Summary
Journalists are increasingly abandoning X (formerly Twitter) for Bluesky, citing higher engagement and less toxicity. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of X, changes like deprioritizing external links and rising hate speech have alienated many, especially marginalized groups.
Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey, offers a more welcoming environment, especially for journalists and activists, with 20x the engagement in some cases.
Reporters note better traffic, reduced harassment, and a focus on diverse stories.
Organizations like The Guardian and fundraising groups also report greater success on Bluesky compared to X.
Wont happen until mastodon makes on boarding easy enough for the tech illiterate.
And the name doesn’t help.
Yeah that generally seems to be an issue with a lot of foss projects.
It’s not that surprising. Developing software requires a certain skillset, heavily based in logic. Understanding people requires a completely different skillset, and people tend to be more emotional than logical. Our brains just draw connections between different concepts that are, at their core, fundamentally illogical. A big business has the benefit of a marketing department, staffed by specialists who earn their paycheck by studying and manipulating people. Your average FOSS project doesn’t have that advantage.
If you wanted some of that same advantage, you’d want to onboard some talented humanities or marketing specialist and give them the branding responsibilities.
Before Zuck dropped out of college to do Facebook instead, he was double majoring in computer science and psychology.
Fuck the Zuck, but that’s the kind of person who can make a successful social media website. Someone who knows how both computers and people think.
Ist that ths kind of place for a non profit organisation. They monetise and pay devs and marketers and as long as u keep it foss thwn that helps the community as a whole.
We need a nonprofit that provides reccommendations to all the Activpub services and helps to steer them in the right direction.
Using the term “Open Social Web” instead of fediverse or mastodon seems to help a lot. TechCrunch and other news orgs use the term more nowadays and Meta mentions it as well as the about us on Bluesky.
Mastodon needs a lot of work before it becomes a mainstream option. They missed a big opportunity when twitter became toxic, and now they can’t compete against bluesky. Hope i’m wrong but i think they are doomed.
At this point I’m just hoping BlueSky gets it right and provides a federation protocol.
That is a major issue the fediverse needs to fix.
We need a single federated account that works across all platforms that iant tied to a single server even if said server goes down that preferably allows for your private key to be held by u. Ideally get this to work with the new passkey standard supported by google, apple, microsoft etc.
Then. We need to make a website that is like 3 simple steps.
Step 0: Option a) sign up with email Option b) sign up with username
Step 1: Select or search for 3 categories ur interested in
Step 2: Show me nsfw yes/no default no Show me extreme opinions yes/no default no (need to rework what word to use instead of “extreme”) Show me bot accounts yes/no default yes
Step 2.5: automaticly send said user off to an instance that is the following:
Step 3: user signs up to the instance they have been directed to
Step 4: reccommend people/communities etc fir them to follow/subscribe to. Reccommend blockliats for specific subjects, racist, tankie, asshole, nazi, etc.
Done!
Their already exists a standard for accounts just that its not yet been implemented into most services yet. Mastodon already has blocklists (although poorly managed and implemented). It wouldnt be too hard to make this website i could probably do it myself ngl.
Should probably also drop this vid into the proccess somewhere as a quick explainer.
It seems like Bluesky kind of did all of this with ATProto but they’re just met with constant criticisms
It’s like everyone agrees mastodon isn’t the “right” special concoction but any attempt ever made to do something different or better and people shoot it down because it’s “not open like mastodon”
Met with constant criticisms…here. Because people seem to care about feelings more than facts or results.
I think it comes down to people not liking that Bluesky is controlled by a board. But that’s what’s needed for mass adoption: a group of people to be accountable.
That’s what bluesky’s DID based account identity does. Unless you make that key the sole authority (no key rotation, like nostr) then you need a registry as authority (like bluesky’s PLC registry)
Bluesky specifically lets the account hosting server handle your auth, the directory points to where your account server is as in when you enter your handle, every 3rd party service and federated peer can do OAuth seamlessly to your account host. Then you can log into every compatible site with your handle, instead of having to get redirected “home” before you can interact. Your account server’s repository keeps records of all your posts and your social network, and you can even migrate seamlessly across hosts.
Yeah if they used Activpub then id be onboard 100%. Its just that there architecture is fundamentally incompatible with Activpub. Federation was supposed to destroy the fragmentation not join it.
Atproto is better at global views thanks to stuff like content addressing than activitypub is. That’s better to reduce fragmentation.
This is the most common reply to any mention of onboarding newcomers, but it’s not helpful. It’d be much more productive to hear specific criticisms so we can address them.
There are other issues. Missing features (cited by people who bailed from Mastodon):
a lack of “trending” list - that means journalists and other people who want to know what’s happening right now didn’t have a way to find events.
no suggestions for follows. As a new user, how do people know what to follow?
no suggested posts. Once I scroll through all the posts from the people I follow, the system doesn’t provide me with new posts.
no quote tweets.
It isn’t just that Mastodon has a weird onboarding experience, it’s that it doesn’t behave the way Twitter users have come to expect/need. I realize that is usually by design.
Edit: added 4
Ask someone you personally know in real life that is not tech literate to sign up for each service and try to get an account going.
It is night and day
Yeah I don’t get it, it really doesn’t seem hard. Honestly I feel like its more of a marketing issue. Bluesky probably has a large budget to buy influencers and create a larger network effect