THE SHORT PITCH Twitter is a cesspool and I’m only posting there now to tell people to find me elsewhere. That elsewhere? Bluesky, a new social media site that’s become the best place on the internet for me… and maybe you too? If you’re not already on social media, congratulations — you should probably stay … Continue reading Why I ditched Twitter for Bluesky – and hope you will, too! →
I know a much better place. It is called mastodon.
Just pointing out the author mentions they used mastodon for a time too, their argument is that bluesky interface, content and moderation are better for them.
That mindset is the problem. A slightly better UX at the cost of freedom is a bad deal.
UX matters.
If open source software genuinely wants to be an option for normal people, they need to fix their shit.
That’s fair! Although I fear big money will always come up with some way to make a “better” UX, either simply because they can afford more/better devs, and often by compromising privacy, accessibility, etc.
embrace extend extinguish has worked in the past and it can work again
It’s a little more than a slightly better UX. Dismissing the entire concept of the instance removes a fair amount of complexity and fragmentation from the equation. There are so many cheerful guides out there about how to select an instance and every single one of them loses 95% of normal people in the first paragraph.
Having a signup model that people understand helps. Concentrating everything in one schema creates a noticeable increase in density of relevant content. Having corporate money for real hosting and security counts. When you fediverse instance goes down to DDOS or implements crippling safeguards because they can’t keep up with the spam, you really feel how the whole thing is run on a shoestring.
I will give bluesky credit for their focus on moderation. Hopefully some of that design is cloned by the Mastodon folks sooner than later
Watch that focus disappear once the enshittification phase starts.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of the microblog format, but I’m pretty sure everyone here is going to agree that Mastodon is the superior Twitter replacement.
Nope. Not at all. I very much prefer BlueSky as far as Twitter replacement goes.
yep, people that loved walled gardens like twitter will absolutely love bluesky
I don’t think I get what you mean when you say “Walled Garden” in this context. Can you elaborate?
just another corporate managed behemoth. their interfaces are slick, but the federation lacking
(Edit, For example…) Facebook control all aspects: you can only do what they want. Mastodon can be hosted and modified by anyone, it’s freedom.
A closed platform, walled garden, (…) is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content. - wikipedia
What are you talking about? BlueSky has absolutely nothing to do with Facebook. It’s a different company using the open AT Protocol.
My mistake.
I’m going to say that to the absolute gross majority of people federation means absolutely nothing.
I’d go even as far as to say that the Venn diagram of what you can and cannot post between Mastodon and blue sky is almost the perfect circle
Nothing wrong with that.
Interesting. Ugh, I feel the need to go peek at it now, but I also expect to really not like it. Oh well, here goes.
Unfortunately not. For me the main problem is discoverability. There’s no recommendation algorithm except for boosts. I’m not suggesting Mastodon integrate some kind of machine learning or other advanced stuff, but number of likes from followed accounts and a threshold would be nice for a start. As it is, Mastodon is just bad for entertainment purposes. Maybe it works for other purposes, but for entertainment I’d rather have the algorithm-fuelled quote-tweet dunking on Twitter.
There’s the explore tab in the mastodon app that shows you trending hashtags, and recommends people to follow based off who you already follow. There’s trending accounts that just post about trending items too. Use them as your algorithm.
There’s definitely an opportunity for someone to run their own curation service for personalized feeds based on a user’s activity on other social networks.
I tend to just check All periodically for the first couple of months and follow tags and people that suit my own interests and build my own feed from zero. But that takes effort and time, and for folks who want an option further toward the convenience end of the privacy/convenience spectrum I suspect it would be a fairly popular option.