Asklemmy

Bluesky is more like Twitter, and Twitter users prefer Twitter to Mastodon

Most people don't know much, and don't care that they don't know much. Half of US adults can't read at a 6th grade level. They don't care about and probably do not understand complex topics.

That's it. They just want cat gifs, and that's the end of the thought.

I knew someone who was smart and successful and politically aware. She didn't care about any of this. She was tired from work and just wanted the familiar ease or twitter. Trying to figure out which server to sign up for and finding content was too much work.

A lot of people have executive dysfunction. Making a choice is hard.

I'd say its because less people probably know of mastodon then bluesky, since on Twitter everyone seems to be making a bluesky account but no one a mastodon account which would result in less people knowing about it.

On Mastodon, you must pick an instance, for some weird "federation" tech reason, whatever that means;

On email, you must pick a server, for some weird "server" reason, whatever that means;

It's literally no different than deciding "should I go with Gmail or ~~hotmail~~ ~~msn~~ ~~yahoo~~" fuck ok I guess there really is only one email provider now. Huh.

Because people I want to follow are on Bluesky?

(I mean, duh? Did you really need people to state that?!)

Two things I don't see anybody saying:

1. BlueSky is has venture capital funding, giving it greater marketing capabilities. Capitalism isn't won by having a better product, it's won by convincing people they should buy your product.
2. Dumb luck. Sometimes things just go viral, and you can try to figure it out in hindsight, but even that's just a guess. If people could accurately predict what was going to be popular, venture capitalists wouldn't have like a 90% miss rate.

I can't tell for BlueSky because I have not joined yet, but I did create a Mastodon account months ago and I'm not sure what to do with it or how to interact with others. I find it confusing.

On Twitter I was mostly following a bunch of like minded people, liking their stuff, and I could see what they liked too. But on Mastodon there's uuh, boosts and favorites?! I'm not sure of how it works or what I'm doing. I can't just "like" posts? I have to boost them?! I found the people I liked that were on Twitter, but on Mastodon I feel like there's nothing I can do aside from seeing posts and it's just not attractive.

Bluesky is more similar to Twitter and has what most people were used to, like an algorithm, quote tweets, etc I found it extremely boring, but tbh it's a more polished experience. One of my biggest annoyances with Mastodon is how threads and replies look weird. Sometimes I see the reply to a post before I see the post, especially in the "lists" view. Also not having an algorithm is both good and bad. It's great because it's organic, but it also means many posts get buried and it's dependent on the time. As someone not living in the US and Europe, it's tricky because sometimes you'll post something when most people are asleep and no one will see it. I ultimately love Mastodon more because of the openness and the federation. But most people will find Bluesky more approachable

I don't think federation has to be an obstacle for non-tech people. They don't really have to know about it, and it can be something they learn about later. I really don't know if federation stops people from trying it out. Don't people think, "I don't know what instance to join, so I'm not going to choose any?"

Personally, having no algorithm for your home feed is what I don't like about it. Everything is chronological. Some people I follow post many times a day, some post once per month, some post stuff I'm extremely interested in sporadically, followed by a sea of random posts. Hashtag search and follow is also less useful because there's no option for an algo.

The UI seems fine to me. I guess I'm not picky about UIs. The one nitpick I have is on mobile, tapping an image will just full-screen the image instead of opening the thread.

The federalized nature of Mastodon seems to be its biggest flaw.

Just to be devil's advocate, perhaps the federated nature of Mastodon could be its greatest strength as well. Isn't part of the point of all of this to avoid too much centralized control of social media?

Sure, Mastodon may never have as much mainstream appeal as BlueSky, but I use both. One of the reasons why I like Mastodon is precisely because I want to interact with more of a niche community on a federated platform. To interact with the masses on a platform that is more centralized, I use BlueSky.

the instances I join keep collapsing and getting deleted

People have to choose a server with mastodon, and you can't just pick any server because of the mess of defederations.

This confuses me because BlueSky does not have any federalization technologies built into it,

Bluesky is designed to be federated though. It's just not fully available yet. Also, Bluesky is open-source, licensed under the MIT license.

Instead of comparing these smaller platforms together to find out why one is better or not people should be focusing on why xitter and Facebook are still two of the most popular forms of social media.

Because they miss the algorithm

For me it's that more people I wanted to follow are now on blue sky but I have both. I have been liking the community on blue sky a little more.

I never used twitter though so what do I even know lol