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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I'm on Mastodon because the Fediverse is π―π°π΅ 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:
https://brologue.net/2023/11/15/i-want-my-twitter-friends-back/
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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:
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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:
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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 π£π¦π§π°π³π¦ the one-man apartheid tribute act bought Twitter:
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/113550873948734102
That, for now, is not so simple as click-click-click. Bang, and the racism is π―π°π΅ 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 π’ππ 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 π€π°πΆππ₯ do*:
https://hackers.town/@lori/113504897152887807
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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?
https://privacy.thenexus.today/resources-for-choosing-instances/
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.
