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Some people don’t want to hear this but Mastodon will never be mainstream without major changes. Even Mastodon users are all on other platforms. I’m not planning to go to Bluesky tho.
I’m not on any other platform except Lemmy and Mastodon. Well, I’m on Facebook but only to find events nearby and have been considering deleting it for a while.
Mastodon and Lemmy are better off not being “mainstream”. There’s a huge amount of crap that comes with being that.
It also has the network problem now. BlueSky quickly got the numbers because it was easy at the right time. It was perfect for the Xodus. Mastodon missed that window. It can get easier and sexier, but it missed that window and will need another.
I use Mastodon the exact same way I used Facebook and it works out great.
It’s just posts and updates on my life and projects, and it just works. Sometimes I get feedback, sometimes not.
Photo of a meal, my cat, projects, car repairs, shit I see around. It works fine.
I don’t understand why govt institutions don’t just band together and use one of their many already running servers and add a mastodon or similar instance, so they won’t ever need to worry about their shit being taken offline
Like, get all federal agencies and currently serving politicians to post on the govt-run mastodon, instead of bsky or xitter.
@Sunshine The EU commission is on mastodon though, over at @EUCommission :GigaChad:
Just a question here as I dont know Mastodont that well. But how do you do vertified accounts? Is there some federally elected institution that will vertify user who requires that sort of vertification? Because to me there is huge amount of fake accounts and copycats and it is as hard to check if they are real as it is to check the spam mail that came from a scamy address. I guess institutions don’t want to be on a platform full of copycats and constantly proving they are the official account. Among other things…
If institutions are hosting their instance themselves, then they are the verifying authority. It should not be that hard to have a .gov domain for a public institution.
You basically verify your account yourself, by adding a link to it on your website with
rel="me"HTML attribute.
In my opinion it’s not bad to have a diverse landscape with different options. I believe the best course of action for many institutions should be to use both of these options simultaneously. Any organisation with a social media, communications or other type of public relations team should be able to set up a crossposter easily enough.
In my opinion it’s not bad to have a diverse landscape with different options.
Not with Comms tools. We had this in the 90s with email and the various walled gardens like CompuServe and AOL. You couldn’t talk to your friends if they were on another system.
Mastodon is SMTP for micro logging. Different servers is fine, but they all need to talk to each other.
Lemmy is NNTP. It’s just the same thing reinvented 30 years later and lower latency.
But they don’t. Organisations seem to be unable or unwilling to have a presence on multiple sites, or at most they seem to choose either X+BlueSky or X+Mastodon
Every extra platform costs time to take care of.
@Sunshine Honestly, though, many of them should just be running their own instance.
If something can be bought, it cant ever be fully trusted.
It makes sense that they would go where the users are.
But not having a separate, European instance federated into the BlueSky network, that’s the real wtf.
What if I told you Bluesky federates just as well as WhatsApp does with XMPP.
Surely that’s a bit unfair to BlueSky.
From my brief lecture of the underlying protocol, public instances could exist and federate, it’s only that they become quite expensive to run if done right.
Federation with bluesky is just that technically theoretical. Creating a protocol that allows for federation is not enough
Stimulating others to federate by making it virtually impossible without only billions in the bank for zero profit sounds great 🤡.
It smells of
greenfederate washing. A way to point legislators/ populous that bluesky is different, really, I swear, trust me bro 🤡 .Instead of writing white papers Lemmy/Mbin/GoToSocial/jackal started with writing detailed documentation in how to run your own. In the scope of reality (not theory) 🤡
I’m not even going to pretend that BlueSky is more open than any Fediverse tool designed with federation in mind from the ground up. BlueSky is certainly not Mastodon or Lemmy, but it’s not Meta AI-pushing crap like WhatsApp either.
