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I don’t understand why govt institutions don’t just band together and use one of their many already running servers and add a mastodon or similar instance, so they won’t ever need to worry about their shit being taken offline
Like, get all federal agencies and currently serving politicians to post on the govt-run mastodon, instead of bsky or xitter.
Me like other people, had the idea of ECI (European citizen initiative) to ask EU level entities to start using the Fediverse. The process is quite slow as I do not have much time but, if you are European and can help, have a look here:
An European Citizens’ Initiative for the adoption of the Fediverse in the European Union’s institutions:
Tbh I have little interest in either of them
I wish fewer people would “appreciate” micro-blogging and short videos in general. It has too much of an influence on public discourse and the short posts aren’t really suitable for the complex issues we face today.
I’ll say it again and again and again:
The fediverse is hamstrung by the need to choose a specific server.
I remember trying to help people join Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter. Every question I heard was about picking a server.
What’s a server?
Why do I have to pick a server?
How do I pick a server?
Then there were the more thoughtful questions.
What happens if the server I chose goes down?
What happens if someone chooses the same user name as mine on a different server?
Mastodon, Lemmy, etc. won’t get mainstream traction until someone solves this simple hurdle.
And they don’t even say server but “instance”. Like need special words to keep the unwashed out.
I keep hammering home: instance doesn’t matter when you start. It’s more important for you to join. Once you join, you’ll figure out the instance and then you can switch.
Can you though? You’ll lose all your data, your posts, your liles, your comments, your curated list of communities and usually also your Username. People don’t like giving up their entire existence just because they made a wrong choice in the beginning.
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users. Mastodon seems to be a great case of Open Source and decentralized being so fervently followed that people ignore the absolute real problems with it thus ensuring it will never become any type of mainstream.
Actually trying to find interesting content on Mastodon is fuckin awful, bluesky learned what i liked and hands me new awesome artists pretty much daily. Combine that with the whole having to select an instance and remember how to use it and cross instance posting and blah blah blah and your average person is not even going to look at Mastodon
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users.
This narrative is tired, particularly with Mastodon.
All open source projects that aren’t violently ruthless about pursuing profits are going to lag behind tech companies approaching social media from the perspective of a cigarette company that also is selling the capacity to rich interests to distort, artificially elevate or silence perspectives.
Should we all push for a more accessible fediverse? Of course, but what is your perspective bringing to the table that does anything other than restate the incredible material inequality in resources between the two things you are comparing?
On the contrary I think the UX of mastodon is impressively boring and functional compared to the ever enshittifying slop and paper thin future promises served up by multimillion and multibillion dollar social media companies.
I have no issues finding content on mastodon, just search and follow hashtags.
And most people prefer content algorithms. Or maybe a better way of phrasing it would be they’re used to and expect content algorithms. Having to actively search for and follow topics is not only yet another hoop users have to jump through (good UX has as few steps as possible to get you where you want, a good chunk of users jumps ship at every step) it also requires that they know which hashtags are being used for the content they want to see beforehand, which might be difficult for you if you relied on content algorithms before.
Shoutout to the European Commission: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
Also: Court of Justice of the EU @Curia@curia.social-network.europa.eu
These stopped being maintained in 2024 unfortunately:
- EU Food Safety Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EFSA
- EU Data Protection Supervisor https://social.network.europa.eu/@EDPS
- EU Space Program Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EUSPA
- EU Aid and Crisis response https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_ECHO
I still don’t understand what inherent appeal Bluesky has. Is it the familiarity? Maybe the delusional belief that corporations are the designated social media providers?
