Bluesky now has 30 million users.
submitted by
ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world
www.theverge.com/news/602049/bluesky-now-has-30…
www.theverge.com/news/602049/bluesky-now-has-30…
Mastodon has around *1 million active users³
Bluesky has around *3.5 million active users²
Bluesky doesn't have a decent way to see active user count, but it is likely higher than *3 million*
Mastodon retains *10%,* Bluesky retains *10%* also, but I can't confirm it
Edit: Using unique likes, it shows about *2 million active users* on each day¹
Source:
Bsky Analytics¹ • Bsky Stats² • Mastodon Analytics³
I looked at the terms of service and noticed that they bind you into arbitration, limit your terms to $100, mandate you to travel to Delaware for dispute, and force you into mass arbitration if your dispute is similar to others.
Pass
During signup, they make it sound like it's a federated service. It is not. Dumped it when it was explained to me.
Unfortunately that's standard for pretty much every service in existence until the government determines otherwise or the users demand it en masse. No company is going to willingly expose themselves to any more risk than they absolutely have to. There's zero benefit to them.
Let's not call disabling the right to sue a "business risk". That's like calling the right to stop paying for the service a "risk" - it's riskdiculous.
By "business risk", they just mean bad for the business, ethics aside
Yes that's what they mean. I tried to persuade against meaning that.
...and why not?
But...that's what it is? I promise if they could remove that risk with a few words in the TOS, and it was legal, *they'd all be doing that too.*
The right to take legal action for harm done is imperative. It's importance is diminished if conflated with a legitimate business risk (like research and development). It should be illegal to deny it.
I agree. But we weren't discussing hypotheticals, we were discussing reality.
And we should just accept that?
Doesn't matter if you should or not. Point is you accept it or you don't use any service whatsoever.
Looks like there's a viable alternative here.
Really? Who are you going to sue here? And how much money do you think you can sue them for?
I don't think forced arbitration has really been tried in court. I remember Disney kind of trying, but it was completely unrelated (e.g. argued that arbitration agreement from Disney+ applied to issues on physical Disney properties).
In order to hold up in court, the contract needs to reasonably benefit both parties instead of only the contract issuer. So there's a very good chance a court will dismiss the forced arbitration clause, especially if it's just in a EULA and not a bidirectional contract negotiation.
That said, I tend to avoid services with binding arbitration statements in their EULA, and if I can't, I avoid companies that force acceptance of EULA changes to continue use of the service.
Well I know someone tried it against Valve and they ended up removing the requirement.
While I understand that, I'm in America. My first priority has to be getting people off of Twitter.
Would I prefer open source, non-profit software? 100%. It's the smarter and better choice for so many reasons.
But if Bluesky is going to gain critical mass, I'm not going to fight it. I'm having a hard enough time getting people off Twitter. I've written the media address of environments I'm familiar with asking them to organize a move, and I mentioned both Bluesky and Mastodon.
Good take. Bluesky is a good stop-gap.
I've also been thinking, if Bluesky never federates and enshittifies in a similar way to Twitter (which it will do much faster, just cause it's a different era), then the Bluesky exodus will really have a solid reason to try to understand why decentralisation is so important...
or people will have lost the ability to imagine alternative and better places...
...which is where we come in to make sure they don't forget!
Yep. Already true to a large extent. But it doesn't take a majority of the world to make the fediverse work. We just need enough for it to become broadly attractive to a critical mass of people. It's big enough to self-sustain now, so I think it's just a matter of time until it hits that point.
Off topic, but I pointing this out reminded me of visiting some ancap circles to see the crazy stuff they discuss. At one point there was a question about how externalities would be handled in their system of private courts and such. When ever I do read some terms and conditions there is almost always something in regard to arbitration. Predictably they were not happy about someone pointing that out and explaining that it is for the benefit of corporations not the customers.
Funny, someone shared an article in another post about all corporate money going to Delaware, https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2022/06/delaware-is-everywhere-how-a-little-known-tax-haven-made-the-rules-for-corporate-america/
Arbitration of what? It's a free service. What money could they possibly owe you?
