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src/posts/2024-12-08-mastodon-vs-bluesky.md

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+---
+title: Why Bluesky is running circles around Mastodon
+description: Recently, the question of why Bluesky was gaining significantly more traction than Mastodon from yet another Twitter exodus came up again. I used to ask myself the same question, so I went digging.
+image:
+  src: https://cdn.sebin-nyshkim.net/-ot2jxWCtxH
+  alt: An upset Mastodon logo next to a group of people talking, with one person jumping out from the group with a Bluesky logo on its head giving the Mastodon logo a big, indifferent thumbs up
+  credit: Made with GIMP
+  width: 1200
+  height: 630
+  type: 'image/png'
+tags: ["mastodon", "fediverse"]
+---
+
+{{ description }}
+
+That question usually gets asked in tech-centric circles where nobody can meaningfully answer or it's agreed upon rather hand-wavingly that it must be *the usual reasons.*
+
+So I took it upon myself to ask the question on, well, [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/sebin-nyshkim.net/post/3lbzac2x5oc2l). I got about the responses I thought I would:
+
+* Didn't grasp the federation concept
+* Onboarding isn't a smooth experience
+* Finding an instance to one's needs is a chore
+* Signing up for the "wrong" instance isolates you from your peers
+* Lack of content
+* Lack of familiar people
+* Mostly just IT related discussions
+* Difficulties to connect to other interest groups when communities don't overlap
+* Little to no traction on posts
+
+Mastodon[^mastosimple] is a different beast from all the other social medias out there, so there is a learning curve involved. That learning curve involves navigating a confusing maze of technical terms and feature pitches that miss the mark in terms of relevance to the average internet browsing people.
+
+[^mastosimple]: I use Mastodon as a short-hand for simplicity to mean the wider microblogging Fediverse software cosmos, e.g. Pleroma, Iceshrimp, Misskey, etc.
+
+It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Not many non-tech people sign up for Mastodon, so there's not much actionable feedback from them on how to make it more approachable to most people, hence the platform is largely steered in a direction the tech-savvy people want it to go.
+
+And that would be totally fine, if it weren't for these Mastodon users that keep asking that question as if to imply Mastodon is the *inherently* better choice.
+
+Because it isn't. Far from it.
+
+## Choice Paralysis
+
+You see, when Musk bought Twitter, it was the perfect opportunity for Mastodon to get people on board. Mastodon was the only somewhat established alternative around, so people went to check that one out.
+
+What they found was something very different from what they were used to. The biggest hurdle was (and still seems to be) where to even sign up. Mastodon users kept reiterating: "Just sign up anywhere, it doesn't really matter."
+
+Except, it does.
+
+To prevent users from harm and harassment, instance admins often outright block or mute the [mastodon.social](https://mastodon.social/) instance over concerns of its lackluster moderation. When an instance is blocked (or "defederated"), no cross-instance communication of any kind can take place. When an instance is only muted, communication across instances is still possible, albeit in a more shielded way, i.e. follows from the instance in question will always have to be approved by users, replies are not shown in the notifications by default and search results do not include posts and user accounts from that instance.
+
+That means if some of your friends happen to sign up with that instance because they didn't know any better, you will never really know they're even around. That's a decision that is made for you and there's not much recourse except making a new account on another instance, that doesn't block the instance you want to be able to communicate with. That entails reading over the blocklist of every instance you might wanna sign up with, but then it will probably block others and the whole dilemma starts over. That is *a hell of a lot* to ask of someone who doesn't care about any of this and just wants the hell off of Twitter.
+
+You also mustn't sign up for big instances. Mastodon users will want you to sign up with smaller instances, so the overall network becomes more resilient in case one of them blows up. The point is warranted, because it's not the first time a big instance with thousands of users has gone offline for good (more on that later). They'll have you know federation will make it all work, as if it's a topic that comes up in every-day conversation and is inherently understood.
+
+The benefits of Mastodon's federated approach are not as immediately apparent as its users think. The often cited email analogy also certainly didn't help, as most people do not use email for active communication anymore. What email is to most people nowadays, is an inbox full of unread messages they'll just let pile up. Saying "Mastodon is like email" does make sense *technically*[^mastoemailtech], but it doesn't evoke the same mutual understanding about the overall network that Mastodon users think it does. It all goes back to how Mastodon's user base is heavily tech-savvy and they care a lot about conveying the basics of it in a way that satisfies other tech-savvy people. It's a disservice to Mastodon and causes more miscomprehensions than it solves[^mastoemail].
