Technology

There's a lot you aren't taking into consideration, for example where those users are coming from.

• Threads is just Instagram, it's essentially the same account, so its users were baked in from the start. How many of those Threads users are just people who already used Instagram?
• BlueSky really isn't pulling users from Mastodon, it's pulling them from "X.com", which if nothing else represents a breaking up of old Twitter, which is good for decentralization in general. Any fracturing of social media is good for the fediverse.
• Both Threads and BlueSky are, to some degree, copies of Mastodon in terms of their relationship with federation. Threads uses ActivityPub itself (a win for the fediverse, depending on how you look at it), and BlueSky has their own AT federation protocol, which shows that the ideas behind the fediverse are already winning out. It's entirely possible that, at some point in the future, BlueSky and Mastodon learn to speak to each other using one of those protocols (or a new one), and then the fediverse wins by default.
• Fediverse apps like Misskey are apparently doing great in Japan, which is great for the existence of Japanese artists and the international side of things.

The fact that we're here, right now, discussing this on the fediverse, shows that ActivityPub has come a long way. Bluesky is nothing more than a shallow copy of Mastodon with far less federation and far fewer features.

Mastodon is a bit like Linux, due to its free and open nature. It can be in 3rd place for 20 years, but it'll keep chugging along, improving and growing over time until it snowballs into something truly formidable. Linux doesn't need to be the most popular operating system ecosystem to be great, nor does Mastodon need to be the most popular social media server. Unlike a corporate product it's not just going to die and disappear just because it isn't the most popular of the social media platforms.

I’ve been around the Internet since the BBS days and I can’t think of a single time where a de-centralized platform has out competed a centralized platform with “normal” users.

I'm right there with you. I'd love to see the dream of the decentralized media return, but it's long-dead. The "Normal" user doesn't give a fuck about the benefits and even the moderate barrier to entry over some centralized platform is enough to keep them away.

Tech-minded people seem to often forget that even the most simplistic choices like "Choose an instance" is a big deal for people. The platform that's the most familiar, and easiest to use is going to be the one that wins, and, right now, that looks like it's Bluesky.

So, you're asking what the thread count is?

Threads has 275 million.

I've heard of people having similar experiences on Mastodon as well. Seems like these smaller communities of early adopters tend to simply be more active and pleasant to interact with.

Yeah once the mainstream media started picking up Reddit stories, that’s when Reddit started going to shit.

Won't happen. Not necessarily the them not buying it part, but it staying popular at all. No site/program is too big for Microsoft to torpedo. Skype used to be the verb for voice calls before they got their hands on it.

They're social platforms, not entertainment, and it's to prevent echo chambers