I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse.

Massimiliano Musina

@maple @FediTips Hi Maple, yeah I get your point and I agree that most of the users don't care, and it is really sad.

I am also an "ordinary user" anyway, I am just tired of directly supporting huge corporation with my personal data. I have opened my eyes and I do believe that the rest of "ordinary users" (like us) will do the same in a point.

It will probably take time, but I really believe that the "fediverse approach" will be the future.

Fedi.Tips

@maple

I think we might be talking about different kinds of groups? A lot of different services on here have used the name "group".

Groups from services like Guppe are basically just "super hashtags". If you mention the group, the post is distributed to everyone that follows the group on any server. You can make a new group just by mentioning it.

If someone spams the group with irrelevant content, they can be reported for spamming (just like they can be with hashtag spamming).

maple

@skamu @FediTips I hope you are right, but it will take a lot longer if people think that you shouldn't even try the Fediverse because any posts you make will only be seen by a limited subset of users, even if you include hashtags they are following. People who are frequent posters often desire that what they write will be seen by the highest number of users (or at least users interested enough to follow whatever hashtags they include), so they may not have much interest in platforms that limit their exposure. And factors such as who "owns" the post content may not matter at all to them.

Fedi.Tips

@maple @skamu

I am on a single user server and have over 200k followers. My other accounts on this server have 70k, 8k, 5k and 3k followers. It is possible to build a mass following without being on a large server.

"they may not have much interest in platforms that limit their exposure."

...if exposure is all they care about, why would they leave Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc? (Genuine question.)

maple

@FediTips @skamu You're in kind of a unique position because you are very well known, so people follow you directly.

"...if exposure is all they care about, why would they leave Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc? (Genuine question.)"

Well, I can think of two reasons, one is that they don't want some big corporation (or the evil owner thereof) owning or controlling or censoring their posts, and the other is that they don't want to share a platform with Nazis/fascists/anti-science types. But if they don't fall into either of those categories, I can't think of any reason they would want to leave one of those platforms. And right now, for the most part those things would not apply to Bluesky users (yet) so the case for leaving to come to the Fediverse is even weaker for them.

Fedi.Tips

@maple

"You're in kind of a unique position because you are very well known, so people follow you directly."

I'm not though? No one knows me outside of these accounts.

"...one is that they don't want some big corporation (or the evil owner thereof) owning or controlling or censoring their posts, "

They already have a big corporation owning/controlling their posts. Bluesky is a for-profit corporation valued at nearly a billion dollars now.

Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋

@xChaos @FediTips @janxdevil Tbh, power users also like having certain basics like working search or seeing complete threads (power user here)

Fedi.Tips

@mackuba @xChaos @janxdevil

You can see complete threads and complete search results on Mastodon if you have just one instance without any federation.

That's what BlueSky currently does, it's all on one instance.

But if you run on just one instance, it makes it incredibly easy for Musk etc to buy you out.

Dr. ir. Brian R. Pauw

@FediTips sure, but what I’m saying is that in order to convince the masses to join mastodon over bsky, we need to make it not just theoretically better but also easy to use and connect.
I’ve read the comments, spoken to colleagues who joined this then that, and the consensus is that “mastodon is hard, difficult UI” compared to bsky.
For context, my friends are scientists with very little time.

Fedi.Tips

@doc

If they have no time or will to consider sustainability, then they will end up having these same Musk-type problems happen to them again and again. I'm not saying this with any sort of judgement against them, it is just the consequence of their choices.

It's much easier to use a single-instance network, but that makes it easy to be taken over.

It's much easier to use a network that has massive amounts of funding from VCs, but that makes it certain to enshittify and exploit its users.