Bluesky has blown up this year thanks to a vibrant community of posters, user customization choices, and a decentralized protocol that doesn't lock users
I haven’t yet heard an explanation for this that makes sense. It looks more like Twitter and it has VC money behind it. That’s it, as far as I can tell.
I wish more than people treated these platforms as disposable like they are.
It would be easy if they were actually decentralized. The way it is now, if you leave, you leave all of your friends. Getting all of your friends to leave with you is a ridiculous task. You can’t even get 3 of your friends to agree on where to eat for lunch. Try getting all of your friends to follow you to a different social network, where they have to create new accounts, etc. If you have that kind of clout, you should start a religion.
The average person is tech illiterate, so having them understand what a “federated platform” is, is too much to ask. It may be easy for you or me, but we’re here on Lemmy, so that immediately makes us not the average.
The average person also doesn’t care what a federated platform is. They just want something that is convenient and works. Same as the above point; maybe we would be willing to sit down and figure things out, but others will consider that a waste of time and bad.
In that sense, federated platforms are a major failure, as picking instances and creating accounts is a hassle rather than a convenience.
From personal experience, trying to find a Mastodon instance to make an account on was irritating. Some rules were too restrictive, some rules were too vague, other rules looked like they were created for sensitive little snowflakes. It was like reading through the rules of Discord servers. Not a good look for a social media platform.
Something like Bluesky tries to be both; a platform without algorithms (or only user-created algorithms that you can choose to subscribe to), where you can make your own instance or just be part of its centralised instance. The fact that the overwhelming number of people choose the latter should tell you enough about what people want.
The signup process for Bluesky is the same as Mastodon. You can join the “main instance” at joinmastodon.com or choose an alternative instance. Most people aren’t going to wade through the sets of rules on alternative instances like you did; they’ll just join the default instance at joinmastodon.com.
having them understand what a “federated platform” is, is too much to ask
Email is the usual analogy.
trying to find a Mastodon instance to make an account on was irritating.
Your average person will just land on mastodon.social without bothering to read the TOS… i mean rules, you know that.
And you missed a real key argument: network effect. If average person’s friends are on platform XYZ, that’s where average person will be (although this is stronger with messengers).
Everyone is using Gmail or Hotmail. So it’s not the same, even if it technically might be.
When I searched for Mastodon a few years back the first page I landed on was one where I had to browse and choose an instance. If that was what most people saw back then during the first Twatter exodus, then nobody is going to look back.
The average person is where all their friends, who are also average people, will go. And that’ll be on the platform that requires the least effort to sign up to. Which isn’t Mastodon.
I haven’t yet heard an explanation for this that makes sense. It looks more like Twitter and it has VC money behind it. That’s it, as far as I can tell.
It would be easy if they were actually decentralized. The way it is now, if you leave, you leave all of your friends. Getting all of your friends to leave with you is a ridiculous task. You can’t even get 3 of your friends to agree on where to eat for lunch. Try getting all of your friends to follow you to a different social network, where they have to create new accounts, etc. If you have that kind of clout, you should start a religion.
I’ll just paste here what I wrote elsewhere:
The average person is tech illiterate, so having them understand what a “federated platform” is, is too much to ask. It may be easy for you or me, but we’re here on Lemmy, so that immediately makes us not the average.
The average person also doesn’t care what a federated platform is. They just want something that is convenient and works. Same as the above point; maybe we would be willing to sit down and figure things out, but others will consider that a waste of time and bad.
In that sense, federated platforms are a major failure, as picking instances and creating accounts is a hassle rather than a convenience.
From personal experience, trying to find a Mastodon instance to make an account on was irritating. Some rules were too restrictive, some rules were too vague, other rules looked like they were created for sensitive little snowflakes. It was like reading through the rules of Discord servers. Not a good look for a social media platform.
Something like Bluesky tries to be both; a platform without algorithms (or only user-created algorithms that you can choose to subscribe to), where you can make your own instance or just be part of its centralised instance. The fact that the overwhelming number of people choose the latter should tell you enough about what people want.
The signup process for Bluesky is the same as Mastodon. You can join the “main instance” at joinmastodon.com or choose an alternative instance. Most people aren’t going to wade through the sets of rules on alternative instances like you did; they’ll just join the default instance at joinmastodon.com.
Email is the usual analogy.
Your average person will just land on mastodon.social without bothering to read the TOS… i mean rules, you know that.
And you missed a real key argument: network effect. If average person’s friends are on platform XYZ, that’s where average person will be (although this is stronger with messengers).
Everyone is using Gmail or Hotmail. So it’s not the same, even if it technically might be.
When I searched for Mastodon a few years back the first page I landed on was one where I had to browse and choose an instance. If that was what most people saw back then during the first Twatter exodus, then nobody is going to look back.
The average person is where all their friends, who are also average people, will go. And that’ll be on the platform that requires the least effort to sign up to. Which isn’t Mastodon.