Disclaimer- I’m pretty new here. Just closed my account on blueshit again. Its getting worse and worse in my opinion. Massive echo chamber of US phsycosis- Mirror of X. Havent learned a single thing, entirely humourless. The only reason I keep trying again is for 2 accounts and one has disappeared. Anonymous is the remaining one. Closed mastadon too as i found myself looking at Lemmie first and spending longer lurking and clicking thru to links way, way more. It’s about content really I suppose. Little effort equals little reward but thats people for you I guess. I’m not looking for agreement but knowledge, info, perspective, open-mindedness & entertainment beyond US fluff. I have hope for Lemmie but can see much room for improvement, growth or development
I closed my account soon after I made one, for parallel reasons that you described here. I liked it for a short while because I am apart of the internet art community but it became an echo chamber too quickly. Lot’s of AI dumping and and memification, cringey “We are warriors/witches they couldn’t burn/etc”, no fruitful discussion or organizing for the US peeps, shaming those who aren’t doing exactly what someone else is doing, inner fighting, you name it. I think I just got on the wrong feed but it was pretty miserable and I ended up going back to forums for niche topics and then use lemmy and mastodon for general stuff. I’m waiting for the bubble to burst at some point.
It’s easy to use
It has Democrat toxicity instead of Republican toxicity. And no Elon Musk. Which is like cleaner and often less stupid, sure, but for a european not very relevant.
And something something protocol cool cool much. Compared to Mastodon, it has similar algorithmic feeds that Twitter has, which depending on your viewpoint makes it just as bad as Twitter or just as useful as Twitter. This + lack of masses leads to nothing ever happening in Mastodon, or at least that it seems like it. In contrast, those algorithmic toxic wastelands like Twitter, Bluesky and Facebook especially always have something “new” happening in them. Even if it’s just AI slop, the dumb part of your brain gets happy about it.
You don’t have to pick a server. You don’t have to pick a software (i.e Mastodon, Misskey, Chrrypick, etc). All likes and comments are actually shown when you view posts. When you search for something it actually comes up with results. It offers algorithms which believe it or not is a feature people want.
It’s simple kinda - one has a marketing team. Lots of wonders the power of spin and hype can do for you.
It makes sense that they would go where the users are.
But not having a separate, European instance federated into the BlueSky network, that’s the real wtf.
What if I told you Bluesky federates just as well as WhatsApp does with XMPP.
Surely that’s a bit unfair to BlueSky.
From my brief lecture of the underlying protocol, public instances could exist and federate, it’s only that they become quite expensive to run if done right.
Federation with bluesky is just that technically theoretical. Creating a protocol that allows for federation is not enough
Stimulating others to federate by making it virtually impossible without only billions in the bank for zero profit sounds great 🤡.
It smells of
greenfederate washing. A way to point legislators/ populous that bluesky is different, really, I swear, trust me bro 🤡 .Instead of writing white papers Lemmy/Mbin/GoToSocial/jackal started with writing detailed documentation in how to run your own. In the scope of reality (not theory) 🤡
I’m not even going to pretend that BlueSky is more open than any Fediverse tool designed with federation in mind from the ground up. BlueSky is certainly not Mastodon or Lemmy, but it’s not Meta AI-pushing crap like WhatsApp either.
Let’s do a thought experiment. What if we would get a Wikipedia like NGO with proper funding setting up a EU based BlueSky instance? It won’t be the decentralized dream of Fediverse, perhaps, but it could still prove useful. I think Twitter was successful because of its unified, global reaching platform appeal, not in spite of it, and the fact that users flock to BlueSky tells me that appeal is still there. Having a bit more decentralization in that mix just makes it better, but Mastodon shows that decentralization is not sufficient to give a platform a wide appeal.
As context: I’m one of those people that donates annually to Wikipedia, but I have no interest or capacity in managing a decentralized federation server in my basement. Lots of kudos to the people that do!
I remember 2009
The future of technology was bright
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/110/
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voice-and-video-chat.html?m=1
Instead of selling competing protocols, companies and non profits came together to talk together… so that we could too.
Honestly I’d be a lot less negative of bluesky if it added native ActivityPub.
XMPP was added back in the day to W3 internet standard, as ActivityPub has.
Junkie Elmo is the correct character to use here. Why do we crave enshitification so badly?
Some people don’t want to hear this but Mastodon will never be mainstream without major changes. Even Mastodon users are all on other platforms. I’m not planning to go to Bluesky tho.
