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For Bluer Skies: Bluesky as a Viable Alternative to X
(statecraft.beehiiv.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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So tired of hearing about this platform that, afaiu, is barely even federated and not really decentralized. Why the hype when fedi exists?
Because people are using it
A very vocal minority is using it, and only because Musk changed the moderation rules on X. Otherwise Twitter was as shit as it has ever been
fediverse is great but it's not for the general public, sadly.
this is the only argument repeated and no one ever comes up with exactly how it's not for the general public, only that it isn't.
and don't say algorithms. the general public constantly laments about how algorithms have ruined everything.
There are a lot of reasons why. Mastodon apps are not pretty. The logo is not attractive. The signup where you need to pick the server for some reason is confusing. The reputation Mastodon already has among the general public, that it's the place for Linux enthusiasts, is not doing it any more favors.
You say that the algorithms have ruined everything but it's just not true. Discoverability is dead on Mastodon. The platform doesn't suggest me any new people to follow. The vocal minority against the recommendation algorithms is just that, a vocal minority. Recommendations are useful if they are not obtrusive.
I've been trying to keep my Mastodon account active for two years and I've been posting some random shit the same way I did on Twitter. I've been looking for some fun idiots but there are none, it's all uptight serious people who are honestly pretty insufferable to read. I deleted my Mastodon account half a year ago and the one thing I appreciate is how easy it was — just a couple of clicks and you're done.
And most importantly - there isn't millions of dollars spent to market it to people. You have to go out of your way to learn about Mastodon or federation in general, and as you say, their reputations precede them.
I use both. I've been on Mastodon for the better part of a year and only actively tried Bluesky the last couple weeks. My Bluesky feed is thriving, whereas Mastodon not so much. IMO this is due to Mastodon is missing the major quality of life features of Bluesky.
These things make Bluesky very easy to get started with and more powerful even than Xitter was. It's simply a better product if you have any requirements other than federation. Getting a good feed up and running doesn't take more than an hour or two. Mastodon is a lot more work.
Yes, its federation is more or less bullshit, but for most users, that feature is a distant priority when compared to the rest.
You can dead name Twitter. People will know what you're talking about haha.
I tend to use Twitter if I'm talking about the pre-Musk infused flavor and Xitter for the Musky turd flavor. Since we must compare features to the now-existing platform, I used the new naming convention ;-).
In almost every thread where this has come up, people have gone into extensive detail about why.
There are a number of you either missing or ignoring it. Which I guess is why the comment sections for these articles are always almost exactly the same.
The reason given is always about features that already exists.
No it's not.
Enlighten me.
Here are some:
The average person is tech illiterate, so having them understand what a "federated platform" is, is too much to ask. It may be easy for you or me, but we're here on Lemmy, so that immediately makes us not the average.
The average person also doesn't care what a federated platform is. They just want something that is convenient and works. Same as the above point; maybe we would be willing to sit down and figure things out, but others will consider that a waste of time and makes something bad.
In that sense, federated platforms are a major failure, as picking instances and creating accounts is a hassle rather than a convenience.
From personal experience, trying to find a Mastodon instance to make an account on was irritating. Some rules were too restrictive, some rules were too vague, other rules looked like they were created for sensitive little snowflakes. It was like reading through the rules of Discord servers. Not a good look for a social media platform.
Something like Bluesky tries to be both; a platform without algorithms (or only user-created algorithms that you can choose to subscribe to), where you can make your own instance or just be part of its centralised instance. The fact that the overwhelming number of people choose the latter should tell you enough about what people want.
Whether a platform is federated or not is an abstract and irrelevant question to most users. It's like telling a typical end user that their hardware architecture is big-endian or little-endian. In terms of their usage, it makes no difference.
Some UI improvements and simple affordances could make a bit difference to those barriers.
It's like the idiots on Facebook complaining that every image was generated by AI. (I have elderly relatives, FB's the only easy way to keep in touch with them).
Right, right. Much the same way the American public complains that fast food has ruined their health and yet 2/3 of the nation is overweight. Or how chain smokers know full well their lungs are fucked six ways to Sunday but they keep reaching for those nicotine hits. It's almost like people say they hate the things they continue to reach for all the time. Funny, that.
Do I think the Fedi is reasonably within the grasp of understanding for most of the general public? Sure. But do I think anything on the Fedi stands a ghost of a chance in competition against centralized services that cater to the dopamine rush people are already conditioned to expect and continue to reach for even when several of them claim to hate it? Oh fuck no, absolutely not.
If they're is anything my we've learned from this last election cycle, it's that the general public will trade superior and nuanced for inferior and simple every single time.
Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public
I mean, yes, addiction is hell of a drug? Doesn't necessarily mean it's what users crave, just why they keep coming back for more. But users used to come back for genuine content too, before algorithms were built to optimize ragebait engagement for maximum advertisement profits.
Yes. And they do come back for more. A lot more. More than "genuine content" ever made them do. It is very much the intended effect, and it is demonstrably working as intended.
So why is it that when a platform like Bluesky does gangbusters while Mastodon languishes looking to pick up table scraps, people here treat it like a wild mystery?
The Fediverse is a cure to an addiction very few people actually want cured; at least, based on their actions taken to solve it. That's how addictions work. Even people who recognize the harm and say they want out actively choose to not get out when presented an exit.
The Fediverse would succeed if it was the only choice. But in a head-to-head competition with a competently-built centralized platform that dabbles in all the trapping features its predecessor did, it's severely outmoded.
Because the general public is fucking stupid and Lemmy requires a bare minimum level of intelligence to understand
Because there's VC money behind it.
Talkin' 'bout the placebo syndrome.
Because Bluesky is less evil than X. At least for now.
Bcuz fedi ass
says the person on fedi
I got banned from Reddit. I had no choice
what for?
Basically, a group of black users were being racist to white individuals by making a bunch of generalizations, so i wanted to point out the hypocrisy by making an obviously racist generalization of my own. I commented, "All black people are disgusting", and was rightfully called out, but the irony was that they were doing something pretty similar calling white people colonizers and other things like that.
The result? I got mass reported and banned, and due to Reddit's inability to identify nuance in comments, my appeals were all for naught.