+
+[^mastoemailtech]: Mastodon (or rather, [the Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse) and its underlying protocol [ActivityPub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub)) is built not unlike email in the way messages between instances are exchanged under the hood, hence the email analogy checks out on a technical level.
+
+[^mastoemail]: A better way to describe this to non-tech people would probably be how single-sign on with Google/Facebook/Twitter works. It's one account and it allows you to be signed into one service to access multiple ones. Just without the privacy implications. Or hell, call it "inverse Discord", one account, all the servers. Anything is better than using email as an analogy because you let yourself get hung up by nerdy semantics!
+
+Then there's the app situation. Mastodon being open source software means an ecosystem can easily form around it to make it usable in native apps for any platform imaginable. Independent apps for Mastodon were available long before an official Mastodon app was [launched in 2021](https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/30/22602275/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-official-ios-app-launches) on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. The network itself has been around [since 2016](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network)). "Use any app you like," they would say. "But not the official one. That one is *bad!*"
+
+Mastodon users were quick to point out, that the official app was lacking in what they felt were core features of the network. The lack of access to local and federated timelines got frequently cited as reasons to use any other app[^mastotimelines]. I remember a ton of posts that were attempting to guide new users on how to get the most out of the network whenever there was an influx. But it was also Mastodon users assuming a lot about the technical prowess of people just coming from Twitter — a site that only had one server and one app — and their tolerance to technicalities of a network that, from their perspective, still needed to prove itself fit for their needs. The apps that were recommended also were of varying quality. If they are even still maintained[^mastoapps].
+
+[^mastotimelines]: I don't think I've ever really checked out the local or federated timelines for long because they're just chaotic and insanely noisy. So the argument could be made that that's the official app actually shielding new users from an onslaught of noise and potentially undesired content they're not prepared for.
+
+[^mastoapps]: [Furry Fediverse](https://furryfediverse.org/) still lists [Megalodon](https://github.com/sk22/megalodon) as a Mastodon client for Android, an app that didn't have an updated release since 2023 and has been archived as of 2024. Its successor is [Moshidon](https://github.com/LucasGGamerM/moshidon). I've seen user reviews on the Google Play Store conflate Moshidon as "stolen" code from Megalodon, because of their stark visual similarities and feature set. Moshidon is a fork of Megalodon, which itself is a fork of the official Mastodon app. But these things aren't immediately apparent to non-tech people and it's unrealistic to expect that deep an understanding from them.
+
+The biggest issue however is and always was the network effect. People join a social network to keep up-to-date with friends they already know and the issues I described earlier are big hurdles for people to join. And even if people joined they are left with a lot of questions that either go unanswered, the answers provided are too technical and incomprehensible or they get a backhanded comment that that's not how things work on Mastodon.
+
+Now, you might say, "What's the matter? It's not that different from Twitter. You post, you boost, you like. It's pretty similar."
+
+## Rules and Regulations
+
+If the broader Mastodon user base would only *let* it be that easy. They frequently betray a certain ignorance of the realities of actual people's online habits and expect them to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of how the established Mastodon user base uses the service.
+
+A friend of mine, who is a freelance artist, sums it up as follows:
+
+> Mastodon is quite militant and aggressive in their inclusion policies. They feel like they insist on talking on behalf of those with special requirements, which often times feels a little too presumptuous for their own good, up to policing uploads with an unwieldy list of requirements to ensure absolutely every potential offence your post could possibly make can be filtered out (including but not limited to - eye contact, potential personal space violations, certain abrasive colour choices and then your more typical things like porn, kink etc. 
+> 
+> You are incentivised to use alt text on both platforms, but Mastodon's requirements feel like you must provide a picture essay to ensure those hard of sight can enjoy the picture too. It wouldn't be such a bad thing if all that work paid off in real interaction and engagement with said work, but it seldom ever did (for me.)