You're not thinking evil enough, honestly. Two examples off the top of my head, each being fairly innocent mistakes: If you enter your phone number for 2FA, it's not going to be public-facing. It's their responsibility to keep that information private from internal and external threats. Ok, so what if it leaks... right? Oh, it turns out the hacker SIM swapped your phone number for the 2FA, and did a password reset on your account via support chat. Still no big deal, its just social media... Except you've been giving updates to all your patreon backers on your project that's shipping soon. It suddenly vanishes off the internet, replaced with a crypto scheme, and all your supporters just flooded your bank with chargebacks. Your attempts at getting your account back are met with silence and your supporters are now furious. Was any of that your fault? No. You get $100.
Let's try another example: Bounty programs are used by companies to collect bugs and other possibly exploits so they can be fixed. "Too expensive, nobody will know if there's a bug anyway." So the app on Google Play store gets installed by 30 million users with a critical flaw... if a very specific image is opened in it, the phone bricks. All the news sites cover the bug, pushing the image to the front page. You open the app and... Your expensive phone just died. Were you at fault for that? No. You get to join the arbitration group and get an individual settlement of $12.
Think more evil. Don't stick with the "I have nothing to lose" because you almost always have something to lose. The fact these terms were even thought of and written means you do have a financial investment in the platform.
That's why 2FA via phone number shouldn't be a thing
If the mods or admin do something that causes you injury, such as ignoring requests that will prevent harassment.
......how would them ignoring requests cause injury??? We're still talking about bluedky, right? The online twitter clone without musk as it's main selling point?
If someone was doxxing you on bluesky, for example, and in the doxxing, you got attacked/injured by someone who recognized you/went to your house.
Then the person liable to you would be the person doxxing you, not Bluesky themselves unless Bluesky themselves was the party that doxxed you and in that case I don't think a court would hold you to the arbitration.
That is an ass pull if I've ever heard one.
Let me make sure I understand your comment correctly.
You're saying that if you post information publically, on a platform whose whole concept is that everything is public, and someone uses information you posted there to identify you, stalk you, break and enter, and then assault you.......that it's the fault of the service you used to post that identifying information?
That's the arguement being made?
You have nothing to hide. Just sign away all your rights.
They can break data protection laws and stuff...
Ok......and why would they pay YOU that money? Wouldn't it be companies and governments they pay?
If a company violates my rights and causes issues for me due to leaking data, then obviously i can sue them for damages.
I've gotten settlement money from it before
Is this 30 million accounts created? Active user numbers would be a lot more meaningful.
As an illustration, if you have a platform that’s gaining 100,000 users each month and losing 100,000 other users each month, it’s basically going nowhere. But it will eventually reach this “30 million users” milestone too if all it means is account creations.
I wonder how many of the 30 million accounts are bots.
Active user numbers is probably less than 1 million, but still, 30 million accounts created is quite likely pretty good.
It’s something, but there’s really no frame of reference to know if it’s good or how good. Because companies rarely talk about this number. Twitter might have billions of accounts created if we look at all time.
Actives are what count.
To anyone bemoaning BlueSky's lack of federation, check out Free Our Feeds.
It's a campaign to create a *public interest foundation* independent from the Bluesky team (although the Bluesky team has said they support them) that will build independent infrastructure, like a secondary "relay" as an alternative to Bluesky's that can still communicate across the same protocol (The "AT Protocol") while also doing developer grants for the development of further social applications built on open protocols like the AT Protocol or ActivityPub.
They have the support of an existing 501c(3), and their open letter has been signed by people you might find interesting, such as Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia).
The only thing the Fediverse is missing is way to migrate from 1 instance to another
It actually does exist, at least on Mastodon, but is still very janky (e.g. old posts aren't moved over due to "technical limitations")
Automatically makes people unfollow your old account and re-follow your new account, then makes your old instance's link redirect to your new instance's one.
This is such a half-assed dog and pony show.
They have millions in investment, why do they need someone else to fund this? Why don't the bluesky team directly and materially support them?
This is a core aspect of Bluesky's marketing and they asking other volunteers to help make them rich.
Until there's overt advertising its unlikely to enshittify the normal way. That doesn't mean it won't, just that a different capital process is at work. Wikipedia has outlived most of "web2.0" because its funded by donations and run by volunteers.
Trust me we will be deep into that territory so fast it is going to make your head spin.
Private equity and VC funding can't directly buy Wikipedia and dissect it because it is an at least somewhat functional non-profit organization. That is the only reason.
What would a comparable example be?
Twitter
I feel like the reason the reason why it's taking off so much is because it's not federated.
It's like people hear the term federation and they get afraid. I know it's not that simple but still.
In other words, people don't know what they actually need.
People are not afraid of the term “Federation.“ They literally have no clue what it is.
