Bluesky has gained a million new users in the last three days.
The platform posted about the milestone this afternoon, which it crossed after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X yesterday as part of an ongoing feud with the platform.
Apparently, enough are headed to Bluesky to drive its iOS app to the top of the Brazilian App Store, as TechCrunch writes.
I’m sad that a lot of people couldn’t perceive the mastodon in the room.
Finding the right mastodon instance was incredibly annoying. I use it, but barely. Most of the artists I follow are on Bluesky, anyway, which is a lot easier to use.
Mastodon allows you to transfer your followers when you migrate, so it’s not a big deal if you change your mind about the first instance you had chosen.
You lost an average user at “instance”, long before “transferring an account”. It’s a big deal.
That may be true for someone just looking to sign up with no help, but if they come across a guide or if their friend helps them, then it’s easy.
So you agree with me. To succeed, a product shouldn’t require a guide or a friend’s help to install and configure it. I work in IT, yet I don’t see people around me bothering with all that. Now think of your relatives, friends, people you see every day on the street or in a mall - they couldn’t care less.
Well, entering Mastodon in the search bar of a search engine today shows that it’s even easier than it was during the big Twitter exodus. The first link is mastodon.social. Clicking that lands you on a page where Create an account is highlighted in blue. From there, it’s the standard signup process everyone is used to.
Edit: Rewrote the comment to focus on the actual flow today rather than anything speculative.
the last time I tried to make a mastodon account I had to type a paragraph about why i want an account and then wait for an email approval and I don’t know what the hell happened because I forgot to look for the email and by now I don’t give a shit
Early in, the Fediverse gained traction with people that were banned from Twitter and others when it had moderation besides for the word “cis” and to suppress leftist viewpoints. Now that Twitter has none, those people have crawled back alongside with the crypto bros, but the bad name generated by gab, truth social, etc. still prevail.
Also people are way too dumb to realize what an instance is (people already have trouble realizing e-mail is not a tech invented by Google for Gmail), defederation dramas, drama around loli, no algorithm “to suggest the users whatever they interested in”, less users, generally fediverse apps being way less addictive, etc.
way too dumb
Or, more likely in most cases, don’t care and don’t want to care.
isn’t that another way of calling ignorance aka being dumb?
There’s only so many hours in the day. There is something to be said for doing the convenient thing that doesn’t have a learning curve if you’re just trying to enjoy yourself.
Can’t fault them. I went through three different instances, one because I disagreed with some of their policies, I don’t remember why I left the second one, I want to say it was technical issues but I honestly don’t remember. Then the third one got closed down because the owner had IRL issues they needed to take care of. Also that instance was on some defederation list because some mod from a large instance had an argument with a mod on my instance.
Ultimately I ran my own solo instance for a while but lost interest eventually. Mastodon is frankly a shitshow and as long as it stays like that, federation or not makes it just a slightly worse twitter, just with some mods taking the role of Elmo instead.
Mastodon isn’t a straight replacement for twitter, bluesky is.
Mastodon is a bi replacement for twitter.
Why is that?
From what I can tell from within the Mastodon echo chamber: quote replies and moderation
Sure, but there are other ActivityPub protocol softwares that have quote replies and moderation, that aren’t Mastodon. I think the challenge is getting the average user to seek out an instance running one of those softwares and not just mastodon dot social.
Problem is there’s no marketing money to make the better platforms more widely known because there’s not as much monetization of the users to fund it.
Mastodon does have as many arbitrary restrictions for one.
Frankly? I’m happy that they didn’t end in Mastodon. Most of those users would have negative value there, and in the Fediverse as a whole.
Twitter was always a cesspool of assumptive, entitled, whiny, nationalistic, context-illiterate users, who’d spend most of their time finding reasons to screech at each other (and at you) than sharing interesting content. That’s regardless of language, but it was specially egregious among Brazilian users there. And it got only worse when Musk bought it, as suddenly the alt right users felt themselves justified to soapbox nonstop there.
Most people with a shred of dignity got the fuck out of that shithole ages ago. The ones not doing so were, most of the time, the ones saying “this is fine, this is how it’s supposed to be”. And those are the ones migrating to Bluesky now.
Someone might say “but we could integrate them into Mastodon. They’d behave better.” Well… we’re talking about a large horde of users, they’d be more likely to bring the place down than let the place bring them up. Eternal September style.
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I was a redditor pre Eternal September. That was the beginning of the end for old reddit.
I was a redditor pre Eternal September. That was the beginning of the end for old reddit.
Dunno if Reddit got its own Eternal September, but the one that I’m referring to was in 1993, predating Reddit by 12y. It was a huge influx of new internet users, specially evident in the Usenet. Wikipedia has a good article on that, but to keep it short: if you got a huge flood of newcomers at once, you aren’t able to enforce the social norms of a place that keep it friendly and nice; instead the new users force the standard to be lowered.
Wild that Reddit’s creation is closer to the start of the Eternal September than it is to today (19 years).
I was a redditor pre Eternal September.
The point of Eternal September is that it happens all the time, so when was that?
The point of Eternal September is that it happens all the time, so when was that?
Kind of - it doesn’t happen “all” the time; it has a beginning, but no end.
If you consider it’s the influx of new users, then yes, it does happen all the time. Do you have a different definition?
What’s “eternal” in “Eternal September” is not the influx of new users, but rather the disruption of the social norms caused by a huge and sudden influx of new users.
That disruption started in 1993, and never ended. So it had a beginning but no end as of yet.
normies are allergic to anything other than corporate social media and software
Wait people didn’t join Mastodon as well? Just Bluesky?