Let’s do a thought experiment. What if we would get a Wikipedia like NGO with proper funding setting up a EU based BlueSky instance? It won’t be the decentralized dream of Fediverse, perhaps, but it could still prove useful. I think Twitter was successful because of its unified, global reaching platform appeal, not in spite of it, and the fact that users flock to BlueSky tells me that appeal is still there. Having a bit more decentralization in that mix just makes it better, but Mastodon shows that decentralization is not sufficient to give a platform a wide appeal.
As context: I’m one of those people that donates annually to Wikipedia, but I have no interest or capacity in managing a decentralized federation server in my basement. Lots of kudos to the people that do!
I remember 2009
The future of technology was bright
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voice-and-video-chat.html?m=1
Instead of selling competing protocols, companies and non profits came together to talk together… so that we could too.
Honestly I’d be a lot less negative of bluesky if it added native ActivityPub.
XMPP was added back in the day to W3 internet standard, as ActivityPub has.
Ah, the “don’t be evil days”. I’m old enough to remember Jabber was a thing. We really took a hard right at some point, didn’t we? Technologically speaking, I’m not getting political.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a BlueSky fanboy either. Their implementation of DMs simply sucks from an open standards POV. I just think they deserve a bit more credit than Zuckersoft. A lot of people I admire are active over there, reason enough for me to stick around. But I’m not giving up on Lemmy either.
Just fyi, you need to use two tildes to for strikethrough. With only one tilde you get subscript.
Thanks 🙏
I still don’t understand what inherent appeal Bluesky has. Is it the familiarity? Maybe the delusional belief that corporations are the designated social media providers?
You don’t have to pick a server. You don’t have to pick a software (i.e Mastodon, Misskey, Chrrypick, etc). All likes and comments are actually shown when you view posts. When you search for something it actually comes up with results. It offers algorithms which believe it or not is a feature people want.
You don’t need to choose a server with bsky, that’s it. It’s just one big blob of everyone where no one really cares what kind of content or how often you post.
With Mastodon, you need to pick a server, and then there’s funny things like “oh, you haven’t posted for a while, we’re blocking your account” or concerns that the server you chose may decide you’re not fitting. That and mastodon.social wasn’t available to register for a while as I recall.
Add to that the fact that your instance may not be federated with whoever you’re trying to share stuff to. Meanwhile with bsky it’s just “do you have bsky yes or no”.
People care about ease of use way more than whether it’s corporate or not.
“oh, you haven’t posted for a while, we’re blocking your account”
Never heard of any mastodon instance doing that
I’ve had my accounts blocked like that a few times when Mastodon was relatively new. I guess it’s an instance-specific thing?
I don’t remember the exact instance any more, since I never went back there, but mastodon.social doesn’t seem to do that.
It’s instance specific. I’ve had a semi abandoned account in one of the NSFW instances since 2022, posted one or two comments, forgot it, remembered about it in 2024 and still logged in.
I know some instances will cull accounts that are 6+ months old with 0 posts, but that’s a different thing, too.
It’s easy to use
Disclaimer- I’m pretty new here. Just closed my account on blueshit again. Its getting worse and worse in my opinion. Massive echo chamber of US phsycosis- Mirror of X. Havent learned a single thing, entirely humourless. The only reason I keep trying again is for 2 accounts and one has disappeared. Anonymous is the remaining one. Closed mastadon too as i found myself looking at Lemmie first and spending longer lurking and clicking thru to links way, way more. It’s about content really I suppose. Little effort equals little reward but thats people for you I guess. I’m not looking for agreement but knowledge, info, perspective, open-mindedness & entertainment beyond US fluff. I have hope for Lemmie but can see much room for improvement, growth or development
I closed my account soon after I made one, for parallel reasons that you described here. I liked it for a short while because I am apart of the internet art community but it became an echo chamber too quickly. Lot’s of AI dumping and and memification, cringey “We are warriors/witches they couldn’t burn/etc”, no fruitful discussion or organizing for the US peeps, shaming those who aren’t doing exactly what someone else is doing, inner fighting, you name it. I think I just got on the wrong feed but it was pretty miserable and I ended up going back to forums for niche topics and then use lemmy and mastodon for general stuff. I’m waiting for the bubble to burst at some point.
