@jon@pluralistic
"For the moment Mastodon – although far from perfect and lacking some functionality I appreciated on Twitter – looks closer to the tool I think we need, and hence will remain my predominant social network for the foreseeable future."
@markhburton@jon@pluralistic je suis d'accord même si il manque pas mal de fonctionnalités c'est ce qui aujourd'hui en tout cas se rapproche le plus de Twitter mais au moins on a une limite de caractère plus grande
Most common reactions to this on Bluesky. “But Mastodon is clunky!” Err have you tried good apps? And better still “I can’t find who to follow” Err, don’t get fooled again? It’s obviously easy to find people as there’s only one instance. Which is the whole problem. If that goes to shit where can you go?
@jon I found people to follow on Mastodon the same way I found them on Twitter: follow interesting people, see who they're following, follow them, rinse-repeat.
I don't know what algorithm people use that they can't find people to follow.
@jon also, fwiw, due to all the mastodon migration tools, I had a much easier time finding people from the birdsite on Mastodon than I've had over on Bluesky. Sadly most of (life) science Twitter is moving over to Bluesky it seems, while Mastodon seems to be bigger within the public transport community, so that's what I use my account for nowadays.
@jon@pluralistic I think it's important to consider what kind of trust. If you're using something that's federated and has proper import export functionality, you're giving them short-term trust but everyone knows that if they betray your trust it's easy for you to get out.
A cool side effect of that setup is that it encourages each company to behave properly, for some definition of properly, because they know that their users can bail at any time.
@jon@pluralistic I think this is a lot about a feeling of belonging and meeting your peers in a digital space. Twitter has been great at that and left a huge gap. Folks here on Mastodon are super passionate about not getting burned again. But this unfortunately also leads to the reply guy culture. Those who care more about the „feeling“ are pushed away by that and keep on searching. The protocol is not a priority in that case. It’s a shame because we basically all want the same thing.
@bastianallgeier it’s a fair point. All we can do is persist though - and try to avoid bad behaviours we see from others. Also ultimately it’s about effort - put in the effort and this network really works.
@jon I‘m 100% with you. The culture is something that we all have control over. My personal experience has mostly been super positive. Way more positive than it was on Twitter for the last years. But I also get why others have been pushed away. I also truly believe that the Fediverse is the best bet for all of us and that we should turn that passion for it into something positive.
@bastianallgeier I feel somehow I have a responsibility here to make this place work. While if Twitter or Bluesky don’t work I don’t know how me trying to take responsibility helps.
@jon 💯 For the first time (since the social media era), there’s a digital social space that turns into a global phenomenon without being controlled by a company. That’s huge. I had given up hope that something like this would be possible. I also think that it cannot be stressed enough how urgently this is needed. The Fediverse is critical infrastructure in my opinion and it’s definitely worth fighting for.
@cstross@jon I'm indeed "too young” for that. I started as a web dev in 2002. Let me specify my sentence: The first time since the read-write-web or web 2.0 or the social media era – however you'd like to call it. The main difference to me is the timing. It's quite a difference to compete with Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. nowadays. Those giants didn't exist back then. The baseline of what to expect from a social media experience is completely different and controlled by those platforms.
@bastianallgeier@jon Yes, I've been blogging since 1998, had my own website from 1993, and first got on the internet in 1989. The changes have been remarkable.
@cstross@jon That's also part of the tragedy behind the reply guy culture and the remaining UX issues. Mastodon is in many ways able to compete with those platforms, despite a fundamentally different funding situation. There are amazing apps for iOS and Android that don't have to hide at all behind the apps for Twitter and Co. The experience is pretty much on par 99% of the time and yet the last mile is holding folks back and the culture is blocking further adoption.
But we expect a lot more from our networks now - sure Usenet newsgroups had admins, could they delete posts? I think we just had to personally block bad actors, I can't remember how much power admins had for moderation.
There were certainly plenty of reply guys there too!
I'm not sure why I stopped participating in them. I guess my interests changed. But I still have some old friends and contacts from those days.
@bastianallgeier@cstross@jon also... it was only nerds accessing Usenet then. And a number of spammers. The demographic was narrow, the access was limited. The social side of the internet is rather different now!
