was hot grits, and she poured them down your pants.
Just /. things.
Soon Twitter will complete its transition to Nazi Bar of Social Media.
If there’s openly Nazis in your bar and they aren’t being kicked out, you’re in a Nazi bar. They completed that transition a while ago.
What aren’t they joining Mastodon and Lemmy? Or even Threads?
Mastodon or Lemmy, because you would have to choose an instance and a client. Threads, because why would you?
Choice is a good thing, though.
Choice is an irritating speed bump to people who don’t care to choose, which unfortunately is most of them.
It doesn’t need to be, as long as there is also a proper default for those who don’t care. Lemmy and Mastodon both unfortunately lacked this during the periods where they both had the most opportunity to grow.
Nowadays Mastodon does it pretty well. Users don’t need to know anything, they just download Mastodon from the app store and register on the instance it chooses by default.
What’s good for freedom is bad for ease of use.
agree, but for some reason many people don’t seem to think that way
Bluesky is a lot easier to use vs fediverse stuff, discovering stuff is also easier in my experience vs mastodon.
the problem is its easier to use because there is virtually no federation. Ive yet to see a user thats not from the flagship bsky.social instance
Maybe you’re already aware, but bluesky doesn’t operate with instances like in ActivityPub land.
I’ve seen many people I believe are using their own PDS, but yes, discoverability is likely better because a relay is meant to aggregate and share all data it can (look up “bluesky firehose”).
P.S. Mastodon’s devs are part of a new initiative to improve this area of the Fediverse. Because it’s so recent, we’ll have to wait to see how it goes.
I just opened BlueSky to see how many people I followed using their own PDS instance and the fourth post in my feed was from someone using one, and the 7th was from Washington Post who also uses their own.
I’ll use Bluesky before I use Threads. I don’t want to get sucked further into the Zuckerborg.
For me there weren’t enough people on Mastodon in my hobby to make it worthwhile.
I’ve been stupidly trying to convince them to use Mastodon on the same thread on reddit yesterday.
Some prefer the interface, but I guess the real issue is what stopping them from selling it to another Musk like they did with Twitter.
I was on Mastodon, but host or whatever you call it, didn’t like what I said and got banned.
Feel like bluesky wouldn’t have that kind of power and control by one person and be more open and popular.
I think it’s the opposite. On Mastadon you can make a new account on a better server ie mods more aligned with you. On bluesky if you make a new account and say a similar bannable thing again you’ll be banned again.
But people are sensitive, rather not jump server to server because that 😅 something on equal terms like bluesky seems good.
Bluesky is popping off lately it feels even more lively and the block tools are great.
Sigh, here we go again. I jumped on board because it’s where my friends are. Was pleasantly surprised that most of my old twitter follows are already there. Still, given the history I’m being careful and ready for the next enshittification exodus.
I wish folks would just embrace self hosting and decentralization but we obviously love to make the same mistakes again, and again, and again…
Decentralization is a bit like showing people “Here’s how to make friends. I won’t actually introduce you to anyone, though.” I kind of want to at least get a starting point off a general topic.
History repeats itself. Stay on Mastodon
right now I consider my fediverse and self hosted stuff as my ‘real’ profile. bluesky falls into the same category as linkedin, a necessary evil for my ‘professional’ profile.
So no, I won’t be leaving mastodon (or lemmy).
Ok I get it
I feel you. I really hope things turn out this time around.
Impressive, since “network effects” are what keeps people on a platform. Why move off Xitter or FB when everyone’s on there, and not on the new place? Keep moving a significant fraction of a million people every week, and pretty soon, it’ll be where everyone is.
My partner, who is very non-technical, signed up for a BlueSky as well this week: “all the teacher blogs have declared that they are moving over”. Looks like everyone has had enough.
I made an account yesterday to see how it is, however, I never used Twitter and so I don’t really understand how BlueSky works (since it suppose to be the same as Twitter?).
I followed 8 people and a couple of “#” but I barely see a thing of the people, I follow.
You can also search for “starter packs” of helpful people to follow in whatever you are interested in, e.g., history, cooking, overthrowing the government, etc.
On Web and official app(android) there are two pages Discover and Following, by default you will be on “Discover” page. To see post from people you followed, you need to switch to the following page.
Same boat my friend. Never ever had a xitter account but I made a Bluesky account last week to check things out. My husband deleted his Twitter account quite a while back and has been sorely missing seeing people he followed. I tried getting him here but he really doesn’t understand the whole set up. So I’m trying to convince him to join Bluesky. I have no idea what I’m doing over there but the folks there are much like we were here in the beginning in that everyone is helping each other learn. I do think that the platform will serve as a good bridge to get people learning about Federated platforms. We all have to start somewhere.
I’ve seen the effect. It’s just like after Brazil cut Twitter off. My very niche account has been gaining new followers by the hour.
I have no idea how people interested in Heathcliff are being found by new people. Much less people interested in Heathcliff without Heathcliff.
I have never seen Heathcliff, I have no idea what they or it looks like. But I have seen your work.
That’s an opportunity to make a community that adds their own concept of Heathcliff.
Maybe the real Heathcliff was the friends we made along the way
People doing anything to not use mastodon…
People doesn’t understand mastodon fragmentation/federation. They can only cope with simple concepts like “the whole thing is HERE —> X”
I am always a little surprised that everyone is surprised as if people are intentionally avoiding Mastodon.
I like Mastodon but it is empty by comparison to BlueSky people want a social media app where there are people to talk to on quantities. BlueSky is also user friendly by comparison, IMO. Easier to setup.
“Well Mastodon would be busier if people would stop going anywhere else.”
No one is avoiding Mastodon I think it is odd it has never occurred to anyone that BlueSky is talked about way more. I had never heard Mastodon before Lemmy but I saw talks of BlueSky everywhere.
At least it can be bridged, and people can partially self-host. If you take a look at Mastodon and Bluesky, you’ll quickly realize the gap between Twitter-like feel between Bluesky and Mastodon, maybe a different interface that puts it more close to Twitter and mobile apps with it would help… a lot of Twitter users used it on mobile app.