It’s the instance concept I find consistently to be an issue. It’s an extra layer/barrier to entry. You don’t just create an account. You have to understand what an instance is and then determine which one you’re joining and what that means for your moment to moment usage of the platform.
Yeah I was confused on if it was connected, if I was explaining it to myself id say that the fediverse has interconnected forums that all serve the same content and can be accessed by making accounts on different websites or apps.
Lemmy, mbin, piefed, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected forum/threads side of the fediverse.
Mastodon, sharkey, plaroma, etc. are all ways to access the interconnected microblogging slide of the fediverse.
They all have different features, like mbin has account reputation, piefed has topics which let you sub to multiple related communities at once, etc., but the content is shared between those that serve the same type of content.
Since they're all built ontop of the same protocol ppl can always come in and build on top of it or make hybrids while still letting everyone access the same content. Like mbin having both microblogging (tweets) and threads, letting you post and view both from the same account/website.
And it legit takes 5 minutes to sign up for 5 instances and see the differences, mine showed the same content for the most part, only lemmy.world was missing the piracy community, other than that it was all the same and any nervousness I had about it went away after seeing the feeds being the same.
Yeah but people don’t want to set up 5 accounts to understand alt-reddit. They want to download a clean app that takes seconds to set up and just *go*. Friction is friction.
Not everyone likes to tinker and poke and prod
I don't think 99% of people who have joined bluesky have any clue what federation is or means. They do know what "not twitter" is however.
I don't personally think it's because of that. Sure, federation as a concept outside of email has a bit of a messaging problem for explaining it to newbies, but... everyone uses email, and knows how that works. This is identical, just with it being posts instead of emails. Users aren't averse to federation, in concept or practice.
Bluesky was directly created as a very close clone of Twitter's UI, co-governed and subsequently pushed by the founder of Twitter himself, who will obviously have more reach than randoms promoting something like Mastodon, and, in my opinion, kind of just had better branding.
"Bluesky" feels like a breath of fresh air, while "Mastodon" just sounds like... well, a Mastodon, whatever that makes the average person think of at first.
So when you compare Bluesky, with a *familiar UI, nice name, and consistent branding, not to mention algorithms, which Mastodon lacks, all funded by large sums of money*, to Mastodon, with *unfamiliar branding, minimal funding, and substantially less reach from promoters*, which one will win out, regardless of the technology involved?
Exactly, it's just packaged in a way that consumers are more familiar with with the backing of major celebs
Its also, honestly, just really hard to find people on Mastodon.
Ah yes, "free our feeds" where millionaire VCs are asking for donations
I never trust meta statistics anymore because you know they're filling out their "numbers" with bots to try and keep their stock prices up.
In terms of real users I bet bluesky has already surpassed them.
What annoys me is that people are buying the idea that BlueSky is federated.
Not only is it not federated, the very architecture they designed means that it's probably not federateable, at least not by normal users.
The way they designed it, a relay is required to collect and forward *every single BlueSky post*. That means, as the service grows, it becomes more and more impossible for anybody but a company to run a relay. Someone did some calculations back in November when it was a significantly smaller network, and they calculated that at a minimum it costs a few hundred dollars, possibly as much as 1000 bucks a month just to handle the disk storage needs for a relay on a leased server. The more the network grows, the more those costs skyrocket.
What good does it do to have a network that theoretically can be federated, but practically costs so much to run a single node that nobody except a for-profit company can manage it?
Sounds like the protocol equivalent of regulatory capture.
I'm not familiar with Blue sky, do they advertise as federated or how exactly do they claim to differ from a regular platform like original Twitter?
https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-architecture
And reading an article from TechCrunch,
"The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation."
"Is Bluesky decentralized? Yes. Bluesky’s team is developing the decentralized AT Protocol, which Bluesky was built atop."
"However, the launch of federation will make it work more similarly to Mastodon in that users can pick and choose which servers to join and move their accounts around at will."
So it definitely is pitching that is it decentralized and federated. Maybe the argument is that it "will be", but at the moment it is not and at the moment it does not look like it will be an actual possibility.
Now people leaving Twitter is great, don't get me wrong, but it's possibly just kicking the can down the road. In a few years we'll likely have articles complaining about missing "Old Bluesky" and how "new Bluesky" has the exact same problems that "Old Twitter" had.