I kept on breaking it too because of the limited number of good accounts to follow. I suppose that was my method- Not following larger accounts because of ppl reposting their stuff all the time so there’s really no need. No place for the interesting smaller accounts tbh. Probably something something algorithm. I did like Mastodon much more than Bluesky in terms of content and variety. US still doesn’t get there’s a whole world out there. Thanks for replying :)
Its unfortunate; I speak as a US-ian and the way we make echo chambers rather quickly is not only surprising but annoying. Like I have to make a solid effort to go beyond my enclosure and find more global media and people from all over, because if I’m not careful I’ll accidentally end up in one of the US bubbles and practically have start over to refresh it. One of the best parts of some of the communities I’m in is that they tend to be global, so I at least have that edge but I know for some it can be difficult for users to reach beyond what they know. They just tend to assume everyone they talk to is american.
Well put and I’m sure you directly benefit from your effort. Its not always easy in terms of peer groups is it? Ironically I went to try and follow you before realising thats not possible here- Right there is a real difference between here and mastodon et al… So its about “topic” rather than ppl- Interesting… So now I need to reactivate Mastodon to stay connected with you. I was using openvibe but there’s only options for BS, Mast & Nostre- was disappointed i couldn’t include Lemmie. There’s potential in this and seems a better fit to include Mastodon with Lemmie rather than Bluesky but thats probably my bias at work??? ;)
@Vimana @pinkfluffywolfie I think the appeal is other people who use Bluesky. High-profile Europeans want to interact with their peers from US. These are more likely to be on Bluesky than or Mastodon. (I don’t say there are no US people here, just fewer of the high-profile ones).
Plus, an obvious one for an institution: More European citizens use Bluesky than Mastodon at this point.
Having said that, I agree: FFS, the institutions should lead. At least post across platforms, including fedi.
You’re right of course and that’s understandable… For me thought, its always quality over quantity. Cant get away from its familiarity to those who were part of the Xodus
It’s simple kinda - one has a marketing team. Lots of wonders the power of spin and hype can do for you.
It has Democrat toxicity instead of Republican toxicity. And no Elon Musk. Which is like cleaner and often less stupid, sure, but for a european not very relevant.
And something something protocol cool cool much. Compared to Mastodon, it has similar algorithmic feeds that Twitter has, which depending on your viewpoint makes it just as bad as Twitter or just as useful as Twitter. This + lack of masses leads to nothing ever happening in Mastodon, or at least that it seems like it. In contrast, those algorithmic toxic wastelands like Twitter, Bluesky and Facebook especially always have something “new” happening in them. Even if it’s just AI slop, the dumb part of your brain gets happy about it.
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users. Mastodon seems to be a great case of Open Source and decentralized being so fervently followed that people ignore the absolute real problems with it thus ensuring it will never become any type of mainstream.
Actually trying to find interesting content on Mastodon is fuckin awful, bluesky learned what i liked and hands me new awesome artists pretty much daily. Combine that with the whole having to select an instance and remember how to use it and cross instance posting and blah blah blah and your average person is not even going to look at Mastodon
I have no issues finding content on mastodon, just search and follow hashtags.
And most people prefer content algorithms. Or maybe a better way of phrasing it would be they’re used to and expect content algorithms. Having to actively search for and follow topics is not only yet another hoop users have to jump through (good UX has as few steps as possible to get you where you want, a good chunk of users jumps ship at every step) it also requires that they know which hashtags are being used for the content they want to see beforehand, which might be difficult for you if you relied on content algorithms before.
