Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms
-
Proof that people rarely know much about anything outside of their field. They'll just be playing this song and dance again when the Bluesky owner cashes in.
There is at least some (admittedly subpar) federation possible. So if the need is great enough, someone may take up the challenge.
-
I've seen a few larger creators say the reply management is bad at scale, too. The thing I mostly like is that here I am, reading Lemmy from Mastodon.
Yeah I'd prefer Mastodon to implement all these features and win, but I understand why it's not winning ATM.
-
Yeah I'd prefer Mastodon to implement all these features and win, but I understand why it's not winning ATM.
Same. Plus I came back here because Bluesky got too noisy so I'm kind of happy if it stays small!
-
Same. Plus I came back here because Bluesky got too noisy so I'm kind of happy if it stays small!
Lemmy is still my favorite, I was never a huge fan of the Twitter model, but I enjoy taking part in the destruction of X.
-
Why switch to BlueSky if you have Mastodon...
Guess why? /s For real, people, some of you live in a bubble...
-
I'm on both and Mastodon is missing (at least in any easy to use way) most of the features that make Bluesky such a good destination:
- instant add subscribe lists
- subscribable block lists
- custom feeds/subscribable algorithms
- keyword/topic blocks
- nuclear block where you never see the blocked person again
- optional discover feed
- DM preferences
All these things (and more I'm sure I'm forgetting), make Bluesky very quick to get started with and very powerful for honing your feeds to be exactly how you want and free of harassment and trolling.
I am still trying with Mastodon, but it's really slow going and I can fully understand why people wouldn't bother. After a year I am way behind where I was in a week with Bluesky.
Thanks for the list! As someone who has never used any Twitter-like site before (I guess microblog is the right term...?), and recently made a profile on Bluesky only to support it (I have used it briefly ~3 times since joining): what are the pros of Mastodon that Bluesky doesn't have?
-
Thanks for the list! As someone who has never used any Twitter-like site before (I guess microblog is the right term...?), and recently made a profile on Bluesky only to support it (I have used it briefly ~3 times since joining): what are the pros of Mastodon that Bluesky doesn't have?
As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:
- Well implemented federation
-
As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:
- Well implemented federation
Haha, thanks! I know it's quite important for a good bunch of people here (on a federated site), but I guess I'll stick with Bluesky then. Thanks for the insights! : )
-
Leaving the board of directors means no day to day control, but he could still exert influence on a shareholders vote.
-
Probably because it has an algorithm
It doesn’t though.
-
Why are they selecting BlueSky over the Fediverse?
Because the Fediverse is a mess with atrocious UX. Choose the wrong server and you might find you are cut off from a large chunk of it because a mastodon.art mod didn’t like something that happened on your instance and servers copy blocklist from each other (not a theoretical example, mind you, something I learned a few months into being on one particular instance.).
Servers can have all sorts of rules you will have to carefully study or risk getting banned (some for example will only allow images with descriptions being shared, this includes boosts.)
In short, the amount of work expected to participate is just - never - going to draw in the average user.
-
Thanks for the list! As someone who has never used any Twitter-like site before (I guess microblog is the right term...?), and recently made a profile on Bluesky only to support it (I have used it briefly ~3 times since joining): what are the pros of Mastodon that Bluesky doesn't have?
Main one is that it doesn't manipulate your feed with stuff "you might enjoy" so you can't be easily manipulated by the people setting the algorithm. Of course, this is exactly why people find it hard. People want to be fed stuff and told what to consume.
-
But we did leave and if (or when) it becomes enshitified, we will move again. We don't need an idealised platform, we just want something easy to use which doesn't (yet) have the baggage and culture of twiXer
But we did leave...
...about a decade too late.
-
As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:
- Well implemented federation
- No "starter kits" which are just positive-feedback loops for popular accounts
- No "algorithm" which promotes popularity or engagement over quality or relevance
-
The Fediverse experience starts with an unanswerable question: what server do you want to be on?
Most people will not have any way to answer that without knowing what the downstream impact will be. Mastodon people are working on smoothing that down, but it's still a pretty fraught question. And if half a given community ends up on one server and half on another, they get fragmented and conversations and followers fizzle out.
Bluesky wants to tell people they're not a single-node lock-in to avoid the Twitter effect, but it turns out that's their key advantage.
The only thing that will guarantee they don't end up like Twitter is if they revamp their corporate governance mechanisms, but they had to take VC money and haven't come up with a long-term revenue model, so it's not clear how they can avoid it.
For a long time now, the entry point to mastodon (joinmastodon.org) has had the default option as being "join mastodon.social", with an option to choose a different server delegated to a secondary button. This compares to bsky, which shows you a dropdown of servers to choose from, defaulting to "bluesky social".
It's a tiny difference in UI; both have a default and offer an alternative. Why do people say it's difficult on mastodon, while bluesky users are apparently not confused by the same option? Even if the option on bsky is basically a joke so far.
-
just tell people to join mastodon.social. problem solved
This isn't good, though. The whole point of the Fediverse is to be a decentralized network. If we push everyone to a single server, we're centralizing the network!
This comes with added expenses for the maintainers, for one, and increases privacy and data-protection concerns as well.
Also, Mastodon actually already funnels people towards .social, though they don't push it too hard. Check out joinmastodon.org and see for yourself.
IMO, the solution needs to be something like a server auto-selector, where the location of the user is taken into account, weighted by the number of active users on the server, and using some sort of vetting system to try to avoid sending people to unmaintained servers (like only selecting servers with a certain degree of uptime and uptime stability).
-
In a word, audience. I'd prefer it if everyone went with Mastodon, but the audience on BlueSky is orders of magnitude bigger. I cross post to both, but only because I don't trust BlueSky not to do exactly what Twitter and Meta have done eventually.
They might do the Twitter. Jack Dorsey has already left the board saying exactly that.
-
How many times can people keep making the same mistake without us concluding they're stupid? Closed corporate social networks ALWAYS go to shit. Enshitification is inevitable. And you'll have the sunk cost fallacy stopping them from leaving, until they all finally get fed up and switch again. Own your network - stop swapping.
They gotta get their news out to the masses, at least they choose something besides twitter.
-
Problem is it absolutely will turn when the Bluesky owners Jay Graber and Jack Dorsey decide it's time to cash in. The project started out as a way to start decentralizing twitter, but they never actually accomplished that goal.
Why is it a problem? If a tool is good now, I'll use it now.
I don't stop myself from buying a new axe just because it'll break eventually, you know what I mean?
Although obviously if there was an axe that never would break, I'd buy that! But maybe there are trade-offs. Maybe the never-breaking axe has a complicated handle or something. I don't know, I'm trying my best with the axe analogy to describe Bluesky vs Mastodon.
Hopefully it's clear enough! -
This post did not contain any content.
I feel like scientists should move towards open source solutions ... I feel like most scientists are smart enough to launch a mastodon server, but well.
