[snapcaster]

I feel for them, because even if they (and weirdos like us on this site) value decentralization and other related values the average customer just DOES NOT CARE. They're trying to compete with other platforms without this handicap and very people people are willing to give them any "credit" for it

[shadowfacts]

I'm a little bit sympathetic, but they've also kinda tried to have it both ways. They spent ages inventing a new protocol for decentralized microblogging, and then ages more before you could actually use a server other than theirs. But DMs is now where they don't want to spend the time up front to do it the right way?

[_djo_]

To be fair, they’re a tiny team with a ton of things on their roadmap and limited time to do it all. It seems they’re taking it slow on core stuff that they really need to get right, because it can’t be changed later, while adopting pragmatic solutions for things that users want now and which can be swapped out for better implementations in future.

[TheBlight]

I thought the entire point of Bluesky was that it was to be decentralized? Did that change?

[ncallaway]

From using Bluesky it feels like the goal is to build a social media experience that’s as decentralized as possible without sacrificing the user experience.

So, they want the experience to be like Twitter for the users that don’t care about decentralization, but to be backed by something like ATProto underneath for those who care.

I’d say Mastodon is more “the entire point is that it’s decentralized”. Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point.

[ethbr1]

When you're competing against goliath first-moved closed platforms, pragmatic eventual-decentralization makes sense.

What use is first delivering today's table stakes features 5 years from now, albeit fully decentralized and open?

[ncallaway]

Yea, especially when their rational is DMs are the most asked for feature.

Build a good enough version now, and then tackle the end to end encrypted fully decentralized version. The cheap version can give them the breathing room to build the better version.

[wmf]

Twitter is over ten years old so arguably all its competitors are "late". Bluesky doesn't have 5 years of runway though.

[ramesh31]

>Bluesky it’s a major point, but not the entire point.

And I'd say that was the right tradeoff to make. Mastodon is only marginally more useful than IRC at this point, and is completely useless to the average person. I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work. And no, I'm not going to spend hours digging through docs.

[krapp]

>Mastodon is only marginally more useful than IRC at this point, and is completely useless to the average person. I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work.

I don't know how you define "average person" but plenty of people who aren't developers are on Mastodon.

This argument that Mastodon is "too complicated" is perennial, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary in the growth of its adoption. It's particularly weird to keep seeing it on a forum full of people who think compiling software from source and working in arcane terminals is trivial.

You can just sign up for an instance like any other website (or multiple.) Or you can pay any number of hosts for an instance of your own (I use masto.host, $9.00/mo.) Or just run the activitypub plugin in Wordpress and your Wordpress is now also a Mastodon node.

If I can do it, it ain't that hard.

[Kye]

It's been on a steady downward slide for the last year, from almost 2m during The Exodus to about 900k active users now. People sign up, but most don't stick around. I also can't help but notice my own timeline has slowed to a crawl, and it's mostly the same few people. It's not vibrant and busy like it used to be.

[krapp]

Aggressive growth and addictive velocity are cancerous, let it reach a healthy equilibrium. Slow can be good, too.

I'm following ~500 people at the moment, and getting relays from a few instances. I see a constant flow of new stuff but I can also easily leave and do other things, because Mastodon isn't designed to maximize engagement and addiction. I don't feel a constant need to post or comment or chase endorphins. The scale is just fine for me.

[Nextgrid]

> plenty of people who aren't developers are on Mastodon

How many of them are gonna stick around once their instance goes offline, or the admin does something crazy (which isn't impossible considering how many of these are ran as personal/fun projects by geeks rather than actual businesses), or their instance gets into a feud with the others and results in defederation?

All of this is overhead. It's overhead that can be managed, or you can pay someone to manage it for you, but it's still overhead and extra problems that just don't exist when you can instead sign up for Instagram or Twitter and call it a day.

[krapp]

My person in deity the standard you're defending is the lunatic dumpster fire that is Twitter, where Elon just decides shit at random like "likes are private now" and "you can just pay for a checkmark" or "I'm unbanning all the nazis lol."

I personally haven't experienced any of the "overhead" of Mastodon that you're mentioning, and making seem far more common than it is, but Mastodon seems far more stable than Twitter as a platform and a community at the moment.

And sure, some people might not like it, and that's fine. There are and will always be alternatives. But anything is better than Twitter.

[Barrin92]

>I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work

You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous), fill in your username and email and you're good to go.

Why do people invent fictional horror stories about a service that's at this point functionally as easy to use as any bog standard website?

[anigbrowl]

You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous)

Regular consumers hate this because they don't know what they're getting into, and it feels like the social media equivalent of a crypto scam where you're invited to buy a coin, any coin. It was probably intended to resemble arriving at college during rush week and pick a social/activity club to join, except you have to pick a server without any real way to browse around and understand what differentiates them.

[monknomo]

heck, I'm not a regular user, and I find it annoying to pick a server without knowing what the vibe is. I want to lurk without any transaction costs before I sign up for something

[ramesh31]

>You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous), fill in your username and email and you're good to go.

And that gives me access to the entire service? Or just bits and pieces of it? And how do I find other services? Asking around? Who's seeing my data if I sign up on another server? What are the anonymous operators of said server doing with my password and email? How do I message someone from another server? Are those messages secure at all?

Decentralized works for motivated parties. It does not work for the masses.

[Barrin92]

Yes, it gives you access to the entire service, you don't need to find anything. Messages and accounts in Mastodon are visible across the network. The operators of almost all instances aren't anonmyous, the address of the default server operators is literally listed on the about page.

If you have zero knowledge and don't care Mastodon functions exactly like Twitter. If you care more, you can invest time, host your own server, do what you want, that's optional.