Not only that have you seen user-generated content? There is absolutely no consistent tagging whatsoever. That is like the worst way to find things because everyone will tag things differently assuming they even tag it at all
Mastodon’s stance on the matter has been strongly opposed to algorithmic feeds
But thanks to ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon and Lemmy) there’s also Minds (warning contains cryptocurrencies) https://help.minds.com/hc/minds/articles/1694176102-feeds
Weird how a marginal effort immediately puts people off.
WALL-E and Idiocracy vibes…This is how society has always been I will continue to be. That is why your self-custody bitcoin wallet will never replace debit card and your non nerdy friends will never use Linux. The barrier of entry is the difference between mainstream and fringe.
The point being idiocracy is increasing with each generation.
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users.
This narrative is tired, particularly with Mastodon.
All open source projects that aren’t violently ruthless about pursuing profits are going to lag behind tech companies approaching social media from the perspective of a cigarette company that also is selling the capacity to rich interests to distort, artificially elevate or silence perspectives.
Should we all push for a more accessible fediverse? Of course, but what is your perspective bringing to the table that does anything other than restate the incredible material inequality in resources between the two things you are comparing?
On the contrary I think the UX of mastodon is impressively boring and functional compared to the ever enshittifying slop and paper thin future promises served up by multimillion and multibillion dollar social media companies.
And that is fine if you feel that way, but it’s not going to match the majority of people and it’s going to prevent the platform from ever achieving any type of mainstream status.
I personally do not agree with you, I find the ux to actually hinder usability. I do use Mastodon, because otherwise forming an opinion on it would be stupid. I regularly still struggle to find content I’m interested in on Mastodon, searching all the different instances is a pain. Hashtags are not adequate most content is never even tagged, even the stuff that is tagged might not be tagged in a way I expect because everybody tags things differently. This makes searching for Content I’m interested in very difficult.
I have to actually invest a pretty sizable amount of my time on Mastodon just trying to find something on Mastodon I want to interact with. Compare that with something like blue sky I open the app and the algorithm has already figured out what I like just from me liking stuff as it appears that I’m pretty much instantly greeted with a wall of nothing but stuff that I’m interested in in some capacity.
It’s coming from a corporation that just wants to make money but the end result is that they gave me something that I was actually interested in immediately without me having to jump through a bunch of Hoops and that’s just objectively a better user experience
I agree that the UI is largely functional first (with no bugs since I started using it, which is hella cool), but it’s a bit unfriendly to new users. For example, it breaks from convention when replying to a comment, and the themes need a better separation between posts, and it needs to expand on existing features. All it needs is a little TLC, but it’s been almost the same for over a year. I’ve only noticed subtle changes on Lemmy UI and none on Mastodon that have any impact.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to overly defend the Mastodon project in particular, I use Mastodon, I have for years but yeah there are lots of issues with it.
…but the difference between Bluesky and the Fediverse is that RIGHT NOW, ALREADY you can use a different microblogging software written and maintained by different people with different ideologies and different objectives that will still interact and interconnect with Mastodon pretty well most of the time. Not only that, but Mastodon (and I assume other microblogging fediverse softwares) already have multiple different themes and the customization options are simply up to how many people are willing to get their hands dirty… and the sense of customization isn’t a marketing bullet point it is a deeply held ideology that is expressed in the very architecture of the fediverse, Bluesky on the other hand can only gesture in the vague direction of these things without rocking the boat of venture capital investors too hard. They have not still as far as I am aware ruled out using ads, according to the CEO of Bluesky (which Mastodon doesn’t have a CEO notably).
Shoutout to the European Commission: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
Also: Court of Justice of the EU @[email protected]
These stopped being maintained in 2024 unfortunately:
- EU Food Safety Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EFSA
- EU Data Protection Supervisor https://social.network.europa.eu/@EDPS
- EU Space Program Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EUSPA
- EU Aid and Crisis response https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_ECHO
Junkie Elmo is the correct character to use here. Why do we crave enshitification so badly?
