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> The internet doesn’t need to be like this. As luck would have it, a new way is emerging just in time. If you’ve heard of Bluesky... Why do they write as if

> The internet doesn’t need to be like this. As luck would have it, a new way is emerging just in time. If you’ve heard of Bluesky... Why do they write as if activitypub and mastodon do not exist?

mxmilkiib 2y ago
don't forget SOLID from W3C! https://solidproject.org https://solidproject.org https://github.com/solid https://github.com/solid
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Perhaps because, in terms of numbers, they don't?
- archagon 2y ago
  Deceptive. Half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter now post exclusively on Mastodon.
  - jghn 2y ago
    Deceptive. While half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter moved to Mastodon, three quarters of them have either shifted to bsky or post to both via mirroring.
    - azakai 2y ago
      Aside from tech, though: practically none of the non-tech people I followed on Twitter moved to Mastodon. Almost all of them went to Bluesky. I follow a mix of people, so I ended up mostly on Bluesky. I would have been happy on Mastodon too, and I don't know why it didn't catch on with non-tech people, but it just hasn't. So Bluesky is our main opportunity for an open social web, at this time.
      - ajmurmann 2y ago
        It sounds stupid but I think the bit where you pick your host was too much for normies or led to pushing off the decision and just not joining. Even when you have an account you know have to pick a client.
        shawabawa3 2y ago
        I've never used twitter or any of the alternatives but I'm glad not many people are going to mastodon The number of dead links I've had where the shard is down or overloaded is way too high The design simply doesn't work imo
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jay_kyburz 2y ago
      Hey, question. Is mirroring officially supported by either platform. So for example, can I configure my blue sky account to just monitor my mastodon feed and re-post things for me?
      - tlarkworthy 2y ago
        I see some BlueSky users mirroring their content from Mastodon
      - m-p-3 2y ago
        There's a bidirectional bridge available https://fed.brid.gy/ https://fed.brid.gy/
  - WJW 2y ago
    Have the non-tech people you used to follow on Twitter also migrated to Mastodon? What about the other half of the tech people, where did they go? Labeling another post as deceptive and then trying to use just one demographic (and not a very large one at that) as proof for whether mastodon is "large" in percentage terms is not very reassuring as to the level of discussion on Mastodon tbh.
    - archagon 2y ago
      I am just relaying my experience. Bluesky and Mastodon together cover 90% of the intelligent discussion I used to get on Twitter, weighed more heavily towards Mastodon. To pretend it’s a dead platform is ridiculous.
- input_sh 2y ago
  Their metrics are comparable in every single way, both with around a million MAU. Plenty of stats websites for both, you should check them.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    Bluesky has 3.5M DAU.
layer8 2y ago
Maybe because user identities aren’t bound to server instances with Bluesky?
- gchamonlive 2y ago
  Sure they are, it's just that it's centralised and you don't see it. If bluesky shut down it's business guess where you data goes? Into the void, correct. Data isn't tied to an instance in mastodon, it resides in an instance and can be easily migrated. If you either host yourself or subscribe to a reputable service that offers mastodon, like omg.lol then it's a safe bet your data will live long after the other proprietary services get shut down.
  - bastawhiz 2y ago
    User identities are not user data. Your identity is only lost if you used an identity provider that shut down. Your data is separately stored. You can, in effect, own your bluesky identity forever, even if every BS server shuts down, so long as DNS still exists and functions.
    - gchamonlive 2y ago
      Didn't know that, thanks for the info!
    - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
      Strictly speaking: 1. This is true for did:web but less true for did:plc identities. 2. For did:plc identities to survive a full "bluesky PBC" death, you'd need to to transfer master authority for your PLC identity to a set of keys you control. If you don't then ultimately bluesky PBC would still have final authority over your identity. But if you transfer control to your own keys ahead of time then you can use those keys to make changes long after bluesky PBC's death.
      - BodyCulture 2y ago
        Wound be great if you posted the URL to the relevant documentation for this… I guess there must be some docs about these delicate details? Thank you very much!
metabagel 2y ago
My experience with Mastodon is that discovery is terrible. It’s great that it’s open, but it was far too much work to find people and topics to follow outside of my instance (indieweb.social). BlueSky makes discovery natural and easy.
- blitzar 2y ago
  My experience with Mastodon is that discovery is wonderful. It is natural and easy - no algorithm, no manipulation, nothing at all. Just type in details of person you want to follow and follow them.
  - lokar 2y ago