It'll be global when I don't need to literally beg the one Singaporean-American mutual I have for recommendations for Southeast Asia content, because practically everyone in Asia is still on Twitter. Pan-European is not the same as global.
@Alon@jon Fair enough. It's an assumption based on posts and folks I'm seeing here. I definitely don't have any intentions to frame a European perspective as "global" if it actually isn't true.
@bastianallgeier@jon Not the first time, we had that all very similar with the BBS scene and networks such as FidoNet. Even the limited accessibility was similar, although that is of course way better today.
@jon@pluralistic I read the article and most of the comments and I'm still not really clear on the BlueSky problems, for me, the end user. Is it a future problem that BlueSky won't be able to handle the bots and "bad actors"?
@jon One thing I noticed is how you got almost no response to the question you asked about this on Bluesky compared to masses of detail here, and that has to signify something.
@jon I found myself wondering the same thing: what's to stop some billionaire with a grudge from buying out and destroying ANY centralized social media infrastructure that is built?
(a) is all the AT protocol open source, can you see (theoretically) any structural limitations?
(b) I’d be surprised if Bluesky itself is fully open sourced, so there will always be proprietary dependencies closed to view.
Imagine Bluetooth as AT, and an iPhone as Bluesky. The vendor uses a base standard, but includes proprietary extensions to make their stuff work better and others work poorly.
@jon@pluralistic good article. Having spent several painful hours transferring technical threads out of muskville to this place, my key test is: can I get my threads out without manual work? I have much more faith that someone out there is building a masto thread exporter than I would with any other network
@jon Very good thoughtful piece, great analysis of the pros and cons and I think you’re right about the future of the bluesky community. Bookmarked for future reference. Personally I plan to use both in parallel which I think is perfectly viable, though there’s a lot of overlap.
@ottocrat When I am posting things from #CrossBorderRail I don't have time to maintain two networks equally. And I have a lot of that project between now and the end of October! 🙂
@jon you've eloquently written out the jumbled thoughts I've had about Bluesky.
I hit back at those saying it's all Jack Dorsey, that it's a crypto Nazi fest - because it's neither. But I agree completely about the nebulousness of how it works, and its future.
I do think it provides a bit of useful competition, to spur on further improvements for UX in Mastodon, even if structurally it's rather behind.
It will suck for those who've made their new online home there, if/when it keels over.
@sarajw Also it must be said it was a pain of a blog post to write. Trying to actually work out what will and will not work in future there is far from obvious. It'a a bit of people sort of going for the devil they don't know.
@jon it is. I think also people just wanted twitter without the nazis.
It looked like twitter, Dorsey was involved, a few high profile lefty celebs went over, it had an interesting ✨vibe✨ to begin with because they were clever* about who they gave lots of invites to - it smashed the hype button just right.
*Well connected Black people, basically. White nerdy devs aren't cool. Cool stuff has almost always started in black culture - and they knew it.
@jon I think people will fight for its continuing - at the time the invites were going out, a bunch of black people had horrible racist experiences here on Mastodon which of course made them bounce.
It may not ever be the protocol and federation it is suggesting, and I don't know how or if they will ever monetise, but I don't really want the black twitter/bluesky community to lose a hub again.
@sarajw Or it doesn't keel over, some of the problems are fixed, and then - but only then - I move properly there. But the practical concerns are serious enough for now to justifiably not do that.
@jon people will respond with "but it's still in beta!" - you'd think that with a twitter CEO on the board and all that VC money that they could be a bit further along by now but eh...
@sarajw well even that is unclear. How much money they actually have is disputed. How involved Dorsey even is is disputed. What is abundantly clear is it's not advancing swiftly, easily or smoothly, and Dorsey is definitely not calling the shots on an everyday basis.
@sarajw It's really odd. I was left wondering “hang on, why is there nothing systematic written anywhere about this”. Given the excess attention to Musk, how is our analysis of one of the major alternatives so sloppy?
@jon I feel like there have been a lot of opinion articles either by non technical people writing about their experiences using it, or developers who are fediverse fans totally blasting it - but yeah nothing more systematic.
@jon@pluralistic You can't always get fooled again.
Thanks for the Ohrwurm. I now have that boys choir in my head but I'm yearning for some strong The Who energy.
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