Mastodon has been around since 2016 and has 804k MAU.
The platform has 57 third party apps.
The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.
I tried bluesky (bs?) for 5 minutes. Clicked one thing, saw the comment “Sunsets are my love language,” and realized that these are not my people.
Mastodon has been around since 2016 and has 804k MAU.
The platform has 57 third party apps.
The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.
Are you asking about “people” or “nerds”? People prefer Bluesky due to its simplicity and momentum. There are more popular outlets using it. If you’re assuming that People would prefer the complexity of the Fediverse and instances, if you think People know what a decentralized community run server is, you’re a “nerd” (for lack of a better term, I’m sorry).
The battle has always been the same: Windows v. Apple, Android v. iOS, SMS Twitter v. App Twitter. Some people prefer flexibility and investing time in making things work the way they want (Nerds). Some people want an out of the box product that’s well designed and efficient (People).
Fifty Seven Third Party Apps is not a selling point - that’s called anxiety inducing fragmentation. Some people want to walk down the grocery store aisle and choose between 57 options for toilet paper and some people just want “good”, “better”, “best”. The reality is that most people just want to be told what to do. They have too much shit going on in their lives to care about “decentralization”.
Mastodon will never challenge well financed closed or semi-open platforms. As it’s designed, it’s apparent it never intended to. It will continue to grow at a slow rate as an alternative. Hopefully, the fediverse is realized and you can choose to host your own server and gain access to other social platforms.
The reality is that this stuff costs money. In the near future, you’ll have the same three choices with social media as we do with other services: ad-subsidized, subscription, self-hosted. Anything with ads is going to have an algorithm. Anything with a subscription is going to have a board of directors. Selfhosting comes with a steep learning curve.
Because it pretends to be different to the centralised corporate social media platforms, whilst giving the cohesive experience of a centralised platform
Best answer yet IMO. The cohesive experience is essential to the branding, and low threshold for entry.
People want to leave X, but they still want the same old, rather than new stuff to make things better as a whole. They don’t want to have to do this “pick a server” thing, they want to have an algorithm spoonfeed them popular content, and it would be best for them to have to put in zero extra effort. In Masto you have to put in the hashtags to get found, and search for and follow people and hashtags to find stuff you want, and essentially DIY-ing your feed seems to be too much work for people.
It’s shiny, they advertise, put in a lot of money to spread the word. And the onboarding process probably is way easier?!
@hendrik do they advertise? Honest question :blobBone_dance:
I wouldn’t know, I have a lot of adblockers etc. But it gets to me via word of mouth. And it’s been in the media a lot this year. Due to their business decisions, new approach, novelty… That’s something they did very well. Mastodon has also been in the news. But that was yesterday’s news and I suppose everyone forgets yesterday’s news.
I can only assume BlueSky feels more familiar.
Mastodon requires a bit of effort, lacking an algorithm to drive content toward users, so you have to do a bit more yourself.
it’s been better marketed, and people struggle with the concept of federation and picking a server. and I guess the invite-only, artificial exclusivity strat has actually paid off for them initially, unlike for Google+.
Language filter in bluesky is much better than Mastodon as well
Mastodon relies on users setting the language their post is in manually, so if someone posts in two languages and forgets to switch between them, they don’t get filtered out. I know there are some other pieces of software that switch it automatically, I’m fairly sure Calckey automatically recognized the language you were writing in.
I already toggle the Mastodon settings to ensure that I got the feeds to the language I want (I want English only) and I still got feeds on different languages such as German and French
again, if the person who is making the post doesn’t change the setting, it won’t get filtered. if they type a message in German but the post’s language option is set to English (which I think is the default on some major instances), it won’t get filtered out.
you can usually check what their post’s setting is by starting writing a reply to them, as the language option of your post will switch to the one they post in.
That is why Mastodon is hard to get mainstream because not everyone wants extra effort to do this. Even, Twitter, threads and bluesky much better to filter their language content
people struggle with the concept of federation and picking a server
This is a HUGE reason. I didn’t know when I first signed up for Lemmy that I was on what is essentially a tankie instance. I didn’t know when I signed up for Pixelfed that I wasn’t going to be able to see shit because the first server I signed up for wasn’t really federated with anyone and I’ve mostly given up on it. I still can’t see a bunch of stuff on Mastodon without switching through several accounts with no rhyme or reason.
I’ve said before that I obviously like it here because I’m using the services, but it’s not easy. Most people don’t know about the fediverse, and most of those that do want to be passive about maintaining their social media. Most of the fediverse is built for nerds.
This article gives a good view from an average user’s perspective.
The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.
For most people that’s a complication, not a bonus.
Because you install the app, make an account, and use it and now it has more celebs I guess.
Why is anyone usi5any of them? They’re all clogged toilets overflowing the same shit onto the flower.
It has an algorithm that puts content in front of you, unlike Mastodon where it only puts what you ask for in your feed. I’m convinced that if Mastodon populated people with low following count’s feed with random posts it wouldn’t have bled as many users as it did.
Because none of those points matter to the average user.
I think it’s much more difficult to find people to follow. I personally struggle a lot, and will likely either gave up the micro-blogging system or try another platform. It was great on Twitter before Musk bought it, but since I left, I have yet to find an alternative.
Can you guys help explain it to someone completely inexperienced?
I had Twitter but only used it for following music venues to see upcoming events and bars for happy hour updates. I have a Mastodon account but only played with it for a few minutes because i didn’t really get it. I don’t understand following a person. What can one person have to say that i would care enough about to download an app. What am i missing?
Imagine if there were two twitters, and you only sign up for one but you can read and comment on posts for both.
Now imagine if anybody can install their own Twitter, and anybody else can sign up on either one, and they can all talk to each other like that.
It wasn’t why Mastodon. It was why Twitter or twitter-like apps.
It isn’t one person that people go onto a micro blogging service for, but a variety of people.
I’m sure a certain percentage of people can’t spell mastodon.