That’s actually a good question. Surely Mastodon and Lemmy instances should have also seen an uptick in registrations?
I saw some posts on Mastodon yesterday celebrating an influx of Brazilian signups, but it was pretty modest compared to the massive exodus to Bluesky. Which, honestly, seems about right and proportionate. (I love Mastodon, but it doesn’t feel like a 1:1 replacement for Twitter the way Bluesky does.)
Mastodon’s original app is just trash Threads are completely unreadable, it should be like that of X
The thing that goes against what most people are used to is the fact that most fediverse services either don’t have an official app or the official app is just a proof of concept. You’re kind of expected to use either the website directly or third party apps, which are usually much better.
When I still used my Mastodon account I used Megalodon and was testing Moshidon as well. Now I just use the PWA for the Sharkey instance I’m on.
+1 for Sharkey. It’s my favorite of the protocols, so far.
What makes it your favorite?
Mainly the 5000 character limit. It handles MFM (though I don’t really use it), and features like antennas (very specific follow lists).
I had originally been 100% against Bluesky because of Jack Dorsey, but when he got so steamed about them doing things like actual moderation and left entirely back to Twitter to pettily suck up to Musk, I really started feeling like maybe Bluesky might not be so bad after all.
Create, Grow, Moderate, Sell, Repeat.
The fediverse is seeing an uptick as well. Els enshitofication continues. Good for us I suppose.
Non-twitter is fine in any form. Real progress is gonna be going to Mastodon, although that’s hamstrung by user-unfriendliness.
Non-twitter is fine in any form.
Gotta disagree with you there when it comes to Threads. We have seen how Meta is also trying to influence global politics. Threads should not be encouraged either. On top of that, their privacy policy is a nightmare.
https://qz.com/threads-meta-delayed-launch-eu-privacy-policy-concerns-1850609340
While I agree with you. I don’t think Mastodon is user unfriendly I think of it as a normie blocker. That being said, bluesky is owning class social media, I expect the enshittification to start now that they have a million + users.
“Normie blocker” is just how abnormies rationalize bad design
Except it’s not. It’s real easy to learn you can choose any instance you’re welcome to. Normies are the ones choosing not to learn.
I do feel sorry for them because they’re probably going to get pushed to the next billionaires social media in the next decade to be exploited there too.
Unless I’m completely missing something? What’s so bad about the design? I’m pretty dumb and uneducated and I dig me some federated social media purely because it’s genuine compared to the owning class social media.
I’m pretty dumb and uneducated
Statistically speaking, the mere fact that you are here indicates that you are among the top percentages of tech literal people. This isn’t necessarily about intelligence or general education, but about tech literacy.
Personally I wish there was a better way to link multiple accounts together to say they’re the same person. When I switched to hosting my own instance, I basically just abandoned my old account, but I would have loved to link them to have the history there. We have the technology, it could be as simple as SSH keys, or like how bitcoin wallets are unique and don’t require internet to verify a match.
Bluesky has gained a
millionbrazilion new users…I’m so sorry, it was right there. And yay for Bluesky!
I can’t help but pronounce it like a Slavic surname.
“Bluesky! You didn’t file your paperwork last night.”
Blue Sky is the only one that allows porn and has no defederation drama, so I’m not surprised people went there. Instagram even put a banner telling people to try out threads but who would trust Zuck?
Twitter allows porn now, no?
Yes, and that’s why it’s hard for artists and their fans to leave, a social media that allows that and normal people posts together has massive visibility compared to enthusiasts site.
I am fine with this.
What are blueskys current userbase numbers, mastodons current userbase numbers, and are they federated with each other?
are they federated with each other?
no. there’s a sort of a third party bridge, but it requires an account on one platform to follow a bot in order to show up on another, so if someone on Bluesky doesn’t explicitly do it and you’re using Mastodon, then you’re not going to connect.
They do not federate with each other AFAIK, Mastodon’s user base is in another user’s answer, Bluesky’s IDK except apparently one million more than before
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That does not seem to know about Bluesky
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Right, because FediDB tracks activitypub, which bluesky is not built upon.
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Oh, right. I guess I forgot all the individual questions. My bad.
Didn’t India just ban Twitter?
Wow. Good for Bluesky.
Downloaded it. Signed up. Replied to a post about rechargeable batteries. Account got restricted. Left.
Restricted to the whole site or just that user? The user tools are pretty powerful on their own.
Not sure what I got blocked from. Might poke around later and see. Guess I upset a bot by using a colon or something.
Maybe the phrase “white ones are better” triggered some moderation bot?
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I heard Brazil did not ban twitter for good reasons, it can be to block a passage of speech.
elon musk was asked to point a legal rep and show up to answer questions about spreading fake news and promoting criminal activity. He denied point out the rep or participating in the investigation at all. There is some backlash as the judge gave the final warning on twitter since there was no legal rep, which would be a first.
Can someone explain to me the difference between bluesky and twitter?
Bluesky is built on an open source ActivityPub alternative called “AT Protocol”. However, Bluesky itself is not open source and afaik does not yet federate with any other software. The company is a “public benefit corporation”.
From my understanding, Bluesky has good moderation, to the point where Jack Dorsey (the Twitter founder) condemned it and withdrew from the project. That’s a big plus in my book.
One is going down the drain first
Unfortunately dark money from Russia is keeping it afloat to provide misinformation for the United States election
Ooookkay,
what
Wow, the emerald mine heir that wants to go to mars is getting support from the ex-KGB agent with a penchant for poisoning. I honestly don’t know why I expected anything different
900k of them are bots getting ready.
Such gross weirdo-behavior to call 900k completely normal people looking to socialize online bots, get off your high horse
