Technology

I also like the absurd amount of permissions it requires. Meta couldn't let their guard down for a moment.

To clarify, I mean Meta couldn't be a little less data hungry in order to take marketshare from Twitter. They instantly needed access to absolutely everything at the start.

They want an algorithm.

As much as people mock it, or know it’s the source of why social media optimizes for outrage and other unhealthy behaviors, the algorithm is what they are missing on Mastodon.

As someone who always used third party Twitter apps, and never directly saw the algorithm in my timeline, mastodon feels like Twitter always did.

Damn we can’t get influencers? How will we live.

Mastodon is fantastic for niche things. For example myself and my colleagues use it for work stuff and I also use it with a few friends for gaming. that's it. Beyond that if you're going to Mastodon to reach a lot of people and chase clout or what have you you're gonna have a bad time. you'll just be shouting to the void in many cases. I also use it to connect with people using linux for help and suggestions.

But just read feeds on Bluesky and you'll see many people, probably the vast majority, just say they want something that "just works" and them trying to use Mastodon was too difficult. They didn't understand the instances and what have you. It's a generation that's been raised on downloading an app, tapping on it, and it works. Login with your google, facebook, or apple id...that's it.

People these days simply don't want to do too much to use something. they don't want to customize their online experience like we used to do years ago. If it doesn't instantly "work" right out of the box, they won't use it. And even regardless of how much they'll complain about using it and all it's bugs and foibles (X/Twitter, Windows 11, etc) they'll continue to use it cause, again, "it just works".

People want to socially interact on a platform with the intention of letting you socially interact. I understand Mastodon intends to do the same thing as.BlueSky so the question is why is BlueSky more.popular.

As someone who uses both. Mastodon's UI and signup process is not as straight toward at least that is my personal reason why.

The reasons mentioned in the article:

One reason is that it seemed tech-savvy users heavily dominated the platform, making it difficult for regular social media users to find their way and feel comfortable on the platform.

I think that's saying the content tends to be very niche and it's hard to find people with similar non-tech interests.

and

Users have described their timelines (and even the explore tab) as “stale” because there’s often not much interesting content to consume or engage with.

This lines up with my experience: it's hard to find people with similar interests. Even when you do, people aren't saying much of interest.

What you describe is basically the flipside of what happened to RSS folks, so I know what you mean. It sucks to stop getting updates the way you're used to, and more hassle making the transitions to whatever the different method is.

It's basically the reason Twitter/X still has anyone there, except they have higher switching costs compared to an open following format.

Honestly I take the compromise approach where I can, which is social media that still generates RSS, like Bluesky/Mastodon/etc. and use that to avoid making additional accounts.