I want to move to bluesky so bad but I just can't get a damn invite. I applied via email months ago. This is their moment & I kinda feel like the invite system is holding them back. (But I do understand why it was implemented.)
Edit: omg you guys are so sweet. I only just started using this place but I'm sold. You're awesome!
It's very... dramatic over there, and I know it's supposed to be a beta (trust me, I know) but there seems to be a lot of missing functionality. I pop in every few days and it's like there a new moral outrage about bluesky each time.
I mostly follow people in the art/illustration community so I'm not really seeing what you're complaining about, but to be fair your complaint could be levied against basically every big online community out there right now including the fediverse.
I am mostly judging by the "hot" feed, since I only follow a few people that I knew via Twitter, and to a significant degree you're right-- there was the same kind of drama on kbin and lemmy when I joined. (I checked out threads for ~30 seconds so I can't say about there) I don't remember anything like that on Mastodon, but I'm sure it's there. It seemed more rapid-fire on bluesky. Specifically there seemed to be a lot of hate against the devs on Bluesky for various reasons.
In any event, it's a pretty big echo chamber right now but that's to be expected while it's in invite-only. I'm sure it will settle out when it opens up to the general public.
Hard pass on that. Also 100% censorship resistance sounds good at face value until you realize that can easily be construed to mean that nazis are free to run wild there.
The fact it requires a specific piece of software, even on desktop, puts it one step from (old) Twitter to me.
Even things like Discord - while very much not the same in other ways - has a web version that runs in a browser. Ditto the early 00's instant messaging apps.
Also, the decentralisation seems to all be under the control of the one company(?). They say "no single entity controlling it" but there's not much further detail. I might be mistaken, but it doesn't seem like the Fediverse's version of decentralisation, at least at first glance.
Moving further(?) into tinfoil hat territory: The founder's name is very similar to that of a late Reddit founder, which is worth a double-take. Funny coincidence? Fake name? Either way might be playing on the coincidence? etc. etc. Hard to tell. Dude's probably legit, right?
b) A few of the web links for it were in Chinese, but that's probably a red herring. Translation suggests people in China are using it to get around certain internet issues.
If you like Mastodon but miss that Twitter layout, I’d suggest looking up Elk. It’s a web client version which can be installed, I’m very impressed so far.
I’ve never understood exactly what people get out of Twitter, and don’t understand why you’d need an alternative? Why not just use Lemmy as your alternative?
Twitter is for those that either want to be the one that people follow or those that want to follow the one. It is about fame and groupies. If your not in one of those groups you will not see value. I am not so I see no value.
The above is why there is not Twitter substitute for most Twitter users. Exception is if Blue or Threads takes off.
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people.
How people always fail to see the usefulness of the platform amazes me. There is nothing else like it for that purpose, moving elsewhere is difficult if all the accounts you are interested in are not also moving there.
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people
So let's say I'm interested in tech. I got my news and updates from tech oriented websites/blogs, with the added benefits of tutorials and other articles also posted there, why would I want to use twitter?
Exactly, if you block enough and follow the right people the twitter feed is a pretty good place to get news and content. Hard to get that on mastodon since, well... no algorithm to actually show these things to you, no people to actually follow and no time to read everything chronologically.
Its definitely a lot worse now, but at its peak twitter algorithm worked pretty well, not that I ever used it, always did the standard chronological, but I wasn't following 100s of accounts anyway.
Had to setup RSS again now, but its not the same as it used to be, harder to find decent blogs with the news/updates I want that support RSS.
Not everyone is on twitter for the political bullshit. Using banned words it’s easy to filter any political garbage. Twitter is quite useful. But I’m not there to convince or push my ideology on a bunch of polarized people. What a waste of energy.
Don't get the official app, get Tusky. Then look under "federated" and follow the people you like. You can also search for a particular topic and follow that topic instead.
I second following hashtags when you first start out on Mastodon. It's probably the best method of discovery right now, since there is no algorithm feeding you constantly.
Mastodon. Seems like the logical choice, considering you’re already on the fediverse, and a lot of people already moved to Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter.
People, yes. Tags, not directly but if you follow kbin magazines most have related tags attached and you'll get microblog content matching those tags in your feed.
Sorry but that is a farcical expectation. All sites will have rules about what can and cannot be posted and will have to follow the laws of the country the server is based in.
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