Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky
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Mastodon emerges as the clear winner. It’s free from investor influence, ad-free, and controlled by a community that values user autonomy over profit.
That's a gross assumption that people care about any of this. The tech-abled and tech-writers are in as much of a bubble as the Democrats were this past election.
The vast majority of people using social media do so for entertainment and passive news consumption and a ton of rage bait. Who owns or controls it is entirely irrelevant - ex., TikTok.
Ads? You think people in 2024 still care about ads? I think a lot of them enjoy it. Moreover, if you're a small or local business, you want a platform that allows you to promote your goods and services. This kind of opportunity is what made social media explode. If you were a community business, would you prefer to operate on a platform that was strictly chronological or one that allowed you to pay to get noticed? What if you were an "influencer"? While normal people may dislike this stuff, it's this stuff that generates revenue for the platform and, like it or not, increases engagement.
This lack of openness confines users to BlueSky alone, making it difficult to connect with friends on other platforms without creating a separate account.
How has this prevented Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube from succeeding?
You're trying to force a platform to do what you want it to do. You're not objectively looking at what the majority of social media users want. When I tell people about interconnected platforms, they have no clue what that means or why they would want that. They just want one platform.
You and I recognize the benefits of the Fediverse meaning one application to access many platforms. That may be a reality we observe one day but for now, nothing is fully developed. You're trying to convince people that robotaxies will replace vehicle ownership today when they're not done deploying them.
Mastodon’s structure, lacking an algorithm to push specific content, gives users freedom to create a feed that genuinely reflects their interests. For those who are politically inclined, Mastodon has communities and accounts covering all sides, but there’s no algorithm driving you toward any specific viewpoint.
If Bluesky has an algorithm, I haven't seen it. I get chronological posts from the accounts I follow with an occasional and subtle suggestion to follow other similar accounts. Many of the accounts I follow are news outlets, journalists, civic leaders, etc. Some of the accounts I followed on Twitter are finally joining Bluesky while less than a fraction of those are on Mastodon.
I've been using Mastodon more than Bluesky. I like the instance I'm a member of which is operated by people in my physical community. Today I saw that more and more members of my community have joined Bluesky, including my local paper. I can not express the joy I've felt this afternoon seeing a platform blossom like the Twitter of old.
Betamax was superior to VHS. DVD Audio was superior to SACD. You may think the flexibility of Windows or Android makes them superior to MacOS or iOS. Ultimately, it comes down to marketing and convenience.
How do you make Mastodon better? You have to get brands over there. You have to get journalists and news outlets over there. When CNN reports that someone said something on Twitter, that's marketing for that platform. When [the news] starts reporting that [celebrity] or [president] posted on Mastodon - then maybe you'll start getting some traction. But why would that person post something so important on a platform with so few users?
i know so many ppl that purchase products: “from an ad i saw on (whatever social media they use)” it blows my mind, seriously.
Yeah absolutely. I have never clicked through an ad on the internet. My click through rate is literally zero. On the incredibly rare instance that I see something I like from an ad, I do some research first then go to the relevant website.
That’s why they’re so pervasive, they work on the majority of people (that’s not us).
If Bluesky has an algorithm, I haven't seen it. I get chronological posts from the accounts I follow with an occasional and subtle suggestion to follow other similar accounts. Many of the accounts I follow are news outlets, journalists, civic leaders, etc. Some of the accounts I followed on Twitter are finally joining Bluesky while less than a fraction of those are on Mastodon.
Bluesky does it even better IMO. Their default feed is a chronological feed of all the people you follow and you can add additional feeds that have their own algorithms (You can even create your own either with simple logic through something like skyfeed.app or code it entirely from scratch). This makes it much easier to choose what you want to see compared to Mastodon.
The feeds are the strongest feature Bluesky has.
Yeah - it feels more organic to me. Bluesky feels like a more well thought out Twitter. Mastodon feels like something built from Google Wave scraps.
I'm not sure how much of Dorsey's DNA is left but it's hard to imagine someone who has had so much success wouldn't know what they're doing. The board could certainly screw it up, just as Twitter's did by selling, but it seems like they're growing slowly and doing things in a productive way. Slow and intentionally growth seems to be the growing trend in tech.
With that said, I'm aware of the funding concerns and I'm trying to pay attention. Where will their money come from is still a question. Will they use ads or subscriptions? I'd prefer the option for either and not both. Is it actually an issue that someone tied to blockchain is involved? I'm not sure but I'm open to a plausible argument.
Personally I would prefer a subscription instead of ads. I hate ads. I'd rather pay directly.
Wouldn't be too bad if they did the model of showing you a persistent banner ad with the option to pay $35 a year to get rid of it. I'd be down with that.
That would be ideal, true.
That's a gross assumption that people care about any of this.
For any form of federated community to be sustainable, its users have to care about that. Otherwise those communities will eventually be consumed by whichever instance gains the critical mass to close itself off and become another Twitter or Reddit.
To achieve the benefits of federation, users must be educated on principles of federation, not be obfuscated from them. The question is how the Fediverse can do that.
I fully agree. This is why it won't work. I dunno - maybe Gen Alpha or Gen Beta will care about this, assuming there's a pendulum swing?