    That’s not what people mean by discovery.
  - pxoe 2y ago
    Their discovery is so bad that they were touting new discovery algorithms for account recommendations in some recent release. So much for "no algorithm".
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    Discovery is great, as long as you know exactly who you want to follow. Got it!
alkonaut 2y ago
Both are written with the idea of decentralization and federation in mind. Bluesky at least superficially looks centralized like Twitter, which is simply put, what I want. I believe that's the case for most ex Twitter users too.
nout 2y ago
And Nostr. Nostr is smaller than either Bluesky or ActivityPub, but it has some benefits over those two. It has a large number of cool clients (twitter-like, medium-like, music related, instagram-like) and the fact that instance admin can't de-platform you like they can on Mastodon, which literally happened to me. Nostr also shows signs of being able to support the developers via very easy "tipping" feature. For example when new Amethyst (nostr client on android) is released, it makes it super easy to send the developers couple cents. And those cents add up. I don't think it's self sustainable currently, but it's not that far either.
- sitkack 2y ago
  I don't know why your comment is being downvoted, first I heard of the protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/ https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/ Is that because of it being crypto adjacent?
  - jgilias 2y ago
    It’s not really crypto adjacent. It is full of Bitcoin maxis who vehemently hate crypto though.
  - nout 2y ago
    Yeah, probably. Nostr is quite hated by the Hacker News community from what I have observed. This is most likely because it's used by folks that are into freedom technologies that explicitly don't allow excluding any users from participating. And so it attracts people that are into bitcoin, Tor, cryptography, etc. "Crypto" is actually quite hated at Nostr and you get called out for bringing any stupid crypto coins. You are free to talk about anything though and the system can't block or exclude you, but people may mute you in their clients.
- pseudocomposer 2y ago
  What do you mean by “instance owners can’t deplatform?” Is this about being able to port your data (and username/handle) out to a different instance?
tensor 2y ago
There are a number of things I don't like about mastodon. 1. The platform is outright hostile to discovery. You generally can't even index posts in a search engine. This is not what I want, at all. 2. Moderation is awful. Letting individual servers control moderation at their whim is not what I want. In contrast, Bluesky's idea of labelling services and opt-in moderation sounds amazing. 3. After point 1, it probably goes without saying that Mastodon is outright hostile to algorithms. While I agree that algorithms can be very problematic, Bluesky's approach to opt-in algorithms is an interesting approach. 4. I think the ship has long sailed on Mastodon. It's failed time and again to gain enough critical mass for non-tech people to adopt. Clearly the combination of above issues, or even maybe the confusion of onboarding, is too much. Overall I'm glad Mastodon exists, and perhaps Bluesky wouldn't be what it is without first seeing what worked and didn't work with Mastodon.
- shaky-carrousel 2y ago
  I'm glad that Mastodon didn't gain enough critical mass for non-tech people to adopt. I see that as a feature.
  - wiml 2y ago
    I see quite a lot of non-tech people on Mastodon. Many are academics, but many aren't.
    - Matumio 2y ago
      That's my impression too. There was a flock of academics and relatively non-tech folks joining a few years ago. Most didn't stay, and a few of those who did are now flocking to Bluesky. But the others seem to be very much at home. They are not millions. They are probably prioritizing the small communities that have formed over maximum reach.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  > You generally can't even index posts in a search engine. That's a per-instance setting in an easy to find place in the Administration section. It's not doing anything more complex than swapping ROBOTS.txt files. If on per-instance, there are also per-user settings to opt-in. (Again, it mostly just tweaks ROBOTS.txt.) The off-by-default nature makes it seem "hostile" if your intent is to roll your own Fediverse index, because you actually have to read ROBOTS.txt files and abide by them. On the other hand, it is nice because it sets an ecosystem norm that indexes and bots should respect ROBOTS.txt and are considered bad actors to destroy if they can't be bothered to do the simple thing of respecting a ROBOTS.txt file. The off-by-default nature makes it a little bit harder to find an instance if you do want your posts indexed in a search engine, but that's a part of why good federation means a diversity of instances. Also, if they are your posts you want searchable nothing is stopping you from using an API to repost them to any other website you control with search engine indexing. I've seen several bloggers include their microblog posts from ActivityPub on their blog. That's my "eventual" plan for my own ActivityPub posts; I don't want the "live feed" search indexed, but I may want to eventually curate "best of" stuff, add context, do some revisions/editing, and upgrade them to blog posts.