Hey, I have a couch you should buy, it isn't comfy right now but trust me, im a random stranger and I promise you on my word that after you buy it one day soon I will come back and fix it up so it is the comfiest couch ever!
Also maybe like somebody could make a non-profit to add features to the couch my business already sold customers on with marketing hype!
Thanks for you detailed and cited response. Very clear!
Weird, I had a bluesky add-on
on my experimental friendica installation and have not noticed any messages other than the ones people I followed participated in.
I have since deleted it, so cannot figure out what they have done differently.
I guess it could allow multiple funding models. Instance A is ad supported, instance B is a paid service. Not exciting for us self hosters, but there is possibility there.
And that's the kicker. Bluesky can never be meaningfully decentralized.
Nice. Glad to see people leaving xitter en mass.
I feel like we're going to have a similar issue a couple of years or decades down the line with Bluesky. People would be better off on the Fediverse instead.
No, this time will be different, I swear!
And that's fine. What the exodus to Bluesky is doing is making it easier for people to stomach switching to similar platforms, so if Bluesky also went to shit, the inertia is much lower for people to abandon it.
People are atleast getting used to the @username@instance thing through bluesky... That would make mass exodus to fediverse in future easier (if that ever happens)
the issue with that is the fediverse isn't the easiest thing to sign up for. and the fediverse needs explaining pre-sign up for most people.
listen I have both bluesky and mastodon so I get you. but for now, bluesky is at least not the platform of an angry nazi man child. (at least not yet).
Love an app that defaults me to people I actually follow and doesn't bombard me with endless reams of ads or engagement bait.
We'll see how long that lasts. But for now, its a blast from the past to be on a social media app I don't hate.
6 more months before it monetizes...
Then a rapid decent into profit maximisation at the expense of user experience.
Whenever I see how they keep getting brought up, I'm always reminded of that Dilbert ep about how people just fall for blue logos that are easy on the eyes. They don't even have to know what it is... just the fact that the stupid logo is blue is enough. lol
Can I get the icon in cornflower blue?
https://youtu.be/4NomQYQK1bE
Another corporate social media platform, what could go wrong?
It is less than ideal.
I only hope that it gets people used to the idea that you can leave a platform and the sky wont fall down. Sooner or later these guys will try a federated service and learn that protocols > platforms (in this case activitypub).
I can't wait for them to bring in ex CIA/IDF types to "clamp down on disinformation".
What do you think the closed beta was for? It was so they can get in and get on the moderator roster
As a former mastodon believer, Bluesky is so much better. I'm sorry but the kind of content I wanted on mastodon was never there. Bluesky feels good. Things change, for sure. For now though? This is the best we have for a replacement for Twitter.
I dont like either, but then again I couldn't get into twitter. The microblogging is not for me. I made accounts on mastodon, bluesky, pixelfed et al just to improve the numbers
Bluesky has the network effect, at least for some domains of content. Mastodon has about 50% coverage of my domain of interests, but that's probably way less for many people.
Mastodon has the guaranteed lack of enshittification via decentralisation. Bluesky is promising it, but it seems far from guaranteed, and if it doesn't happen, I'm betting it'll enshittify about 4 times faster than twitter, because everything does these days..
So Bluesky is probably a better bet in the short term for general users.. I'm glad people are escaping twitter at least. But I'm sticking with Mastodon, 'cause fuck going through all that again in a couple of years.
I tried to figure out Mastodon a few months ago. I'm with you.
Someone asked me to follow them on Mastodon. I couldn't find them in the app. He sent me the direct link and it opened up a browser on my phone, refusing to recognize the app.
I finally added them directly from a browser by by remembering which server I was in, log into that, visiting their link again, adding them from my logged in server, and then it finally appeared in the app.
And if I'm dealing with thet level of monkeying around, how many others are? How the hell are we supposed to contribute and add content and find social circles when we're fighting with the UI?
Lemmy seems to have figured out how to not make a sucky experience with multiple servers.
On Mastodon I have no trouble interacting with other users there. I have 2 accounts running on different instances - one global and one local. No trouble at all finding an account on either of them.
Yep, if even tech-savvy folks struggle with following people via links, the average user is going to feel totally lost. It's these minor UX issues that keep holding federated platforms back.
I never actually used Twitter, but recently made accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed.
Pixelfed has been my favorite of the three so far... I'm finding that the image-based focus means my feed is mostly fun stuff, that leaves me feeling happy, not gloom and doom of news, snark, etc.
