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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Folks, I won't deny Mastodon's different. I won't deny you the frustration that there's some friction in setting up shop. But once you're in, this click-click-click business π³π¦π’πππΊ is that simple.
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Mastodon, like BlueSky, is essentially an interface to its underlying protocol (ActivityPub for Mastodon, ATProto for BlueSky). But in the latter's case, BlueSky's been promising fire exits since before it went public, and they still haven't materialised.
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You can move about πΈπͺπ΅π©πͺπ― BlueSky's ecosystem, but you still can't leave it entirely.
(And, for the avoidance of doubt: this isn't a post about whether ActivityPub is 'better' than ATProto or not. That topic is a social experiment I don't want to be a part of.)
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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 β on post-its, DMs, in guest talks, in the canteen kombuchaβ¦
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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 doesnβt do evil β by Act III, no matter how long it takes to get there, someone will dig up all that nice and find that π―πͺπ€π¦ π’πͺπ―'π΅ π¨π°π°π₯.
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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 π±π³π°π«π¦π€π΅ 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 πΈπ©πΊ, 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 πΈπ©πΊ they hate these platforms they feel they can't leave.
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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:
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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
βI could easily get him to pay me $125,000 for a jug of something called Diarrhea Water in the understanding that it would βdetoxify his beard.'β
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 π£π¦π§π°π³π¦ 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 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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