+> 
+> The hashtag system in both eat into your text box, but again, Bluesky allows you to use simple tags to make sure your art gets to at least a few places you want it to be. Mastodon, on top of the exhaustive alt texting, wants tags to be filterable such that — as mentioned before — any potential offence can be avoided. There's simply far too much pre-emptive apology for my tastes.
+
+Mastodon users are quick to instruct you to add alt text on attached media, without really specifying how detailed it should be. Accessibility gets cited a lot as the reason, but I've yet to see a visually impaired user come forth and complain about missing alt text. It's almost exclusively sighted users talking for visually impaired people.
+
+Same with CWs (content warnings). Seemingly innocuous things are subject to self-censorship, e.g. among other things photos of food (people with eating disorders), images with people — real or drawn — making eye-contact with any potential viewer (neurodivergent people), seeking financial aid ("begging") or self-promotion (live streams).
+
+Posting to Mastodon is anything but simple. Something that should come as easy as talking to someone on the street becomes a walk on eggshells with an unwieldy list of rules and regulations on what constitutes acceptable post policy.
+
+If users on Mastodon want their little cove on the internet, that is totally fine. They pride themselves on the freedom of choice to connect, that is, choosing who they want connecting with them. But there's one big thing that really rubs me the wrong way about the ways they conduct themselves.
+
+## Pearl-clutching Galore
+
+Mastodon users can't seem to make up their mind if they want people to join or not.
+
+What I mean by that is any time there's some sort of user migration and the choice doesn't fall on Mastodon, there's almost always great indignation along the lines of:
+
+* "How can't they see that this will end badly for them?"
+* "Have fun in your new corporate silo…"
+* "Can't help loving corporate social media kool-aid, huh?"
+* "Bluesky is just cosplaying federation."
+
+First of all, that's assuming a lot about what people want and how much they even know about all of this stuff, or even care for that matter.
+
+The underlying systems and protocols are of *no importance to regular people.* At the end of the day, people want something that works and that doesn't require a comprehensive technical understanding of what makes it tick. The whole argument of whether something does "true federation" or is run by a corporation when trying to convince people to join Mastodon is irrelevant and pointless. The average Mastodon user really struggles coming to terms with the fact that most people do not care about these things because they're neither IT nerds nor privacy advocates. It just gets in the way when it should ideally be completely transparent.
+
+It's not that people love corporate social media so much. It is highly likely that the reason is much simpler: People had a decision to make, chose the one that had the lowest barrier to entry and most of the people they know were headed and then stayed for the vibe.
+
+The barrier to entry for Mastodon is high, nobody they know is there and if you stay long enough the vibe is extremely off.
+
+![Condolence card reading: With Sympathy on your new Bluesky/Threads account. Our deepest condolences on the inevitability painful realization that your expectations were not informed by past evidence.](https://cdn.sebin-nyshkim.net/-WgVbSeHyaD "The \"Condolences\" Mastodon users expressed for people joining Bluesky and Threads instead of Mastodon")
+
+The way anything remotely corporate is not only frowned upon, but actively despised. The way users of other platforms are constantly ridiculed and made the target of spite begs the question if the average user base on Mastodon has the emotional intelligence and self-awareness of a sponge[^mastodig]. I hate what the internet has become under the corporate leadership of pump & dump scheme Silicon Valley as much as the next guy, but to imply that people are "too brainwashed" to make a "better informed" decision so it gives the invested Mastodon user a reason to pout to make them feel better makes them look like an immature child that didn't get the birthday present it wanted. But point that out to the larger group and be expected to be tarred and feathered by an angry mob because you dared question the sanctity of Mastodon's noble principles.
+
+[^mastodig]: Thought, that might be unfair to sponges.
+
+Mastodon die-hards are always quick to point out that Bluesky *might* go the way of The Bird, i.e. once the VC money dries up and they feel the pressure to be making money they're going to nickel and dime their user base, "just like Twitter!"
+
+That is a glasshouse argument if I ever saw one, because Mastodon instances have been shut down over [much less way quicker](https://web.archive.org/web/20230303095807/https://mastodon.lol/@jeanburgess/109837309981257160), with money not even being a factor[^mastolol]. Instance admins and moderators are all volunteers, investing their own time and money into running these things; for which they have my utmost respect. They're not the ones this addresses. The incident around mastodon.lol shows, however, that it also doesn't take much to bring down an entire instance by wearing out the admin until they go "fuck this shit, I'm out" and shut the whole thing down on short notice, because of a rabid, self-important, vigilante justice pitchfork mob.