I'm not sure how long I'll use Mastodon, but I've been finding hashtags and users that I'm interested in following and interacting with, and the keyword filters have allowed me to limit (but not eliminate) the depressing stuff.
Bluesky pissed me the fuck off since I couldn't find a way to follow hashtags, only users, and the Lists thing was just not what I wanted either. Bluesky's filter is disappointing compares to Mastodon's too, since Mastodon allows you to hide filtered words behind a content warning or hide them completely, while Bluesky seems to only hide them completely.
While you can't follow hashtags you can follow "topics" like movies, tech, etc. They should do a better job of explaining how to use that feature though.
As for pixelfed, I'd love to use it. But the only use I have for Instagram is following local bands. Although there is a new site that's popped up recently that's like Instagram with a forum but only for bands and musicians to communicate with their local scenes. Very cool, old Internet kind of feel to it.
I think I might use both
I find Lemmy to be a better reddit alternative than Mastodon is a twitter alternative.
The lack of an infinitely scrollable algorithmic feed in Mastodon is definitely better societally, but let's be real, the algorithmic feed is just way more fun to scroll in blue sky.
I've come to realize that bluesky already had all lot of what I'm happy to not see on masto. Good that there is a place for it to exist without me.
That content is also probably what the majority of people like about it.
Tried it last night for a hockey game. I still think I'm not using it correctly but people were nice.
There’s no right or wrong way. For it to be fun for an event like that you need to follow lots of people in that space. Like journalist, reporters, beat writers and analysts. However if you don’t want that content in your feed full time you could try searching one of the teams hashtags and use the latest tab to follow along. You can also take all those suggested follows and make a list to pin to your BlueSky front page without following them and just goto that feed during games.
Oh interesting, thanks! I figured out the hashtaga bit but a lot of fun popped up without the hashtaga etc.
I suppose I'll just keep muddling along and figure something that works for me while trying to be a net positive influence!
Sorry to hear that, but at least some of them are not on Xitter.
Try hosting your own instance and sorting through the content of 30m people for the one post you want. lol
This is so true. It costs more money for the server power required for something like that to be pulled off.
There's a comment in this thread going all crazy complaining about it being costly to host anything on the protocol to stop Bluesky from dominating it and everything. But im like "uhh yeah, servers and storage costs money".
It's just so weird how everyone thinks hosting popular sites should be free.
I never had a twitter account, not because of political beliefs but because the core of that social network is bullshit and the internet should be better than that.
It's literally just Shower Thoughts: The Website.
I really don't understand the appeal.
It is a decent format for businesses, organizations, musicians/comedians/touring acts etc. to announce events and goings on to the general public. For discourse, it's complete garbagepuke.
Which of those are not “advertising” of one sort or another? Twitter was a dumb idea to start and I still just don’t see any appeal.
FB had my friends (now is a stupid cesspool of echo chamber idiocy.
Insta was photo-based FB Lite.
Fark>Slashdot>Digg>Reddit>Lemmy was/is about community and sharing of ideas and thoughts. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses, but the anonymity gave everyone an equal opportunity to participate.
The early days of Twitter seemed to be 10,000 people yelling in a room and nobody listening. Then celebrities took over and companies followed. Enshittifying it early on in the process.
At some point I'm not averse to advertising. I'm fine with Burger King having signs on their buildings.
My water bill comes with a one page flyer from the town every month which announces things like planned road construction, the obligatory "as we enter [whatever] season, remember that it probably presents a fire hazard somehow" from the fire department (seriously I'm surprised they didn't warn against knocking candles over during Valentine's Day fucking) and a list of events that the town library, community college and other such organizations are putting on open to the public.
I see a place or even a need for a similar platform that operates at a national or global scale.
I'm reminded of the Bloody Board, which if I understand the story correctly was a Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan site whose owner was kind of misusing a forum engine as an announcement board, so if you didn't know that bit of context it looked like someone going completely insane. A writer for Cracked.com didn't know that bit of context, and wrote an article about how someone was apparently going completely insane, and Cracked's audience took that at face value and basically broke it. Having a Twitter account, or a Mastodon account, that does the same thing, posting about a TV show (quotes, memorable scenes, interviews with cast and crew, appearances at conventions and stuff, fan meet and greets etc) would seem perfectly normal.
The thing I'm envisioning might be closer to an RSS feed except it's a platform.
