Is it just the momentum and word of mouth, or are there improved features as well?

  • ram@lemmy.caEnglish
    49·
    1 year ago

    Forgive my ramblings, but here’s the main differences I see, from a community perspective:

    Bluesky’s for people who loved twitter circa 2015
    Mastodon’s for people who loved the format but hated the way the platform made use of it. The community is FOSS-focused and anti-corporate.
    Bluesky folks are anti-corporate, but they still want their social media to be on a single platform and tend to dislike federation
    Mastodon folks tend to be in smaller circles and more tech enthused

    Features-wise, Mastodon kills the algorithm in favour of chronological timelines and lists, while Bluesky embraces algorithms, allowing people to even make their own algorithms for the platform. Bluesky’s AT Proto uses “DIDs” to identify users, which are associated directly with a domain[1]. This means that when federation does eventually happen, usernames will just be @my.domain.com instead of ActivityPub’s @actor@my.domain.com.

    Federation’s still not enabled so I have no clue how things will look and feel on that front, nor am I familiar enough with the protocol to make any claim about how versatile it is. ActivityPub is flexible enough to be a Twitter clone, a reddit clone, a blogging platform, a youtube clone, a twitch clone, a goodreads clone, or several other formats. AT Proto’s currently only proven to work for a Twitter clone.

    1. or subdomain ↩︎

    • Xepher@lemm.eeEnglish
      27·
      1 year ago

      I would argue that most Bluesky users don’t necessarily dislike federation, but rather have no idea what it is, or what the larger Fediverse is.

      • HipPriest@kbin.social
        9·
        1 year ago

        Someone I’m in a Discord group with wanted an invite to bluesky because it was more familiar to him than Mastodon.

        He pretty much wanted a like-for-like replacement for Twitter, though to his credit he had already tried Mastodon before dismissing it out of hand.

        It’s not that he disliked it exactly, but he wasn’t that interested by what he saw so didn’t stick with it - to each their own

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

      Bluesky folks are anti-corporate

      Bluesky is a for profit company with a crypto person as the CEO and Jack Dorsey on the board so good luck to them I guess

  • legion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    1 year ago

    You can just click Follow and start following someone. You don’t have to perform a copy-paste dance to bring the username back to your instance and do the following there.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      72·
      1 year ago

      In the Mastodon app you can just click “follow”. Since BS doesn’t have a web interface at all, it’s probably safe to assume that this is not a major reason a BS user would avoid Mastodon. Since they’re not on desktop anyway.

      EDIT: Disregard me BS apparently has a website now so maybe the copy-paste reason is why?

    • Wiz@midwest.socialEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Wasn’t that fixed - or at least ameliorated - in the newest upgrade of Masto?

    • NicoCharrua@lemmy.caEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      The process got easier in mastodon 4.2.0, now you just have to type in your instance and it takes you to it directly.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.spaceEnglish
    331·
    1 year ago

    A place where normies can feel at home, knowing that they won’t feel out of place not having a fursona or favourite Linux distribution and won’t be scolded for not using alt text or some inadvertent picoaggression. Also, the promise of clout.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      It really comes down to this. So many time’s I’ve discovered a cool FOSS project years after it’s existed simply because I hadn’t thought to search for it. Imagine if Linux had the advertising budget of Microsoft or Google. The “Year of the Linux Desktop” would have arrived in '99.

      This aspect is one thing that makes me optimistic about the fediverse. A communication platform without ads and where the spread of information is dependent on network effects and word of mouth, means that it’s much harder for a company to force themselves in front of everyone at once using dollars.

  • Ddhuud@lemmy.worldEnglish
    281·
    1 year ago

    Like many cases of “success” lately. A well connected and rich parent.

    • spiritedpause@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      67·
      1 year ago

      Are you referring to Jack Dorsey? He’s not the owner, he just gave them grant money in the beginning. It’s a non-profit so technically no individual “owns” it.

      • huginn@feddit.itEnglish
        20·
        1 year ago

        Mastodon is nonprofit. Blue sky is for profit.

        You’re right about the Dorsey part.

        • huginn@feddit.itEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          No, he’s wrong (obviously) it’s a for profit startup.

          It’s not currently making money but that’s different than nonprofit obviously.

          He’s right about the Jack part though.

      • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        oooh i stand corrected anywho that makes me more anxious to try it if they would just send me my gd invite that i requested like a year ago ;__;

  • BeefPiano@lemmy.worldEnglish
    242·
    1 year ago
    • No HOA complaining that you didn’t CW a picture with eye contact or food or alcohol or matter
    • More witty people from X
    • No drama about who is defederating with who
      • BeefPiano@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        My instance is great, although I wish we would switch to glitch-soc so we could have instance-only visibility on posts. I don’t really see much inter-instance drama and I generally don’t get harassed by people who think I need to post a certain way (maybe because I’ve been on Masto since 2018 and they have been on less than a year?)

        But those are still legitimate problems for a lot of people.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    253·
    1 year ago

    Bluesky is to Mastodon & ActivityPub, what Matrix is to XMPP/IRC… a completely over-engineered system, ignoring all well established international standards and run by a for-profit entity with venture capital funding.

    • Wiz@midwest.socialEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      And when the venture capital runs out, they will need to turn a profit. And the cycle of enshittification will continue.

    • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Matrix is literally the best decentralized real time chat we have. I don’t think you understand how the Matrix protocol at works, and I assume you are blindly repeating what you read online that XMPP must be better because it supposedly has less lines of code, though I’m sure you didn’t check that either.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        I hate to inform you that I know the insides of both pretty well and run both myself on my server and have evaluated the differences extensively 🤷‍♂️

        Oh and:

        • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          That’s awesome, and I still know that you don’t know what you’re talking about. But damn you made me a soyjack, that definitely tells me you’ve actually looked into the technical differences.

  • petunia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    Feeds/timelines are first-class citizens in the AT protocol and are decoupled from account hosting.

    On Mastodon, your timelines are computed by the same server that hosts your data. Consequently, signing up to a server to have an account on the fediverse is the same thing as joining a community. You follow the servers rules and share the same local timeline as everyone else on that server.

    On Bluesky, feeds are arbitrary, fungible and provided by any server, and it can be computed/curated/moderated however they like. So communities are “built” around feeds rather than around account hosting providers.

    The AT protocol also has “real” account portability (though I have not seen this demonstrated in practice https://atproto.com/guides/overview#account-portability). On Mastodon, account “portability” is a delicate dance that requires the cooperation of both the origin and destination server.

    Mastodon has something that Bluesky currently doesn’t: real federation. The Bluesky server that everyone signs up to doesn’t federate with anyone else, since the whole protocol is still a work-in-progress.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      51·
      1 year ago

      My money’s on BS never federating at all. Mastodon Instances are communities unto themselves. The way BS is set up means an “instance” is essentially just free additional hosting for BlueSky Inc. It’s decentralized similarly to how crypto is decentralized. Of course, what else would one expect from Jack.

  • timconspicuous@lemmy.mlEnglish
    211·
    1 year ago

    I like Mastodon and the Fediverse, I really do, but I just can’t deny that all the good posters that made Twitter enjoyable moved to Bluesky. My Mastodon feed is nothing but journalists, activists, developers, but very little fun shitposting.

    • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
      162·
      1 year ago

      See, that’s exactly why I like Mastodon and want nothing to do with Bluesky. Sounds like we’re both happy this way.

      • timconspicuous@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        That’s fine, I just want either of them to actually kill twitter for good though and it just doesn’t look like it’s gonna be Mastodon. With Threads potentially joining the Fediverse, I guess who knows.

      • P̴i̸x̶e̶l̶l̸e̴3̸D̵.̸e̵x̴e̶@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You’re not missing much. I had a BlueSky account for all 2 days before deleting it. Literally people begging for follows and clout chasing non stop. It’s just twitter again with all the garbage that comes with it. Mastodon is far far far FAR better.

    • iorale@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      Agreed 100%, it’s tiring and redundant. I know it’s important, but constantly reading the same issues over and over ends up in a big “ugh”, I need some good shitposting and porn/hentai to balance it out and Mastodon doesn’t have it for some reason

  • son_named_bort@lemmy.worldEnglish
    222·
    1 year ago

    Easier sign up. On BlueSky you can just sign up for an account and go. You don’t have to worry about picking an instance or anything like on Mastodon, which can be a bit off-putting for someone not familiar with federation.

    • legion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      192·
      1 year ago

      It’s ridiculous how much Mastodon advocates downplay this.

      I strongly prefer Mastodon over the alternatives, but the onboarding experience is BAD for the average user.

      • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
        111·
        1 year ago

        Onboarding to Mastodon is actually identical to BS/Threads now. They’ve made huge improvements. It’s a shame that most of the news media’s experience discovering Mastodon for the first time was in Oct '22 because it’s left a bit of a “techie” aura around the whole thing they’re still trying to shake off. If Mastodon was then where it is now, I don’t even think BS or Threads would try to compete.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      72·
      1 year ago

      FYI- Signing up and following people on the Mastodon app now is literally just as easy as it is on BS. All the Federation stuff is hidden unless you want to look for it. It’s very nice.

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been on the waiting list for months now, at least there are Mastodon instances with open registration available.

  • SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    111·
    1 year ago

    Tho I agree with all the comments I have to say the general vibe of bluesky is more playful and fun compared to mastadon, perhaps its just my bias. But just like lemmy generally feels like a nice place to be so does bluesky- the vibe feels inviting.

    • Hubi@feddit.deEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      I’ve got an account on Bluesky and I’m not sure if I agree. Like 90% of the posts I’ve seen on there are about Bluesky itself, there wasn’t really anything beyond that.

        • Zoolander@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, if you can get past all the posts about Reddit. Lemmy users mostly spend time bitching about Reddit, Apple, and Microsoft. It’s exhausting.

        • Hubi@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I generally agree, but I felt like Bluesky was on a whole different level.

          • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            I think the issue is that there’s a slow trickle of people who have just gotten in and go “Wow I just got in, has anyone got any tips?”

            Find one or more feeds you like and pin them. I use the newly created For You feed (which algorithmically puts stuff there it thinks you will like) and a couple of topical feeds that are specific to my interests. I think it’s great. Way more content that I care about than there ever was on twitter, and way way more engagement between folks.

            I’m a big proponent of Mastodon/Firefish in general, but while they win in volume, Bluesky is already pulling ahead for me in signal to noise ratio. (I think that’s very subjective to what things interest you, so YMMV.)