mxmilkiib 2y ago

don't forget SOLID from W3C! https://solidproject.org https://solidproject.org https://github.com/solid https://github.com/solid

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Perhaps because, in terms of numbers, they don't?

archagon 2y ago
Deceptive. Half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter now post exclusively on Mastodon.
- jghn 2y ago
  Deceptive. While half the tech people I used to follow on Twitter moved to Mastodon, three quarters of them have either shifted to bsky or post to both via mirroring.
  - azakai 2y ago
    Aside from tech, though: practically none of the non-tech people I followed on Twitter moved to Mastodon. Almost all of them went to Bluesky. I follow a mix of people, so I ended up mostly on Bluesky. I would have been happy on Mastodon too, and I don't know why it didn't catch on with non-tech people, but it just hasn't. So Bluesky is our main opportunity for an open social web, at this time.
    - ajmurmann 2y ago
      It sounds stupid but I think the bit where you pick your host was too much for normies or led to pushing off the decision and just not joining. Even when you have an account you know have to pick a client.
      - shawabawa3 2y ago
        I've never used twitter or any of the alternatives but I'm glad not many people are going to mastodon The number of dead links I've had where the shard is down or overloaded is way too high The design simply doesn't work imo
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jay_kyburz 2y ago
    Hey, question. Is mirroring officially supported by either platform. So for example, can I configure my blue sky account to just monitor my mastodon feed and re-post things for me?
    - tlarkworthy 2y ago
      I see some BlueSky users mirroring their content from Mastodon
    - m-p-3 2y ago
      There's a bidirectional bridge available https://fed.brid.gy/ https://fed.brid.gy/
- WJW 2y ago
  Have the non-tech people you used to follow on Twitter also migrated to Mastodon? What about the other half of the tech people, where did they go? Labeling another post as deceptive and then trying to use just one demographic (and not a very large one at that) as proof for whether mastodon is "large" in percentage terms is not very reassuring as to the level of discussion on Mastodon tbh.
  - archagon 2y ago
    I am just relaying my experience. Bluesky and Mastodon together cover 90% of the intelligent discussion I used to get on Twitter, weighed more heavily towards Mastodon. To pretend it’s a dead platform is ridiculous.
input_sh 2y ago
Their metrics are comparable in every single way, both with around a million MAU. Plenty of stats websites for both, you should check them.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Bluesky has 3.5M DAU.

layer8 2y ago

Maybe because user identities aren’t bound to server instances with Bluesky?

gchamonlive 2y ago
Sure they are, it's just that it's centralised and you don't see it. If bluesky shut down it's business guess where you data goes? Into the void, correct. Data isn't tied to an instance in mastodon, it resides in an instance and can be easily migrated. If you either host yourself or subscribe to a reputable service that offers mastodon, like omg.lol then it's a safe bet your data will live long after the other proprietary services get shut down.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  User identities are not user data. Your identity is only lost if you used an identity provider that shut down. Your data is separately stored. You can, in effect, own your bluesky identity forever, even if every BS server shuts down, so long as DNS still exists and functions.
  - gchamonlive 2y ago
    Didn't know that, thanks for the info!
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    Strictly speaking: 1. This is true for did:web but less true for did:plc identities. 2. For did:plc identities to survive a full "bluesky PBC" death, you'd need to to transfer master authority for your PLC identity to a set of keys you control. If you don't then ultimately bluesky PBC would still have final authority over your identity. But if you transfer control to your own keys ahead of time then you can use those keys to make changes long after bluesky PBC's death.
    - BodyCulture 2y ago
      Wound be great if you posted the URL to the relevant documentation for this… I guess there must be some docs about these delicate details? Thank you very much!

metabagel 2y ago

My experience with Mastodon is that discovery is terrible. It’s great that it’s open, but it was far too much work to find people and topics to follow outside of my instance (indieweb.social). BlueSky makes discovery natural and easy.

blitzar 2y ago
My experience with Mastodon is that discovery is wonderful. It is natural and easy - no algorithm, no manipulation, nothing at all. Just type in details of person you want to follow and follow them.
- lokar 2y ago
  That’s not what people mean by discovery.
- pxoe 2y ago
  Their discovery is so bad that they were touting new discovery algorithms for account recommendations in some recent release. So much for "no algorithm".
- serial_dev 2y ago
  Discovery is great, as long as you know exactly who you want to follow. Got it!