I only use bluesky to follow a couple of ukraine war news accounts. It's very good for that purpose. I don't interact at all or read comments, twitter was always an absolute cesspool and I assume bkuesky is as well, or will be if it ever replaces twitter
why are people frothing over Bluesky? this is just Twitter but owned by a different oligarch
Yeah, why would I use BlueSky when I could just use my favorite platform named Threads?
Tap for spoiler
Just kidding
Because they learned nothing
No clue. Never found those platforms to be useful, just toxic.
Same here... even when Twitter was not even in the sights of fElon I found it to be super toxic. I signed up because "it was the best way to get the news" and left in about 4 days
Because it isn't just Twitter.
Nobody can buy the network, the same way nobody can buy email.
- Anyone can host a server.
- Anyone can make an app.
- Anyone can make an algorithm.
- Anyone can make a moderation service.
Users can freely pick a server, app, algorithm, and moderation service.
Yeah, no, *not* anybody can host a server. Sure, you can host a PDS, but the AppView still wasn't open source last time I looked, and hosting a relay requires tens of terabytes of storage, not to mention the bandwidth to keep up.
Meanwhile, people host actual activitypub instances on repurposed routers and their car entertainment system...
Ngl thanks for the detail, I went and had another look so correct me if I’m wrong.
- Anyone can host a open source PDS like the Bluesky PDS.
- Anyone can make an AppView to view these PDSs.
- Someone with many resources needs to host a relay.
- Also it seems that Bluesky is able to gatekeep access to its federation of PDSs on a per AppView basis? The details are a bit confusing.
So if we wanted to undermine Bluesky’s currently - hopefully temporary - centralised state, we would need multiple community modified PDSs, a widely rehosted open source AppView webapp & iOS/Android clients, a very expensive relay that is community controlled via non profit or something, and then we would be federated with each other and the bluesky infrastructure too?
Sounds like a lot of work just to recreate the user-end functionality of ActivityPub :/ Very confused why they felt the need to invent ATProtocol? I have heard some vague praise of it over AP but I think I’m not technical enough to really properly make that comparison. It’s nice that ATProtocol gives you ownership of your data though.
Perhaps Mastodon/ActivityPub-apps need to improve their onboarding process and user experience. Maybe include the custom feeds feature for Bluesky too. Something has to have gone wrong for Mastodon to have failed where Bluesky succeeded.
They have an addiction to that kind of socials.
Man does not learn
Bluesky is like Twitter but with about 1/10th the idiots, and no mechanism that the idiots can elevate their racist, moronic hot takes above other comments.
Bluesky will follow the same enshittification trajectory Twitter did, it is just the beginning of the rollercoaster where the coaster is slowly brought up to the top to be launched... and everyone is exclaiming "wow I haven't even thrown up yet!" as if that was any indicator of how much they were about to throw up...
Maybe it will, but for the time being it hasn't. The experience is so vastly better than Twitter, that it's a no brainer to jump over. It also helps to have a decent competing platform that people like to suck users and influence away from the platform that Musk turned into a cesspit.
Yes but Twitter was fine for well over 10 years so it's fine. Like I don't understand this attitude that we can't enjoy something now because at some point in the future it may theoretically be not as good.
I don’t think it will go down the same path as Twitter, since Bluesky is open source and available on Github other devs will have the possibility to improve it or create a better version of it but with the more users joining it might necessary to monetize it to better cover the costs. I would love to see everyone switching to the Fediverse but it’s not very intuitive for the average end user with the instances and the fact that you need to target a user and an instance to follow it
*an incomplete subset of Bluesky is opensource
what do you mean by incomplete subset ? The code is available on Github and can be compiled
The entire appview layer is proprietary in practice and in spirit.
Activitypub or gtfo
I tried Mastodon two times in the past. I love the idea of federation and really want it to work. There's just too much friction though.
First you have to choose an instance. If there isn't a sensible default preselected when you download an app you already lost almost all non-technical people.
But I'm a technical, motivated individual, so I managed. Next I wanted to follow some creators I know. I couldn't just look them up, I had to find them on twitter or other places and manually copy their name@instance or whatever into mastodon.
Cool. Now I can press follow and it'll follow, right? Wrong. I press follow and nothing happens. I find out It's pending? I'm guessing both instances have to accept federation between them?
Let's follow some more creators I know. What do you mean I can't follow someone because their instance is straight up blocked by my instance because their instance mods think everything anime-related is for pedos? So I can't follow creators from both instances because they don't like each other? So I need to find an instance which isn't blocked by anyone, doesn't block anyone? Or host my own one person instance and hope other instances accept my federation?