+
+[^mastolol]: *mastodon.lol* blew up over disagreement about content moderation policies with regards to allowing/removing/banning content about [a certain video game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts_Legacy). There were slurs and other nasty recommendations of life choices being flung around by users demanding moderation (a single person) to take certain actions until that person caved under the pressure and the abuse. An entire Mastodon instance of 16,000 users. Gone. *Over content moderation disputes regarding a video game.* The boycott of which, by the way, having largely no if not the opposite effect. But now we have a Mastodon instance less to show for it, too. Good ***fucking*** job!
+
+And while Mastodon users will tell you it's easy to export your data and transfer it to new instances, they consistently fail to mention that you can only restore follower lists, [not the contents](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/1gosrxk/) you've been posting. You have to start over from scratch when you (have to) move, which is especially painful when you're trying to run a business or maintain a portfolio in the form of a backlog of posts[^mastoexport].
+
+[^mastoexport]: "Well then they should not use social media as a replacement for a portfolio!" If you thought that, congrats, you're missing the point. Not everybody has the time, money and know-how to maintain their own separate internet presence. A social media presence might be the only thing they ever had and it worked for them. Who're you to tell them they're wrong? Artists especially have to wear so many hats already that maintaining a whole-ass website is often just not in the cards.
+
+## Disenchanting Delusions
+
+Apart from the technical merits of decentralization, community-owned instances and the privacy aspect it all brings, Mastodon does not, and never did, have a unique selling point to offer to most people. At best it just didn't help them achieve their goal for what they tried to use it, at worst they've had an actively bad time. The average Mastodon user's insistence that the inherent qualities of their social media network explain away its shortcomings or outweigh the perceived shortcomings of any corporate offering, for that matter, hits the same notes as the open source enthusiast's insistence that Linux and open source software are inherently better than commercial software offerings, simply by virtue of being open source — and I don't think that comes as much of a surprise when you consider *who* the majority of the user base represents. And they're in charge.
+
+There's this weird tendency in FOSS circles to assume that because the mechanics and interactions of things are of interest and/or concern to *them*, they should be of interest and/or concern to *everyone*, and anyone who doesn't show interest and/or concern is an idiot who has been brainwashed in some sense. But this only ever seems to apply to products or services that involve computers.
+
+*[FOSS]: Free and Open Source Software
+
+I need both of these parties to understand something very basic: Given the choice between a tool that's immediately useful to achieve a certain goal, but conflicts with a person's ideologies, and a tool that's not as useful, but they agree with ideologically, the choice will almost always fall on the former.
+
+You won't sell people on merits that aren't important in their day to day.
+
+![Simpsons bus driver meme. He taps a sign that reads: You won't sell people on merits that aren't important in their day to day](https://cdn.sebin-nyshkim.net/-dM6mv9N5MT "Maybe it will stick better as a meme?")
+
+For the same reason we've still not arrived at end-to-end encryption being a standard in our daily communication, Mastodon is not the standard for social media. It offers a worse experience without offering a clear and concise reason how that is better than the thing that serves people's means of self-actualization right now.
+
+People shouldn't need to understand how the electrical grid works in order to operate a light switch for the same reason they shouldn't need to understand how every last bit of their computing devices work and all the implications therein in order to have an enjoyable experience sharing photos of their pets, art and game captures. As far as most people are concerned, it is as inconsequential where they do that as it comes. The only people making a big stink of it are on Mastodon.
+
+Tech being beyond most people's understanding does not reflect badly on them as a person. Belittling them for how they choose to connect to other people and express themselves, however, says more about you than it does about them.
+
+Rather than Mastodon users taking a look inward and coming to terms with the fact that the way Mastodon is run is actively failing everyone else, they're huffing and puffing, making up reasons why those people are either "blind", "ignorant", "drinking the corporate kool-aid", "helpless", "careless", "clueless", "brainwashed", or what have you, and indulge in the only coping mechanism they know at this point, perpetuated by an insular, exclusionary culture. All the consternation over people on other corporate social media platforms, not realizing their allegedly obvious pitfalls, is just digging the hole deeper and living in denial. Anything is better than having to admit to one's own vitriol-flinging behavior, because that requires admitting that you're wrong and have wronged other people; a character trait sorely missing in a lot of people that spout this nonsense.
