Journalists flock to Bluesky as X becomes increasingly 'toxic'
Journalists flock to Bluesky as X becomes increasingly 'toxic'
Journalists are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky than on the platform they used to know as Twitter.
Summary
Journalists are increasingly abandoning X (formerly Twitter) for Bluesky, citing higher engagement and less toxicity. Since Elon Muskโs takeover of X, changes like deprioritizing external links and rising hate speech have alienated many, especially marginalized groups.
Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey, offers a more welcoming environment, especially for journalists and activists, with 20x the engagement in some cases.
Reporters note better traffic, reduced harassment, and a focus on diverse stories.
Organizations like The Guardian and fundraising groups also report greater success on Bluesky compared to X.
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Im kinda pissed about this ngl. The enshitification of twitter was supposed to drive mastodon not another corporatised shithole.
Wont happen until mastodon makes on boarding easy enough for the tech illiterate.
And the name doesn't help.
Yeah that generally seems to be an issue with a lot of foss projects.
It's not that surprising. Developing software requires a certain skillset, heavily based in logic. Understanding people requires a completely different skillset, and people tend to be more emotional than logical. Our brains just draw connections between different concepts that are, at their core, fundamentally illogical. A big business has the benefit of a marketing department, staffed by specialists who earn their paycheck by studying and manipulating people. Your average FOSS project doesn't have that advantage.
If you wanted some of that same advantage, you'd want to onboard some talented humanities or marketing specialist and give them the branding responsibilities.
Ist that ths kind of place for a non profit organisation. They monetise and pay devs and marketers and as long as u keep it foss thwn that helps the community as a whole.
We need a nonprofit that provides reccommendations to all the Activpub services and helps to steer them in the right direction.
Developing software requires a certain skillset, heavily based in logic. Understanding people requires a completely different skillset
Before Zuck dropped out of college to do Facebook instead, he was double majoring in computer science and psychology.
Fuck the Zuck, but that's the kind of person who can make a successful social media website. Someone who knows how both computers and people think.
Using the term โOpen Social Webโ instead of fediverse or mastodon seems to help a lot. TechCrunch and other news orgs use the term more nowadays and Meta mentions it as well as the about us on Bluesky.
Mastodon needs a lot of work before it becomes a mainstream option. They missed a big opportunity when twitter became toxic, and now they canโt compete against bluesky. Hope iโm wrong but i think they are doomed.
At this point I'm just hoping BlueSky gets it right and provides a federation protocol.
That is a major issue the fediverse needs to fix.
We need a single federated account that works across all platforms that iant tied to a single server even if said server goes down that preferably allows for your private key to be held by u. Ideally get this to work with the new passkey standard supported by google, apple, microsoft etc.
Then. We need to make a website that is like 3 simple steps.
Step 0: Option a) sign up with email Option b) sign up with username
Step 1: Select or search for 3 categories ur interested in
Step 2: Show me nsfw yes/no default no Show me extreme opinions yes/no default no (need to rework what word to use instead of "extreme") Show me bot accounts yes/no default yes
Step 2.5: automaticly send said user off to an instance that is the following:
- Respects their email/username sign up choice
- Related to their interests
- Respects their nsfw choice
- Is defederated from extreme instances for dont show me extreme opinions hexbear lemmy.ml etc 4.Respects the load any individual instance can handle that the instance admin can configure.
Step 3: user signs up to the instance they have been directed to
Step 4: reccommend people/communities etc fir them to follow/subscribe to. Reccommend blockliats for specific subjects, racist, tankie, asshole, nazi, etc.
Done!
Their already exists a standard for accounts just that its not yet been implemented into most services yet. Mastodon already has blocklists (although poorly managed and implemented). It wouldnt be too hard to make this website i could probably do it myself ngl.
Should probably also drop this vid into the proccess somewhere as a quick explainer.
It seems like Bluesky kind of did all of this with ATProto but theyโre just met with constant criticisms
Itโs like everyone agrees mastodon isnโt the โrightโ special concoction but any attempt ever made to do something different or better and people shoot it down because itโs โnot open like mastodonโ
Met with constant criticisms...here. Because people seem to care about feelings more than facts or results.
I think it comes down to people not liking that Bluesky is controlled by a board. But that's what's needed for mass adoption: a group of people to be accountable.
That's what bluesky's DID based account identity does. Unless you make that key the sole authority (no key rotation, like nostr) then you need a registry as authority (like bluesky's PLC registry)
Bluesky specifically lets the account hosting server handle your auth, the directory points to where your account server is as in when you enter your handle, every 3rd party service and federated peer can do OAuth seamlessly to your account host. Then you can log into every compatible site with your handle, instead of having to get redirected "home" before you can interact. Your account server's repository keeps records of all your posts and your social network, and you can even migrate seamlessly across hosts.
Yeah if they used Activpub then id be onboard 100%. Its just that there architecture is fundamentally incompatible with Activpub. Federation was supposed to destroy the fragmentation not join it.
Atproto is better at global views thanks to stuff like content addressing than activitypub is. That's better to reduce fragmentation.
This is the most common reply to any mention of onboarding newcomers, but itโs not helpful. Itโd be much more productive to hear specific criticisms so we can address them.
- Is clicking the big โJoinโ (the default server) on joinmastodon.org really that big of a hurdle?
- Is a firehouse home feed required to engage users from the start?
Ask someone you personally know in real life that is not tech literate to sign up for each service and try to get an account going.