At this point you already lost 99.9% of people. I want mastodon to work, but it straight up sucks.
Time for the fediverse to reflect on this lamentable failure to capture the zeitgeist. The future could have been glorious. Instead we have infighting, defederation, owner class privilege with their delegates (moderators) as the first class citizen. And of course, hiding the structures of power has already begun in the name of harmony, so no, you can't have frictionless account migration. Don't step out of line if you don't want to lose your fediverse relationships and history...
We haven't failed, the wise ones among us understand companies like bluesky grow cancerously, and that cancerous growth is neither desirable nor emulatable (especially in pace) in a healthy system.
10s of millions if twitter refugees and how many came here?
It could very well be another decade before these people are sold out again.
What... are you talking about?
I agree that defederation is vastly overused, and simple account migration should be a priority.
another trash platform its just matter of a time, use mastodon and fediverse to don't migrate again in few years
And how many users does Mastodon have?
About a million active users each month
Edit: Damn, 10 million users, 1 million active daily, see other comment. My source was this, the one from the other comment is certainly more trustworthy https://adamconnell.me/social-media-platforms/#%3A%7E%3Atext=larger+social+network.-%2CStats%3A%2Cat+the+end+of+2022
which is less than bsky, but more than lemmy.
I think a lot of people get sucked into the idea that more is better. But that isn't necessarily the case. I don't think any of us really want to talk to a million different people anyway. We just want to talk to a suitable subset.
But with less people, the chance of you finding the subsets that interests you or fit your interests better is much lower, and that's one of the main issue.
Roughly 10 million.
I would consider 1/3 a notable contender. Granted, only ~1 million of those users are active daily, but that's still very significant for a FOSS alternative.
EDIT: Source
Those numbers are small in the grand scheme of things, but for a newer and open source community developed project those are absurd numbers, ESPECIALLY because it isn't a flash in the pan, many of those users call the fediverse home and use it daily.
Federation is too confusing for the average bear. the success of bsky is the best thing for getting people off twitter
It is the path of least resistance *because it just goes in circles*
Mastodon and the fediverse are nerd shit with massive usability issues. Even I gave up on Mastodon and I would consider myself far more willing to put up with shit than the average user will ever be. The mass will - never - migrate to the fediverse and in many ways, especially looking at moderation issues, that is probably a good thing.
I love Mastodon. It's easily my favorite & most-used social media platform right now.
But I'm also a huge damn nerd.
I honestly can't say I'd recommend it to anyone that isn't also a huge damn nerd, because they just won't find stuff *they* want.
*"You want sports? We don't have much of that, but check out the Proxmox server in this guy's basement!"*
@RxBrad @mostlikelyaperson yeah, feel the same..
Well when I first start using facebook it was the same, the normies follow after if the platform is worth it
🤣 I love Mastodon as well... I also have a Proxmox server in my basement.
It's sad but I agree. Lemmy works well, especially if you use third-party apps such as Voyager, but Mastodon... is so badly thought. I can navigate it because I'm a technical person, but normal people will never be able to understand how to use it, what are instances, why it asks me to type my instance when I want to follow someone, etc.
It's interesting what a bubble lemmy users are in. There is a reason it is not taking off and did not replace reddit for many people that tried it. It's way too daunting and confusing for the average user, same with mastodon.
Yeah, we don't have millions in VC or private equity funding to dump into marketing and to smooze with the tech press enough for them to actually do their jobs as journalists and cover the fediverse with a modicum more of nuance then "Mastodon is just for nerds, even the Mastodon CEO says so! Use Bluesky, it is corporate and its marketing promises what the fediverse already has so in that sense they are equivalent and lets be honest that means you should use Bluesky."
The masses will either eventually migrate to ActivityPub, or have their entire digital lives consumed by oligarchs. It's just a fight between finally deciding that maybe ease-of-use doesn't mean "good," and losing every ounce of your identity and ability to express your thoughts and feelings.
Good, I don't need the mass. Social media is cancer anyways.
This is the saddest, most insular cope I've read all day.
Does it have anything to do with crypto and decentralisation? I heard it did but it doesn't seem like it does at all. Disappointing
30 million users and still nobody likes my posts
Something similar is going to happen with lemmy if reddit keeps caving in to Elon
Na, we are a reduct... it's a miracle we are on indexed web*
*/j
Good with some competition. We need much more in that area.