If decentralized systems don't work it's amazing that my grandfather is able to send emails every day. Which is btw the exact equivalent to Mastodon. You don't care you sign up for Gmail, if you do, run a server out of your basement.

[tedunangst]

And you know the answer to all those questions for bluesky?

[fragmede]

the masses don't ask questions at that granularity though, it either works or it doesn't.

[TaylorAlexander]

I mean you can just sign up and use it. No need to read docs. I have plenty of complaints, but it’s largely alright imo.

[ziml77]

That was the idea with Bluesky, but people refuse to budge from Twitter without DMs integrated into the platform.

[doublerabbit]

Which applies to WhatsApp, TikTok too.

The main issue with other platforms is that the content that exists within are too wild-west. Anime isn't a everybody thing nor are geeky Programming/Linux communities or furry artwork for that matter.

Where do I find TikTok content within Matrix? That's what the current content-matter is.

The corporate apply heavy exploitation; psychology and social exploits to the user. And while the other platforms don't and carry merits such as privacy and the likes; people really just don't care they are being used for systematic learning, being manipulated because some peer is influencing them.

Companies pay large amount of money in R&D for developing social exploits, all the way down to the background colour of the icon of the app. A platform has to have a gimmick to catch. Privacy, decentralized isn't it.

These foundations don't have corp money to pay for content producers, influencers and so you then end up with dwellings of niches which can turn urk at best.

[summerlight]

Decentralization is a solution for establishing a saner, fail-safe governance structure (or we can call it "billionaire-proof"), not the problem to be solved by itself. You need to have enough traction to achieve this goal and sometime it might make sense to compromise the decentralized implementation part.

[jasonlotito]

Yes. No.

[bachmeier]

> the average customer just DOES NOT CARE

They're not targeting the average customer (by whatever metric you measure an average customer). They're targeting people that value decentralization.

[djur]

Kind of, sort of, but not so much? They're also targeting people who left Twitter because of the moderation policies, ownership, and/or user base. Among Bluesky users, Twitter migrants easily outnumber decentralization enthusiasts 10 to 1 at this point.

[wannacboatmovie]

This is spot on. BlueSky and Threads have just become "left-wing Twitter", intentionally in quotes because it's actually a very small subset of users that left to found their own hug-box, due to some irrational hate of Musk, or that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again.

Nobody cares about protocols, except maybe the handful of infosec nerds on Mastodon. It's about a middle school-level rearranging of friend groups. A VIP lounge where they only hang out with their own.

There was an exodus of a small subset of users, and BlueSky was there like an abandoned building that was squatted. It being invite-only added to the exclusivity as invites were passed amongst like-minded peers online, further adding to the echo-chamber.

[lxgr]

I left Twitter because I got tired of having inflammatory content be shoved in my face without ever actively following any of the people posting it.

Censorship is bad, but amplification of horrible takes is not equivalent the absence of censorship.

The quality of ads (I was using the official client) was also quickly approaching the quality of predatory late-night TV shopping channels (“call NOW to get our ULTRA LINT REMOVER with free shipping!!!”).

[wannacboatmovie]

> but amplification of horrible takes

The problem is the definition of 'horrible takes' is, and always will be, subjective.

[lxgr]

It is, so I left, just like I’m not reading newspapers that I don’t like the editorial decisions of.

Possibly there is also a way to run a social network uneditorialized, but Twitter clearly isn't attempting that.

[djur]

Right, which is why people may prefer Bluesky, which doesn't amplify anyone's takes and lets users decide what they prefer to see.

[gammarator]

> that people they don't like at the old place are allowed to have opinions again.

Sorry, but I think that deliberately obfuscates the changes Musk has made at Twitter. See https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energ... for one summary.

[djur]

Why is hating Elon Musk irrational? Regardless of politics or business practices, his personal conduct is revolting.

[wannacboatmovie]

Why do you care? You're not his friend or related to him. He is the CEO of a scaled text messaging app.

Do you get upset if the CEO of your electric utility made stupid political statements?

Or if the owner of a car dealership cheats on his wife?

Tiger Woods slept with like fifty waitresses and masses of people were furious. Why? What did they expect his life as a star athlete was?

People dislike Musk out of pure jealousy and try to rationalize it via other means. The logical option would be to simply not care.

[lxgr]

His tweets started appearing in my feed at an absurd rate some time after he bought it, and I never followed him.

That’s like my utility company insisting I watch a message from their CEO on all devices they power every once in a while, or the owner of my car dealership calling me every once in a while unprompted to chitchat.

[wannacboatmovie]

> or the owner of my car dealership calling me every once in a while unprompted to chitchat.

If you know the secret to stopping car dealership spam, please share!

[fredoliveira]

> People dislike Musk out of pure jealousy and try to rationalize it via other means.

I don't think this is true. Most people I hear express that they don't particularly like him, also attribute it to things that made me not like him. The rescuer story, the absurd trolling, the disparaging of specific individuals, the pretending to be for "freedom of speech" until the speech is about him.

This is a person I once thought had the desire and the means to push humanity forward. He's done so much, all of it tainted by, well, being absolutely unhinged.

[krapp]

Are you Elon's friend or relative? Logically, other people's opinions about him shouldn't concern you at all. Yet here you are white knighting someone who's just the CEO of a scaled text messaging app. Why do you care?

[djur]

Who's talking about "getting upset"? Elon Musk has done a lot of things in his life that slot him into the "bad person, do not like, do not support" category. That's just called forming an opinion. I'm not playing darts with his photograph. I'd prefer to hear as little about or from him as possible, frankly.

[riffic]

customer? who's paying for it?