Mastodon vs BlueSky - differences

BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 112 points –

Hey, I wanted to ask someone who has probably more knowledge than me about it - what's the difference about these two services? I know Mastodon has ActivityPub, so it works with Lemmy, and BlueSky has it's own kind of federation, but does it even has anything to federate to?

I'm asking not which one is better, I'm searching logical argument for one or other. I'm obviously more leaning toward Mastodon since I'm here, but I wanted to give my friend, who is thinking about joining, some real arguments.

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Bluesky is easy on the beginner and mimics X as a whole world in your single feed. Mastodon (fediverse) carry way to much technical concepts to understand and get the most out of it.

What do you need to understand about the technical concepts? Join an instance (mastodon.social if you have no reason to select another one), post and follow.

That's where the first question woul pop up. Which instance to choose? What to consider when choosing? That's where the first less technically inclined will already abort.

That question would start a very long post. Let's keep it simple:

  1. you may never find your communities again (hashtag ? what is that ? why should I hashtag to make it searchable and make it stick....)
  2. your posts may never reach your friends, or general audience (defederation, admin instance ban...)
  3. the global timeline is not a global timeline as in X or Bsky, or Insta or any other social media, just what your instance admin and federation relatations "agreed" to show you ...

Why do you need to understand any of that? Now, none of it is wrong - but it's not something anyone signing up at a Mastodon instance absolute must know about to use the system and have a good troll-free social network experience.

On the contrary. Maybe those are exactly the things needed to avoid becoming Xitter. Bluesky is rapidly becoming another instance of the hellhole at this very moment.

I agree on the unfortunate and predictable bluesky's future. Corporate, politics, ads... Avoiding to become "Xitter" should not rely on end users computer knowledge, technical abilities, geeky mindset. I think you understand that too: KISS is a huge success factor. That's just my 2cts.

I've been waiting for everyone around me to "understand computers" for forty years.

No luck. They're just as clueless as they have ever been.

You'd think I'd be less boggled by it now, but nope.