It is night and day
There are other issues. Missing features (cited by people who bailed from Mastodon):
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a lack of "trending" list - that means journalists and other people who want to know what's happening right now didn't have a way to find events.
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no suggestions for follows. As a new user, how do people know what to follow?
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no suggested posts. Once I scroll through all the posts from the people I follow, the system doesn't provide me with new posts.
-
no quote tweets.
It isn't just that Mastodon has a weird onboarding experience, it's that it doesn't behave the way Twitter users have come to expect/need. I realize that is usually by design.
Edit: added 4
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Yeah I don't get it, it really doesn't seem hard. Honestly I feel like its more of a marketing issue. Bluesky probably has a large budget to buy influencers and create a larger network effect
Never going to happen. You're in the company of the people who have been saying "year of the Linux desktop!" for three decades or more.
We used to be <1% we are now up to about 4%. We are on the slow lead in to the exponential curve.
Lots of that is the steamdeck, so it's a bit hard to say if even that lackluster improvement means actual Linux OS usage past "platform for an app that users dont leave."
Is it? Most of those numbers come from web browser share sites, and Steam Deck is barely used for web browsing.
Sure, but instances / servers confuse most average users. We see this every single time there is a new big migration wave. People donโt get it, then bail.
It's wild that no one ever had a problem with this with email and yet this is apparently so confusing they abandon it.
It's wild that no one ever had a problem with this with email
Do you work in IT? I couldn't imagine sitting there trying to guide people through IMAP and SMTP settings. Like email has been made a lot easier on that end because most people use an app on their phone that allows them to select from one of the three major providers, they click it, poof all done.
But imagine someone calls you up and is like "hey how do I setup mutt for gmail?" "How do I set up Canary for Microsoft?"
Then imagine someone who has 1/10 of your knowledge trying to set it up. We have to remember that a lot of people are unaware of the file/folder metaphor in computers because a lot of people just "put it in a cloud" and call it done. The tablet/phone era has really eroded a lot of knowledge about systems. I know that seems hard to believe on the Fediverse when we're all surrounded by incredibly knowledgeable people.
People at work think I'm a wizard because I can do formulas in Excel and know how to navigate through directories in the file explorer. Even standard keyboard shortcuts (Like Ctrl+C) are strange magical things to many of my coworkers.
I see your point but do you really have that level of complexity on the fediverse?
You pick an instance, create an account and then browse; much like you would pick an email provider, create an account, and email your friends.
Sure if you're setting up your own domain for email, or configuring a mail client to work with your email provider, then you have to deal with these things but in my opinion the analogy works reasonably well. Maybe I am being dense.
Agreed, imo lemmy is more of lacking critical mass. Ime, more people seem to complain about the small size of communities.
I would just never get accustomed to mastodon, though. Finding out people is difficult there.
So it's hard choosing one instance but having an account in Bluesky, another one in Steam, another one in Epic, another one in PSN/XBox Live, another one in Twitch, ... it's the easiest thing in the world.
This analogy gets used a lot here, but it ignores the fact you literally see users struggling, asking for help, then giving up.
Also, email had a lot of things helping it out. Many ISPs would (and still) give people an email address and set it up for them. Moreover, mail web clients like Hotmail and Gmail didnโt pester people with domain selection. Average users didnโt pick a Hotmail or Gmail domain because they were thinking about the domain, they got it because they were thinking about the features that the web client and host offered.
Hotmail and Gmail are domains. People had already chosen a domain before they went to the website.
My point is email isnโt just a domain. Itโs a client and a hosting service. You were forced to use their domains if you wanted access to their web clients, free storage, etc.
No one chose Gmail early on because they wanted the โGmailโ domain. They chose it because of the web client and massive free storage.
So you're arguing that Mastodon instances don't do enough to set themselves apart on features?
You don't have to deal with being sent links to other people's mail servers' public mail lists, and then figuring out how to get your own mail server to figure out how to join that conversation. Mailto links open in your mail client which already knows what your server is.
Mastodon don't have a mailto: equivalent, pages can't identify themselves in a way your browser recognize as a Mastodon host, your browser won't remember your Mastodon account(s) specifically. And federation sync issues aren't even dealt with here...
Email is not the same, if it was, then mastodon would just be another email client.
One of the biggest issues with federated social media is discovery, a specific problem that email doesn't deal with, sense communication with email is primarily done between individuals with known addresses.
It's also easy for people to comprehend email because it has an easy analog to regular addresses and traditional communication (I'm writing a letter on my computer and it's getting sent to someone else's computer)
Finally, it took email decades to get to the place it is today, and 99.99999 percent of people using it don't understand how it works in the slightest, like at all.
One of the biggest issues with federated social media is discovery
Exactly this. IIRC the Mastodon devs don't want to add recommendation algorithms, since those can be gamed. The problem is that many users rely on them to bootstrap their account and find ongoing events.
This sort of thing will keep happening unless the FOSS world learns to treat designers as equals. Mastodon is significantly harder to get going. Simple things like on-boarding and starter packs make BlueSky a better experience.
100% agree
All we gotta do is wait for Bluesky to get bought by Musk.
Full circle!
Dont fret Mastadonians. The great Bsky to Fediverse migration is inevitable. Only the timing is debatable.
So you are saying go to the thing that has been shit for years over the thing that isn't shit yet because that second thing may become shit in the future?
No. Im a self serving bastard who wants to see Activpub as the dominant form of content sharing and discussion. Because i think Activpub is an objectivly better standard that gives more power and liberty to the individual.
We have had many waves of people in the past. It does not look like Mastodon will become mainstream for some time if ever.