Technology

We can stop talking about after we've destroyed it

I Set up the content filter with „Elon“ and „musk“ which significantly reduced it. Now it’s just posts like these that remain. Can’t recommend enough!

Content filters! I've got them for Trump, Elon, "Slammed", "Dragged", "Blasted" and the question mark, because news headlines in the form of questions can almost always be answered with the word "no" and are not worth my time.

Bluesky is being run by a funded professional startup team and is aimed at the masses. Mastodon is run by activists and software devs and brings in other like minded folks.

I use both. I've been on Mastodon for the better part of a year and only actively tried Bluesky the last couple months. 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.

• Add lists
• Subscribable block lists
• Custom subscribable topic feeds
• Optional recommendation engine

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.

1. That was part of the reason. I tried explaining Pixelfed to my photographer dad and he completely lost interest when I mentioned instances and equated them to e-mail providers. Non-technical people don't like having to understand a technical aspect, and the nature of federation can't be avoided.

2. Keep in mind that these are the people who stayed on Twitter after it was infested by the musk. They're leaving because it's turned into a dogshit service, not because of any kind of moral stance. They won't choose one service over another because it's libre or decentralized or community-operated. They'll flock to one that has a low entry barrier and high population.

3. Speaking of which: Bluesky is where the people are. The merits of a social media provider are worthless if it has a fraction of the population of a direct competitor.

Bluesky offers better access to the content people want with less effort. Mastodon was always going to lose that battle.

I think that's a good part of it, to be honest. Plus I think also helps that Bluesky's handles look visually less confusing and unusual than the conventional double @ sign for the fediverse

@user.bsky.social vs @user@bsky.social

Plus other things like having starter packs

That’s exactly it. People are bad at tech and do not understand it. If you even give them an additional option, this may confuse a tremendous amount of people enough to simply lose interest.

Also helps it was created by Jack Dorsey.

Its also able to pay for advertising and marketing

I think it was mostly that Mastodon wouldn't send referer headers.

So when people look at where their traffic comes from, 50% would be unknown, 20% would be Twitter, 10% would be Bluesky, and most importantly, Mastodon would never show on that report.

(Numbers made up and inaccurate.)

But if Elonjet is in Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/elonjet.net

He “lost” about 75% value of twitter, from $44bn to $10Bn Musk is worth ~$440Bn.

That’s like a normal person with $50k invested losing about $3500 on a stock. You’ll notice it. But it doesn’t change your day any.

(Dunno about the math, might be off)

Elon is teasing about offering an email service on X... why would anybody give him access to all of your private information?

It just occurred to me that the reason I don't remember those events, and have no basis to compare, because I had already left the platforms. Same for Digg.

I deleted my personal and business Twitter account the day Musk took over.