What a bunch of dumbasses
I find it odd that people follow Jack Dorsey into another sewer in troves. They seem to like the previous Twitter experiment, while I find it repugnant.
The lesson today is that I don't get the social media phenomenon. My bad. I hope they have a ton of fun.
Jack Dorsey has no involvement in Bluesky. He doesnt even have a Bluesky account.
He was the founder… I did not know he had left.
Jack Dorsey is not part of Bluesky, maybe you don't get things because you don't pay attention.
He's already gone. But, regardless, why sign up for yet another corporate social media site when every single one of them becomes enshittified after a few years. Are they just planning to abandon Bluesky eventually too? Or just hoping that this time it's different?
You say that as if any Mastodon instance was guaranteed to last several years.
The difference is that you can easily move to another Mastodon instance, and it's designed so that when you do that your followers / followees come with you.
Except you can’t move your posts. Or, really, anything other than followers.
True, and this is something that Bluesky actually seems to do better. Your posts are stored in a "PDS" (personal data store), so in theory they're not tied to any particular instance.
I hope that a future version of the Fediverse design / ActivityPub considers how to handle this issue. Still, I'd much rather lose my past posts than lose my social graph. Past posts can probably be archived, but it's much harder to track down people you used to be mutuals with on a different account and follow each-other.
I didn't like Twitter as a social platform, but I did use it a lot for news on current events, such as how is the traffic on my route home, and why am I stuck in traffic, and how many miles ahead of me is the fucking accident?
Handy for communication during some kind of emergency that floods the phone network, but that's pretty niche. Anyway, I interact a little on Bluesky but mostly it's just a time killer like TikTok or whatever. Twitter was super easy to quit between the Musk take over and moving away from DC.
Any maps app, especially Google Maps, would do this as well.
Eh... what I really wanted to know was when they are going to clear the wreck and whether that stupid mother fucker died so I shouldn't flip them off as I drive by. Can Google Maps tell me that?
I didn't really want to out myself as the asshole wishing for someone's death. But here we are.
1/10th the US population! Fantastic!
Im one of them
Sounds disgusting
It didn’t say anything except share some stats. What part of that was disgusting?
That that many people are willing to hop on another VC funded platform.
The average person doesn't care about that and large scale development cost money. It doesn't really bother me either if it's being run respectfully and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until it's not.
I agree with you, the number/the rise of users on such platforms makes me feel sick. There literally is a built, proven, & running alternative. The difference is what, "the onboarding process" which instance to choose if you wanna post & vote?
You mean the alternative where a random person decides what people you’re allowed to interact with?
Are people running megacorps not random persons deciding what you can view or not, but with extra wealth concentration?
And the beauty of federation is that the process is (and is evolving ever more into) a bit more democratic with easier transitions or irrelevancy of what your home fedistan is.
With megacorps you don't have even the theoretical option, you can just move to an entirely new platform.
This is why we need social networks where you can choose your moderation independently of your instance. And Mastodon is not that. I’m not sure if Bluesky is.
Why would Bluesky be?
It has a responsibly to its owners to maximise profit.
So they will block & force-promote just like any Twitter or Facebook.
And what is *self-moderation*? The block function? Or like choosing your interests (like subscribing to tags/channels/instances)?
Always reminds me that George Carlin was right
Decentralized FOSS socials are great technical achievements but I feel like the actual product that users will interact with are worse copy cats of already established social platforms. Mastodon is a Twitter clone, Lemmy is a reddit clone, peertube is a youtube clone. I love these FOSS/decen. platforms but the frontend that users actually interact with are just copies of already popular platforms, just with another backend. What innovative FOSS/decen. social platforms exist? Not talking about the backend but the user experience.
Man, people love Left wing Gab.
The need to give everything a political stance these days is maddening and IMO very divisive.
When Bluesky was first launched in February 2023, it was an invite-only beta that required an invite code to register. Several prominent influencers and celebrities, including Breadtuber Twitch streamers were given referral codes to share with their audience. As a result, these codes were kept within these leftist spheres. So the user base is mainly Left wing. All I'm doing is calling spade a spade.
Oh it's very left, the whole open web seems to lean that way. I just find it silly and not much different from what they claim right wing platforms to be. When I go out into the world social spaces aren't left or right and for the most part we all get a long cordially. Bad eggs notwithstanding.