+
+If Bluesky is an echo chamber ignorant of the dangers of corporate social media, Mastodon is an echo chamber full of self-righteous pricks, too full of themselves to realize the ignorance to their own behavior is putting off all the people outside of their tech- and privacy-centric bubble. The people who actually gave it a shot came to the conclusion that they don't want to deal with that smug superiority complex bullshit[^mastolinux].
+
+[^mastolinux]: I've seen both "Linux is the Mastodon of operating systems" and "Mastodon is the Linux of social media" as a testimony of how the involvement of seasoned users of both made the experience actively worse for people just taking their first foray into each. Let that sink in.
+
+There is a point to be made about corporate internet silos for sure, but if Mastodon users want to decry those and act like their social network's approach to breaking them up be the better solution, there better be a way implemented into the software directly for people on an instance to dispute which Fediverse instances get blocked and/or muted, because so far there is little to no recourse for them to do so, other than to approach instance admins directly. They call it moderation, I call it an overreaching, over-protective power-imbalance that pushes their ideologies and world views on everyone else in an attempt to protect people from external harm, but in doing so they have created yet another silo where people then have to put up with abuse from the inside[^mastosilo].
+
+[^mastosilo]: Sure, people could again switch instances or run their own that doesn't block certain instances, but, again, that's asking people who aren't mechanics to build their own car because they've expressed discontent with what's readily available to use. Not to mention federation being so incredibly clunky that when abuse *does* happen, it's dependent on instances being federated with one another for other people to even perceive it. It's like the very protocol of Mastodon is gas-lighting people.
+
+They're so preoccupied preventing abuse on a technical level, introducing friction that made it come easy elsewhere, that they've completely missed the mark on how not to obstruct genuine people's natural craving for connecting to one another. Rules and regulations, written as well as unwritten, make people so insecure to engage at all, out of fear for getting berated over simply doing it wrong, spamming too many hashtags, being very anti-engagement, anti-self-promotion, that the actual "social" part of a social media network gets nipped in the bud almost instantly. The constant berating of new users in and of itself is its own form of abuse, but nobody bats an eye about that, because they feel they have the norms of the network on their side to make it acceptable.
+
+Hell, *even I wanted to see Mastodon making it at some point,* but I'm beyond tired coming up with excuses why other people should suffer this absolute clownage. You don't get to complain with the many structural and societal problems entrenched in your culture and processes that turn off large swaths of people to your idea how social media should work when you don't also take steps to fix that shit.
+
+But that didn't happen in November 2022, when Mastodon actually would've had a chance at mainstream adoption, and it probably won't happen now when everyone has already decided the trade-offs Mastodon requires are not worth anybody's time when something simpler like Bluesky exists and people actually working towards making it an enjoyable ride. None of the previously outlined issues with Mastodon are easily fixable, because the people in charge don't see them as a problem, and it needs the existing user base of Mastodon to make compromises in how their network works which they likely will not want make.
+
+I'm [not the first one](https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt) to point out the shortcomings of Mastodon's approach to social networking, and I'm sure I won't be the last. I think the people on Mastodon are well aware that they have issues to sort out, but I also think I've seen enough of how the dynamics play out every time an opportunity to garner good-will presents itself that the community will work diligently to squander it, to the detriment of everybody.
+
+So you all can drop the act how you're baffled that people would choose the "wrong" side of internet history, *again.* You've demonstrated that your software, model and culture are unfit for what most people expect of a social media platform and you're unwilling to compromise on that. You'll stay the relatively small place lacking mass appeal. If that's what *you're looking for,* more power to you! But when you're even starting to [disenchant believers](https://akko.wtf/objects/a6f1ea29-8982-4acc-8e99-84ca1adfe532) in the cause, because the climate on the Fediverse grows ever more exclusionary, toxic and disdainful, I think you have different issues to sort out than explaining to people how decentralization should play a bigger role in their life and why they should care.
+
+The #TwitterMigration didn't fail because of people not joining, but because *the model and culture of Mastodon is its own worst enemy!* Bluesky gaining traction is honestly the least of your problems.