There are a lot of people I follow who moved to Mastodon, that now appear to have moved to Bluesky (I’m seeing posts on there from people I know used to post on Mastodon).

I’m not sure why. If I move over it’ll be because everybody else is there. At the moment I’m not using it much.

I’m only on the fediverse but I miss algorithms. Recommended accounts (which to be fair exists on a corner of Mastodon), similar accounts to one you just followed, custom home feed, suggested posts, etc. Discoverability sucks on fedi and the lack of interest from devs for some sort of private FOSS implementation is disappointing.

Loops was like let’s have a “For You” algo early this year but even that seems to be a dead idea.

People love corporations

Threads was because if you had an Instagram account it ported over.

Bluesky was the Twitter clone made by the old Twitter CEO.

Most people didn’t have a problem with Twitter being a corporation, they had a problem with the new owner of the corporation making the experience terrible with his new changes.

Valid question, but Americans in particular are easily swayed by the fact that the corporate ownership is listed as a “Public Benefit Corporation.” Bluesky is a PBC and for most people that’s enough “proof” that they will “be for the public good.”

In that it is set up to “benefit the public good” people just… buy into that, even if the company isn’t actually benefitting the public good.

Look at how long it took for people to wise up that the Susan G. Komen foundation was spending most of its money on their CEOs and ads and very little on actually helping people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Pinkwashing

For the general public, Open Source generally means “difficult to set up and use with bad user interface.”

And yes, the whole self-hosting thing with numerous servers is confusing to people who have never had to step outside of the corporate-dominated internet.

All that is self-evident based on the original reddit exodus to here on Lemmy. The initial exodus lead to tons of people complaining about lack of features on Lemmy with very few people actually stepping up to contribute to the code-base to bring those features to light. They’re just far too used to private company doing all that “for free” (*cough for all your private data cough) and struggle to understand how the different way it is set up means you don’t get all the fancy features from the get-go.

So people saw an option with corporate sponsorship and money behind it, and they leap to that. Also I’m sure Bluesky is investing in advertising their product, which is competing with zero advertising dollars spend on the no-corporate fediverse.

People dumb.

“Everyone”? I know exactly zero people that have admitted to having a Bluesky account, but I know plenty that have an Mastodon etc. one.

I think this is at most a very regional or specific user bubble thing, and official user numbers for these commercial services are never trustworthy.

Fediverse sounds too much like metaverse so people assume it’s crypto bullshit

My personal opinion is that it was:

• Easier signup
• A wider variety of opinions… Fediverse imo is known for tankies and progressives. I’m a progressive so I’m OK w/ the latter, but it can be an echo chamber at times.
• Built-in audiences (Threads especially but also Jack founding a spinoff helps)
• Similar to Linux, one of the benefits to open-source is plenty of forks and standards. This leads to a more fractured landscape at times and so it’s rockier than the alternatives

A marketing budget. The Fediverse has none, and we’re competing with the big boys.

Because the Mastodon community did the same thing we do every time there is a chance to get people away from corporations (e.g. Linux vs Windows).

People were looking for an alternative. The general consensus was it was hard to really grok federation. So, of course, The Community insisted on explaining federation and why it was good while basically only commenting on the instances that had closed applications. It was the equivalent of insisting someone who wanted to try Linux for gaming NEEDS to use arch and only needs to know twenty command line operations to get up and running.

So… everyone instead just went to Bluesky and Threads where sign-up links were provided rather than directory links and manifestos.

And… I am perfectly happy with that. Lemmy has a LOT of issues where so much of the community is talking about their ex-girlfriend (reddit) all the time and we basically get constant content and engagement farming that makes no fucking sense considering the userbase.

Whereas Mastodon actually IS a really good community that feels very different from twitter/bluesky/threads. It isn’t for everyone but I very regularly have genuinely good conversations with people in the town hall/microblog format. Whereas… I am not sure if I have ever had even a meaningful conversation on lemmy (whereas I’ve probably had maybe ten on reddit over the years?).

It’s multiple factors but boils down to them being easier for non-techie people to access. It’s also a culture issue. Bluesky culture is more like Mastodon than not but it is more diverse and shifts younger. Lots of gatekeepers and harassers ruined it for would be mastodon users particularly Black and Brown folk that were harassed out of the space. One of the biggest minority ran instances was shut down due to overwhelming harassment. People also don’t want to be preached to nor want to be told how to use their own damn social account and be told they’re using it wrong. Most people legit just wanted Twitter without Musk.

Is it really that surprising that large companies with lots of money can advertise better than user run instances of open source software?

Threads has close ties with Instagram

(Threads uses opt-out ActivityPub.)

I’ll speak about my experience. Bluesky feels like an upgrade to Twitter. There are many algorithmic feeds to choose from, and it’s easy to discover people to follow. Mastodon, on the other hand, is a straight downgrade from Bluesky because it is lacking in those features.

I imagine a lot of people leaving Twitter feel similarly. They don’t care much about privacy or federation. Bluesky just works, and that’s what matters to them.