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.
“There’s no chance this leopard will eat my face.”
–Migrating Journalists, probably
Well, it’s not like it’s the exact same dude who sold the old platform to fascists last time, right?
“He’s said he’s sorry, and he’s not going to do it again. You’ll see. He’s changed.”
Bluesky is a registered public benefit company and Dorsey is no longer with the company and no longer on the board.
Phew … then we can trust the open software that is locked to one company and one instance essentially leaving control to a handful of people.
What could go wrong?
Open AI changed to a for profit company in a heartbeat and these folks can too.
More worrying is who owns them and their funding sources.
Im kinda pissed about this ngl. The enshitification of twitter was supposed to drive mastodon not another corporatised shithole.
Sure, but instances / servers confuse most average users. We see this every single time there is a new big migration wave. People don’t get it, then bail.
It’s wild that no one ever had a problem with this with email and yet this is apparently so confusing they abandon it.
This analogy gets used a lot here, but it ignores the fact you literally see users struggling, asking for help, then giving up.
Also, email had a lot of things helping it out. Many ISPs would (and still) give people an email address and set it up for them. Moreover, mail web clients like Hotmail and Gmail didn’t pester people with domain selection. Average users didn’t pick a Hotmail or Gmail domain because they were thinking about the domain, they got it because they were thinking about the features that the web client and host offered.
It’s wild that no one ever had a problem with this with email
Do you work in IT? I couldn’t imagine sitting there trying to guide people through IMAP and SMTP settings. Like email has been made a lot easier on that end because most people use an app on their phone that allows them to select from one of the three major providers, they click it, poof all done.
But imagine someone calls you up and is like “hey how do I setup mutt for gmail?” “How do I set up Canary for Microsoft?”
Then imagine someone who has 1/10 of your knowledge trying to set it up. We have to remember that a lot of people are unaware of the file/folder metaphor in computers because a lot of people just “put it in a cloud” and call it done. The tablet/phone era has really eroded a lot of knowledge about systems. I know that seems hard to believe on the Fediverse when we’re all surrounded by incredibly knowledgeable people.
You don’t have to deal with being sent links to other people’s mail servers’ public mail lists, and then figuring out how to get your own mail server to figure out how to join that conversation. Mailto links open in your mail client which already knows what your server is.
Mastodon don’t have a mailto: equivalent, pages can’t identify themselves in a way your browser recognize as a Mastodon host, your browser won’t remember your Mastodon account(s) specifically. And federation sync issues aren’t even dealt with here…
Email is not the same, if it was, then mastodon would just be another email client.
One of the biggest issues with federated social media is discovery, a specific problem that email doesn’t deal with, sense communication with email is primarily done between individuals with known addresses.
It’s also easy for people to comprehend email because it has an easy analog to regular addresses and traditional communication (I’m writing a letter on my computer and it’s getting sent to someone else’s computer)
Finally, it took email decades to get to the place it is today, and 99.99999 percent of people using it don’t understand how it works in the slightest, like at all.
Wont happen until mastodon makes on boarding easy enough for the tech illiterate.
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.
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:
- Respects their email/username sign up choice
- Related to their interests
- Respects their nsfw choice
- Is defederated from extreme instances for dont show me extreme opinions hexbear lemmy.ml etc 4.Respects the load any individual instance can handle that the instance admin can configure.
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”
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.
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.
- Is clicking the big “Join” (the default server) on joinmastodon.org really that big of a hurdle?
- Is a firehouse home feed required to engage users from the start?
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?
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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
Never going to happen. You’re in the company of the people who have been saying “year of the Linux desktop!” for three decades or more.
We used to be <1% we are now up to about 4%. We are on the slow lead in to the exponential curve.
Lots of that is the steamdeck, so it’s a bit hard to say if even that lackluster improvement means actual Linux OS usage past “platform for an app that users dont leave.”
This sort of thing will keep happening unless the FOSS world learns to treat designers as equals. Mastodon is significantly harder to get going. Simple things like on-boarding and starter packs make BlueSky a better experience.
So you are saying go to the thing that has been shit for years over the thing that isn’t shit yet because that second thing may become shit in the future?
I think Mastodon needs to adopt a flying animal as its logo and make its theme blue and white
Better summary: Biased journalists bitter their ideas don’t get traction where everyone isn’t holed up in an echo chamber so they blame racism and homophobia while migrating to a platform run by the same corrupt garbage, but its BLUE garbage.
If you’re still federated you’re doing it wrong.
Twitter was always toxic.