alkonaut 2y ago

Both are written with the idea of decentralization and federation in mind. Bluesky at least superficially looks centralized like Twitter, which is simply put, what I want. I believe that's the case for most ex Twitter users too.

nout 2y ago

And Nostr. Nostr is smaller than either Bluesky or ActivityPub, but it has some benefits over those two. It has a large number of cool clients (twitter-like, medium-like, music related, instagram-like) and the fact that instance admin can't de-platform you like they can on Mastodon, which literally happened to me. Nostr also shows signs of being able to support the developers via very easy "tipping" feature. For example when new Amethyst (nostr client on android) is released, it makes it super easy to send the developers couple cents. And those cents add up. I don't think it's self sustainable currently, but it's not that far either.

sitkack 2y ago
I don't know why your comment is being downvoted, first I heard of the protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/ https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/ Is that because of it being crypto adjacent?
- jgilias 2y ago
  It’s not really crypto adjacent. It is full of Bitcoin maxis who vehemently hate crypto though.
- nout 2y ago
  Yeah, probably. Nostr is quite hated by the Hacker News community from what I have observed. This is most likely because it's used by folks that are into freedom technologies that explicitly don't allow excluding any users from participating. And so it attracts people that are into bitcoin, Tor, cryptography, etc. "Crypto" is actually quite hated at Nostr and you get called out for bringing any stupid crypto coins. You are free to talk about anything though and the system can't block or exclude you, but people may mute you in their clients.
pseudocomposer 2y ago
What do you mean by “instance owners can’t deplatform?” Is this about being able to port your data (and username/handle) out to a different instance?

tensor 2y ago

There are a number of things I don't like about mastodon. 1. The platform is outright hostile to discovery. You generally can't even index posts in a search engine. This is not what I want, at all. 2. Moderation is awful. Letting individual servers control moderation at their whim is not what I want. In contrast, Bluesky's idea of labelling services and opt-in moderation sounds amazing. 3. After point 1, it probably goes without saying that Mastodon is outright hostile to algorithms. While I agree that algorithms can be very problematic, Bluesky's approach to opt-in algorithms is an interesting approach. 4. I think the ship has long sailed on Mastodon. It's failed time and again to gain enough critical mass for non-tech people to adopt. Clearly the combination of above issues, or even maybe the confusion of onboarding, is too much. Overall I'm glad Mastodon exists, and perhaps Bluesky wouldn't be what it is without first seeing what worked and didn't work with Mastodon.

shaky-carrousel 2y ago
I'm glad that Mastodon didn't gain enough critical mass for non-tech people to adopt. I see that as a feature.
- wiml 2y ago
  I see quite a lot of non-tech people on Mastodon. Many are academics, but many aren't.
  - Matumio 2y ago
    That's my impression too. There was a flock of academics and relatively non-tech folks joining a few years ago. Most didn't stay, and a few of those who did are now flocking to Bluesky. But the others seem to be very much at home. They are not millions. They are probably prioritizing the small communities that have formed over maximum reach.
WorldMaker 2y ago
> You generally can't even index posts in a search engine. That's a per-instance setting in an easy to find place in the Administration section. It's not doing anything more complex than swapping ROBOTS.txt files. If on per-instance, there are also per-user settings to opt-in. (Again, it mostly just tweaks ROBOTS.txt.) The off-by-default nature makes it seem "hostile" if your intent is to roll your own Fediverse index, because you actually have to read ROBOTS.txt files and abide by them. On the other hand, it is nice because it sets an ecosystem norm that indexes and bots should respect ROBOTS.txt and are considered bad actors to destroy if they can't be bothered to do the simple thing of respecting a ROBOTS.txt file. The off-by-default nature makes it a little bit harder to find an instance if you do want your posts indexed in a search engine, but that's a part of why good federation means a diversity of instances. Also, if they are your posts you want searchable nothing is stopping you from using an API to repost them to any other website you control with search engine indexing. I've seen several bloggers include their microblog posts from ActivityPub on their blog. That's my "eventual" plan for my own ActivityPub posts; I don't want the "live feed" search indexed, but I may want to eventually curate "best of" stuff, add context, do some revisions/editing, and upgrade them to blog posts.