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

Axel Rauschmayer

True! But (and I’m saying that as someone who thinks the Fediverse is the better choice):

It *sounds* like the protocol was designed to support true federation (vs. “big world” design based on Relays). What would that look like?

If that works well then, in principle, AT *could* become a reasonable and open alternative to ActivityPub.

If not (which is my current impression but I may be wrong) then there is no way of that ever happening.

caos

@FediTips @effariwhy Do you have a link to the current status as a source?
I only know this article (in german) from November: "Bluesky: How is a ‘decentralised ecosystem’ financed? Bluesky was launched as a non-profit organisation, and controversial names emerged in the latest round of financing"
https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000245588/bluesky-wie-finanziert-sich-ein-dezentrales-oekosystem

James Endicott

@[email protected]

I still think Christine Lemmer-Webber's blog post on it is a worthwhile read for people a little more technical.

https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

Amber (deilannist)

@[email protected] @[email protected] I also think it’s important to specify something.

The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.

This is only partially true. In bluesky the way it works is that you have to be connected to the relay. Posts must be "published" to the relay and while you can get a slice of the relay with an appview it still has to connect to the relay. This is something that is expensive to run and manage. Fedi works a bit differently because not every instance is talking to each other. If I follow someone on mastodon.social I am going to get their posts, not the entirety of mastodon.social’s traffic.

In fedi it’s impossible to have the same centralized relay because traffic exists between instances. We have relays but they do not operate the same as the bluesky relay. It is entirely optional to join a relay. Even if you do join a relay you are only going to see posts from other instances on the relay (ignoring the connections your instance establishes outside of the relay). There’s no real way for your instance to receive the entire network’s traffic which makes instances a lot cheaper to run and maintain.

Mastodon Migration

@janxdevil @FediTips

For more on who actually owns Bluesky:

Mastodon Migration (@[email protected])

So, to summarize what we've learned on the second day of trying to figure out: Who actually owns #Bluesky? The company represents that Jay Graber and the employees own Bluesky. This is misleading. In actuality, Bluesky has a host of tech VC shareholders (https://accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-ipo/) and is about to get more in a stunning funding round led by Bain Capital valuing the company at $700M (https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuation-new-funding-round-2025-1). So who are the current owners of Bluesky? Read on... https://accessipos.com/bluesky-stock-ipo/

Mastodon (mastodon.online)

Hrefna (DHC)

@puppygirlhornypost2

Not strictly true.

ATProto allows relays to be optional—appviews could subscribe directly to PDSs.

But it reduces connections, which allows a relay in ATProto to run a fraction of the cost _per user_, even where the aggregate cost is higher (I think one estimate from a while back is that it is on the order of millions or tens of millions of BlueSky users for about the cost of Hachyderm).

AP is also, as implemented rather than as designed necessarily, _hellishly_ expensive per user compared to pretty much every major systems protocol.

@o76923 @FediTips

Amber (deilannist)

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] fair

John E. Bartley, III (D) K7AAY

@FediTips Well, the tech aspect is interesting, but let's also discuss the UI experience. The BlueSky interface is much more rewarding to the user as we get to see much more content.

Chao-c'

@FediTips @janxdevil I am getting your point and of course, I promote Fediverse as much as I can.

But there are definitely reasons why users prefer BlueSky massively. I am not sure about their MAU, because they are centralized service, there is no way to verify independently, but they may be easily 10 times our MAU.

I think the need to choose the instance is not the main problem of Mastodon and Fediverse. It is quite easy to explain to newbies. The problem is quite simple and straighforward: it is UX focused on power users.

There are too many new concepts to learn. There is no reason, why end users should have to even know about federation: it is the implementation, that matters. Backfilling history of toots and timeline of other instances instead of "opening original page". Starter packs (ie. easy sharing of user-generated lists - no CSV imports). Propper scanning for all replies (somehow). Better search feature. Better explore feature...

Also, even if Mastodon may be the best ActivityPub client so far, it is definitely not for everyone. It is quite complex chunk of code. The frontend is written in JavaScript, which is of course very standard and it is my fault I am not more familliar with it. But Ruby is pretty oldschool server side language and not among the most popular. This makes the backend quite unreadable... although probably still better, than node.js

Anyway, it is not easy for me to participate in development of neither frontend nor backend of Mastodon.

Writing completely different Fediverse application would be probably hard and I definitely don't feel one should attempt it as one man show. The team would need to start with such ActivityPub implementation, which would fix the issues like replies, and then maybe work with W3C to standardize account list sharing, so other Fedi implementations can join.

Good cellphone app would be a must. It would have to come with good instance selector. Etc.

Maikel 🇪🇺

@FediTips I’m saving this as my shorthand explanation. Thank you

Pierre Chrzanowski

@FediTips can you clarify for Bluesky? Are you talking about the standard or current ownership model?

Thomas Schmall

@FediTips I will stick to Mastodon, but even as technical minded user, it's way more frustrating to use. I can't even see half the content that is on other Mastodon instances, let alone comfortably interact with other protocols. It's confusing and badly communicated by the UI. Things need multiple times the clicks than on bsky.

I understand the limitations, and things are getting better. But realistically there is no way an average internet user can comfortably switch to Mastodon at this point.

Complexity of systems

@FediTips @mastodonmigration apparently several people have run their own relays for personal use but it's not for the faint of heart apparently you need several terabytes of preferably solid state storage and a very fast network connection and while the code for the relay server is public it isn't terribly well documented

Take a look at these links if you'd like to learn more
https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q

https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/entries/Notes%20on%20Running%20a%20Full-Network%20atproto%20Relay%20(July%202024)

Christiaan Moleman

@FediTips Failing to mention that for the average (non-tech-savvy) user Bluesky is *significantly* more user-friendly than Mastodon and the Fediverse makes this not a very honest comparison.

Mastodon has real advantages and should in an ideal world be the main social network, but it is unable to reach that critical mass because Fedi-enthusiasts refuse to look critically at what could be improved (a lot).

Usability is simply not where it needs to be to reach a wider audience.

McNeely

@FediTips I find this picture to be misleading.

It seems to imply that users are the green dots for BlueSky and they communicate with servers (red dots) which are (so far) run by corporations. No complaints, that's all pretty accurate.

But when you use the same green dots for the Fediverse on the bottom, it seems to imply that individuals are directly connecting to each other which is NOT accurate. Servers are still intermediaries on the Fediverse. I don't believe this is a minor distinction.

Mastodon Migration

@addressforbots @FediTips

These examples really just reinforce the technical infeasibility of the entire FOF scheme.

Ghab

@FediTips Thank you for the drawing chart. Make things more understandable. 🫶

Fedi.Tips

@rauschma

It sounds more like a hypothetical thing in a document rather than a real world thing actually being implemented.

BlueSky are a for-profit corporation dependent on VC money, and they've given their staff shares. That gives all of them a huge financial incentive to create a network that can be bought out by billionaires etc.

It's difficult to see why they would do anything to endanger their ability to sell themselves to wealthy investors.

Fedi.Tips

@pzwsk

The standard. Bluesky servers can't talk to each other, they have to go through relays which are substantially more expensive to run.

Fedi.Tips

@Praxila

Glad it works!