A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
Networking effect
Mastodon required people to join a server which made out to people who are used to signing up to a single website for the past 20 years or such, seam too complex.
You also end up in a situation where social media managers have to reach engagement and impression targets and don't think which is best platform that will not be taken over Elon musk or Mark Zuckerberg style, but which will reach engagement targets the quickest.
I'm only on the fediverse but I miss algorithms. Recommended accounts (which to be fair exists on a corner of Mastodon), similar accounts to one you just followed, custom home feed, suggested posts, etc. Discoverability sucks on fedi and the lack of interest from devs for some sort of private FOSS implementation is disappointing.
Loops was like let's have a "For You" algo early this year but even that seems to be a dead idea.
My personal opinion is that it was:
I know it's not the main point, but I wouldn't call Linux fractured. Linux has multiple choices, but they all work fine unless you're going into an experimental realm or uncommon distros that beginners shouldn't be getting near anyways.
Mastodon and the fediverse in general are weirdly user-unfriendly, and then some fucking programmer pops in to say,
"Oh! You can fix that! All you have to do is hop over to their github page and..."
Lol
If they can make the user experience good, we might get the basis for a new internet, but they'd have to build it first.
I'll speak about my experience. Bluesky feels like an upgrade to Twitter. There are many algorithmic feeds to choose from, and it's easy to discover people to follow. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a straight downgrade from Bluesky because it is lacking in those features.
I imagine a lot of people leaving Twitter feel similarly. They don't care much about privacy or federation. Bluesky just works, and that's what matters to them.
What do you mean by privacy? Mastodon doesnt have privacy or encryption
I guess a lot of people feel like Mastodon is more private because it's smaller. Which is a kind of privacy, I guess, until it isn't.
Maybe it is just avoiding big tech.
As depressing as it sounds, most Twitter users actually like Twitter. They're fully okay with all of its dystopian features (some even idolize pre-Musk Twitter). Mastodon is a break from Twitter in many ways, whereas bluesky is just another Twitter in their eyes (many of them probably dgaf about federation and ignore it).
There's a few technical and non technical reasons someone might be on Bluesky/AT instead of Activity Pub. Protocol specific there's:
) Account ownership (theoretically at least, migration is still in development). Though it's hidden behind domain based identification there's a cryptographic key that let's you migrate to another PDS even if yours is down or banned you.
) Performance. Hosting something like a PDS is lighter than an Activity Pub instance.
) User level configuration. Bluesky let's you set custom moderation lists and algorithms, something you can't on Activity Pub.
) Compatibility. Building something like a link aggregator on AT that is compatible with a microblogging platform like Bluesky is likely a lot easier then Activity Pub since AT is broken up into PDSs and Relays. (To be fair compatibility does work on Activity Pub, but it's got jank).
There's also some less technical reasons as well:
) Bluesky is a platform and you don't need to learn a protocol to use it. Yeah it's not that hard to learn how any of the big three protocols work, but it's also not that hard to change your car's oil or sew ripped cloths instead of replacing them - but how many people do those? I'd guess 80% of Lemmy is an IT guy between 20-45 so it can get a little echo chambery on how easy tech is. One if the reasons Threads makes up 99.5%+ of the fediverse.
) Defederatiation is becoming a mess. If some random Joe has a friend on Bluesky & Nostr (both bridged), a few on threads, and a few spread across different instances; yet he can't reach all but 1 or 2 of them from the instance he chose to join on joinmastodon it might be time to reconsider how things are done. Techy people might have no problem sifting through a long list of servers to find the right one, but somebody who's already on the fence is probably going to quit at that point.
) Bluesky has a more mainstream culture, while the fediverse has very specific thoughts and ideas. Had I said I was on Windows you all might have put a hit out on me 😆
the later those outlook, iphone and windows11 using ppl find a good home in a more guarded environment. makes fediverse a place that can grow. it is not mature yet as we all can see when looking at defederation drama. in the end you will be able to choose between the fully federated network or a "super" app like weechat.
Valid question, but Americans in particular are easily swayed by the fact that the corporate ownership is listed as a "Public Benefit Corporation." Bluesky is a PBC and for most people that's enough "proof" that they will "be for the public good."
In that it is set up to "benefit the public good" people just... buy into that, even if the company isn't actually benefitting the public good.
Look at how long it took for people to wise up that the Susan G. Komen foundation was spending most of its money on their CEOs and ads and very little on actually helping people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Pinkwashing
For the general public, Open Source generally means "difficult to set up and use with bad user interface."
And yes, the whole self-hosting thing with numerous servers is confusing to people who have never had to step outside of the corporate-dominated internet.
All that is self-evident based on the original reddit exodus to here on Lemmy. The initial exodus lead to tons of people complaining about lack of features on Lemmy with very few people actually stepping up to contribute to the code-base to bring those features to light. They're just far too used to private company doing all that "for free" (*cough for all your private data cough) and struggle to understand how the different way it is set up means you don't get all the fancy features from the get-go.
So people saw an option with corporate sponsorship and money behind it, and they leap to that. Also I'm sure Bluesky is investing in advertising their product, which is competing with zero advertising dollars spend on the no-corporate fediverse.
This is weird on multiple levels, Bluesky code is Open Source, it’s federated and no one gives a damn about it being a PBC. It’s mostly about culture why people have gone to Bluesky and Threads
I don't disagree with your points but I think they apply to pretty specific groups. I doubt that the average person knows or cares that Bluesky is a PBC. The reaction of the average person to 'open source' is probably, "I have no idea what that is and please for the love of god don't explain it to me."
The initial exodus lead to tons of people complaining about lack of features on Lemmy with very few people actually stepping up to contribute to the code-base to bring those features to light.
Dude.....I have zero clue how to use linux. Which I assume is easier than writting code. You think I'm going to write a program in C++ or whatever language?
Saying the users aren't developing the program is like saying the hospital patients aren't willing to be their own doctor.
Users will ALWAYS bring up issues, and if the developers want the platform to grow, they'll implement upgrades to fix those issues.
Otherwise, you just have a userbase that rejects your platform, goes somewhere else, and a small group on the platform wondering why it's not growing.
Which is basically the core of this post.
To be fair, people having ideas for features is a valuable contribution in its own right.
Entitlement to them, not so much. But feature suggestions have value even if many of them aren't practical and many more never get added.
Agreed, but during the exodus it was less "this is a positive feature that we need and I'm willing to be patient" it was more like:
"This feature not existing is why no one will ever use this product! I'm sick of this and going back to reddit!" after being on Lemmy for 10 fucking minutes.
Oddly enough that secondary exodus is probably why this place is so much more positive
I used mastodon for a year. It didn’t really work out for me. I just took so much effort to find content or build an audience.
I didn’t go to threads because it’s owned by Zuck. But Bluesky is FOSS add free and decentralised, so I tried it out, and honestly (I’ll probably get hate here for this) but the experience is far better than mastodon. There’s an algorithm, everything works. Mastodon had always been buggy for me. The UI is nice, the community is nice etc.
Plus thanks to bridgy, all of my bluesky posts are automatically displayed on mastodon and I can follow people from mastodon on bluesky.