If you're already on BlueSky, I'm not asking you to ditch it for Mastodon - I'm asking, "Why not both?"
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So, what stands between BlueSky being "the good Twitter" and "the bad Twitter" is a time-honoured Big Tech promise - that it won't be evil. It's a nice promise.
It wouldn't be a promise if it couldn't be broken:
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If in Act I a business has you at its mercy, hope like hell they promise to not be evil. Not being evil means they have to get a lot of people in on it – on post-its, DMs, in guest talks, in the canteen kombucha…
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Not being evil, so far as a business is concerned, is persuading everyone that they're nice.
Hope like hell the business doesn’t do evil – by Act III, no matter how long it takes to get there, someone will dig up all that nice and find that 𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘯'𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥.
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On Mastodon, by contrast, if your community's owner starts getting their evil on, click-click-click - and fuckity bye! If the Mastodon 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 does a heel turn? Click-click-click - myriad Fediverse projects await you and your connections: Misskey, Sharkey, Akkoma, etc..
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Vetinari is wrong: it's not that people don't know how to say 'no,' it's that people are not allowed to learn how to say, 'no.'
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The 𝘸𝘩𝘺, you see, is down to material conditions, or, to put it simply, "late stage capitalism." That, plus being constantly told at every turn that there's no alternative, and we should put up or shut up.
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Not what you'd call an intellectual response, but again - most folks don't have the time to sit down and figure out how to articulate 𝘸𝘩𝘺 they hate these platforms they feel they can't leave.
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I'm on Mastodon because the Fediverse is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 like Twitter. I participate in the Fediverse because I believe that none of what we take for granted about social media platforms are inevitable. I wish others would, too:
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I participate in the Fediverse because it looks at how every other platform is built for hockey stick growth, and says, "I would prefer not to." Contrary to popular belief, the Fediverse does not "compete."
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That is its biggest strength and weakness: it is, as @davidgerard put it, "run by the sort of people who have opinions on Linux distributions."
I don't know if you know this, but GNU/Linux has never exactly "competed" with Windows:
Jack Dorsey, Bluesky, decentralised social networks and the very common crowd
“I could easily get him to pay me $125,000 for a jug of something called Diarrhea Water in the understanding that it would ‘detoxify his beard.'”
Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain (davidgerard.co.uk)
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The Fediverse doesn't compete with traditional platforms, and yet, it still maintains a healthy band of returning users. People can and do organise themselves here:
FediDB, Fediverse Network Statistics
FediDB is a cutting-edge service providing detailed statistics and insights into the Fediverse network.
(fedidb.org)
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Because that's the Fediverse's other major strength: all of those niche Twitter sub-communities you found yourselves in can be turned into their own dark corners!
Ask yourself, "What part of my identity is most important to me?"
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Are you Scottish? Join mastodon.scot. Are you Scottish, but only want to interact with your fellow Glaswegians? Join glasgow.social. Games or art? Communities aplenty - pick one (like geekdom.social). Do you get horny on main? An NSFW community might be right for you.
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I should be very clear, however, that Mastodon's host to moderation issues all its own. I won't pretend that federation is a magic bullet.
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As @mekkaokereke and @thenexusofprivacy show, many communities are host to racism that isn't killed by simply blocking - be that individual users, or whole communities (
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This has been the case since 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 the one-man apartheid tribute act bought Twitter:
Mastodon Migration (@[email protected])
In a thread this morning on starter packs and the success of black people moving to #Bluesky @[email protected] points out that a lot of discourse here about Bluesky is warnings about "inevitable corpo takeover" and not "How do we get them to build for Mastodon/Activity Pub?" This inspired discussion about how to, in fact, make Mastodon better for black people, and links to some good resources: From @[email protected] and @[email protected]: https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/ Mekka thread: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113550102316715794 1/2
Mastodon (mastodon.online)
That, for now, is not so simple as click-click-click. Bang, and the racism is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 gone.
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So, yes, I am a little crestfallen that BlueSky's where the party's at for the time being; that """"the good Twitter"""" is 𝘢𝘭𝘭 folks demand. You deserve so much more. You've seen what happened to Twitter - I fear that, in four years' time, it will happen again.
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No matter what happens to BlueSky, you should claim your username on Mastodon, and join a community, even if you don't see yourself using that account much. On the "old, good" internet, that's all you 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 do*:
lori (@[email protected])
People keep learning the wrong lessons from all this social media stuff. "Clearly just move to fedi" "Bluesky is going to be totally different". The lesson you needed to learn, which was how we used to do things in the good old internet we all pine for, is diversify your internet presence. Be on a lot of websites. Be on tons of platforms. Use several messaging apps. I'm not going to tell you which ones, that's up to you, but have redundancy in your social networks online. Federated decentralized platforms are great, but you can still put all your eggs into one basket with them. Don't! Have fifteen different places you can reach out to the same fuckin friend. Spread yourself out. We used to visit tons of websites and post on dozens of forums AND run our own personal site. Continuing to use exactly one platform and cling to it for dear life doesn't help as much as you think. Edit: and just to make this clear, because this is already getting boosted by folks: this is NOT about how you need to join Bluesky. Bluesky vs Fedi is the fight of the week but this is big picture stuff. Don't mistake what I'm saying here. Replace Bluesky with anything. XMPP, IRC, Discord, Signal, Facebook, Twitter, Pillowfort, Reddit, it literally doesn't matter which thing. You pick whatever things you want to join or don't, but for the love of god quit picking exactly one thing to be the single pillar supporting your entire life online. Spread yourself out as much as you can.
hackers.town (hackers.town)
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One can choose not to join certain platforms, AND one can choose to diversify their presence online. Those aren't mutually exclusive. If you're already on BlueSky, I'm not asking you to ditch it for Mastodon - I'm asking, "Why not both?"
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@bigolifacks thanks for the tag! I certainly agree that people who have the time and energy for multiple social network accounts should diversify their presence ... many don't, and so it depends on (a) what they're looking for and (b) how much time and energy they want to put in to looking. A lot of people are looking for a Twitter alternative; Bluesky's easy to sign up for, and it's also the best Twitter alterantive out there for most people. Fedi by contrast is much better for most people at networked communities (Blacksky's currently the only example I know of in English-language Bluesky) but (a) that's not what most people are looking for and (b) it takes noticeably more work to find a good community that's a match.
.social's just as easy to sign up for as Bluesky, but it's not a good experience for most people as a Twitter alternative -- and it's also not a good experience for most people as a networked community. mastodon.scot and glasgow.social are on joinmastodon.org, so still fairly easy to find (at least when joinmastodon is working, which it isn't today ... but there are less than 50 regional servers there so that's not going to help most people. The lists of Interest-foused instances on joinmastodon are similarly sparse. And what if somebody's concerned about how well-moderated an instance is? A lot of the information people need is out there but it's very hard to find ... here's my work-in-porgress attempt at a reference, but how many people want to read a 4000-word document before signing up?
Resources for choosing the right fediverse instance (REVISED DRAFT)
A daunting choice -- but not irrevocable!
The Nexus Of Privacy (privacy.thenexus.today)
Obviously this are all problems that can be overcome, and I think we're on the verge of making progress with the problem of helping people find the right instances -- @kissane's been doing a lot of thinking about this and has an interesting project in progress. Until that happens though I think it's better to set people's expectations ... right now, if people don't have the time and energy to put into getting started on the fediverse, I'm not sure what's gained by just setting up a Mastodon account.