Because it’s good now, bad later. Junkies crave good now.
Because Money 🤑 And Profits 😎 And a new Yacht! 🏖
What’s that, you can’t afford groceries? Fuck off, poor.
I wish people appreciated lemmy more than mastodon
As long as we’re throwing fediverse wishlist items out there, I wish the Lemmy core developers/founders didn’t have such gross political views.
Yeah
I wish the Lemmy core developers/founders didn’t have such gross political views.
Which are? A link to a story or something will suffice.
They run lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, they claim to be Marxist-Leninist and communist, they have profile pictures of both Mao and Fidel Castro respectively. They seem like generally reasonable people on a personal level but they do a lot of apologism of awful regimes under the typical guise of “just asking questions” and “free speech” and frankly I have no patience left for that kind of garbage.
Is it a fact that they run lemmygrad also? I thought it was just some truly crazy people in there.
Yes, it was the second lemmy instance created, and their own wiki says it was created by Dessalines and he is active there.
You can look into mbin. I prefer it to lemmy, personally.
One person’s gross is another person’s based.
They probably do, but that just means that they hate Mastodon and have never heard of Lemmy.
Boomers are used to Twitter- and facebook-like platforms
I’ll say it again and again and again:
The fediverse is hamstrung by the need to choose a specific server.
I remember trying to help people join Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter. Every question I heard was about picking a server.
What’s a server?
Why do I have to pick a server?
How do I pick a server?
Then there were the more thoughtful questions.
What happens if the server I chose goes down?
What happens if someone chooses the same user name as mine on a different server?
Mastodon, Lemmy, etc. won’t get mainstream traction until someone solves this simple hurdle.
The first time someone told me about mbin/lemmy, I had that exact issue and just gave up on it for a few months. This is especially true as there doesn’t really exist any account migration (nor, probably, can there be one without any kind of centralized auth server or the like). I finally did move over, but two of the instances I used just shut down, one with basically no warning.
And they don’t even say server but “instance”. Like need special words to keep the unwashed out.
@DemBoSain @Sunshine
I think that a part of the “server hurdle” can be solved - at least for brand new users - by initiatives like the Vivaldi Social network.New to Vivaldi? Nice - welcome. Would you like to join Mastodon? Register here. Boom.
If people have heard about Mastodon and are curious about it, this is the easy way to get them hooked. No talk about servers or instances - you register and you are off to the races.
How this all plays into the decentralized nature of the Fediverse and who is going to fund those servers is a different question - but it is definitely the easiest gateway for new users (as you can see, I was one of them).
@DemBoSain @Sunshine you’re like my dog on walkies.
What’s a tree?
Why do I have to pick a tree?
How do I pick a tree?
What happens if the tree I pick suddenly moves?
What happens if there’s already another dog at that tree?Jokes aside — as long as people desperately try to see problems where there in fact aren’t any, people will have problems.
And no, explaining the fediverse to newcomers isn’t a problem. Never was, unless people wanted it to be, so they have an excuse to join bluesky.
First of all, please read my comment again. These aren’t my comments, these are questions from other people. I have a Mastodon account. I’ve had one since Musk bought Twitter, and the one I have now isn’t my original. Because I moved servers and didn’t have a problem doing that.
Second, grow up. You’re ridiculing people who have used Facebook since it opened up to non-students. And some of these are valid concerns. For some people they’re deal-breakers, and they should be addressed of we want the fediverse to grow.
I keep hammering home: instance doesn’t matter when you start. It’s more important for you to join. Once you join, you’ll figure out the instance and then you can switch.
Can you though? You’ll lose all your data, your posts, your liles, your comments, your curated list of communities and usually also your Username. People don’t like giving up their entire existence just because they made a wrong choice in the beginning.
This is the position of migrating social medias in the first place though.
Which is why it’s such a hurdle for those that get attached. They don’t want to go through that again with no notice.
