Why I recommend against Bluesky.

But Bluesky does have a lot better features when it comes to actually effectively using the platform. Getting set up on Bluesky is orders of magnitude easier than Mastodon, and I do think that's a big part of why it's become the preferred destination recently. Mastodon had a real shot early on but didn't make it easy enough for people.

I know you’ll get blowback for this, eye rolls and such about how it’s not that hard, but I’ve been building social software for ordinary humans for almost 25 years and you are quite correct. Honestly the Mastodon PR itself was too complex. Anytime you heard about it, you heard not about what a hot social destination it is, but how cool its distributed technology model is and that shit just flies over most peoples heads and actually scares them into think it will be complex and hard. Then you prompt them to choose an instance and it’s just game over. Ordinary users have the attention span of a fruit fly.
I'm probably an idiot, but my experience was exactly the opposite. I don't really feel like following specific users (at least for now), I just want to follow hashtags. Super easy to do on Mastodon, but I couldn't figure it out on Bluesky.

I never used Twitter, and am not particularly excited about the general format, so I'm probably not the target user, but I check Mastodon occasionally, and gave up on Bluesky after like 2 days.
- I just want to follow hashtags. Super easy to do on Mastodon, but I couldn't figure it out on Bluesky.
  
  BSky is just a little different, and I would argue superior, in the way discovery works. Instead of searching for hashtags for a subject (which can easily be abused) you search for feeds of the subject, which are far more useful. Then if you want, you can combine multiple feeds.
  
  Another commenter shared a link with a guide to create a custom feed, and I definitely see how that can be better. As a new user, I was having too much trouble finding an easy way to create my own custom feed, and wasn't happy with any of the existing feeds that I looked at.. they all seemed to include more "junk" than the equivalent hashtags on Mastodon. I agree that simply following hashtags has downsides, but the logic as to why a specific post shows up in my feed is much more obvious in that case, allowing me to more easily troubleshoot and adjust my follow/block settings.
- On Bluesky you follow starter packs which are collections of users which go to your main feed. https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs/all
  
  Or you follow feeds which are set up by users to track certain topics. These can be very highly customized follows of people, hashtags, keywords, crowd tagged topics, including blocks of certain stuff. These are like subreddits or Lemmy communities. https://blueskydirectory.com/feeds/all
  
  Yeah, I saw those and appreciate the idea, but I didn't like them, at least not yet. I just want to follow a few cat related tags, maybe some FOSS stuff, and some tags relevant to my local area. I just clicked through a few feeds related to each of those, but didn't like any of the ones that came up. Each feed contains posts that seem totally irrelevant and I don't understand why they're included or how to tweak my feed to remove them.
  
  For me the feeds solve a lot of problems with straight hashtags, like getting stuff that's the wrong language, or bot spam. But I guess if you are just going for visual stuff that stuff may be easier to tolerate.
  
  If you don't like the feeds that are out there already, you can build your own feed. https://www.southernfriedscience.com/a-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-making-custom-feeds-on-bluesky/
  
  Thanks! I was looking for a way to build my own feed, but this is the first guide I've seen that seems relatively simple to follow. I agree that there's downsides to simply following hashtags, but I'm familiar with ways to curate my feed based on hashtags, and just wanted to start with something familiar. The curated feeds are probably great for a lot of people, but just really frustrated me, as the feeds I happened to browse seemed to somehow include more "junk" than what I've encountered with the equivalent hashtags on Mastodon.
  
  You can build a feed just from straight hashtags if you want, but I think combining it with crowdsourced tags, block lists, and keywords will get you better results.
Getting set up on Bluesky is orders of magnitude easier than Mastodon,

I'm so tired of hearing this. Just click the mastodon.social button in the app and it's not any different.
- Not setting up an account, that's roughly the same. Adding contacts by topic, blocking topics and people with bad agendas en masse, etc. I started my Mastodon account almost a year before Bluesky. In Bluesky I had something useful in a week. In Mastodon I still don't (and it's not for lack of effort).
- I’ve been on Mastodon for two years now. I’m active and all.
  
  And yet, to this date, I still can’t find a single person in my working field, who are located within the province of Quebec.
  
  Bluesky? Found and added over a hundred, in mere days.
  
  Yeah I mean you're making my point here. More marketshare = more leverage over users.
  
  Maybe they have more users for the same reason you’re sick of hearing how much easier it is than Mastodon: because it’s easier than Mastodon. Users didn’t spontaneously materialize on BlueSky.
  
  Okay but...it's not.
  
  I don’t think I do… what I explained was, Mastodon is too difficult not because of the interface, it’s because it’s too decentralized, to the point of everyone getting lost in the forest, and no one can find each other within the networks.
  
  As for Bluesky, while it’s not the best or safest alternative, is way more convenient for networking—the raison d’être of a social network.
  
  No one is arguing about that. None of that matters when BlueSky turns into the next Xitter. Your social network is irrelevant when you can't even find those people in a feed full of ads for weight loss supplements and unchecked disinformation.
  
  I know that. And I do believe Mastodon is superior tech-wise, safer and better.
  
  But, at this moment, the people I look to reach are on Bluesky, none are on Mastodon.
  
  Again, that is not the discussion we are having.
  
  "Im so tired of hearing that getting set up is easier in bluesky, you can do it like this on mastodon"
  
  "That didn't set up my account, which includes getting a healthy following base"
  
  ...
  
  "That's not the discussion we are having"
  
  I'm another person but, are you sure it isn't? Setting up the account is not only creation, it's all the tweaks until it's useful for the user. If the user needs connections and searching for them is harder (due to how search works currently with federation) then setting up is indeed harder on Mastodon, which is the point the one you are responding to is reinforcing.
  
  Not having users on the platform is not part of account set up, no.
- Wouldn't that mean everyone is centralized on the same instance? I don't use Mastodon so I don't know if it's the same as here...
  
  Not everyone. Just those users who don't care enough to be picky. I wish they would rotate the instances but this is better than nothing.
  
  Sorry what do you mean? I see users posting from other instances in my mastodon app (I haven't used it much).
  
  Sorry, what do you mean?
  
  I see users posting from other instances in my mastodon app
  
  Which would indicate that
  
  everyone is centralized on the same instance?
  
  is incorrect.
  
  Idk this whole thread confuses me. I'm on est.social instance, I'm gonna assume I see everyone who hasnt excluded my instance and vice versa..
  
  It's a bit more complicated than that, but yes, that's the gist of it.
You can convenience or security, never both. Unfortunately bluesky’s compromises towards convenience hurt it’s security measures against enshittification
- For me it's the difference between something that's usable for its purpose and something that's not. As much as I wanted to use Mastodon and tried, it just never got off the ground. If Mastodon introduced starter packs, subscribable block lists, topic tagging and blocks, etc. I would use it in the same way I do Bluesky. But it hasn't done that so I don't.
- You can convenience or security, never both.
  
  Generally, yes. Strictly, no.

Bluesky isn't Twitter. That's all that mattered to most people. A few influential people went there first and the network effect kicked in.

Yup, the network effect is real.

Hell I wouldn't even say that... they don't understand it, they don't care to understand it, they don't know or care what federated means. They went there because, it's not currently nazified twitter.

I get that it's "technically" federated... but practically it's for all practical purposes just a proprietary program, run by a group that isn't currently horrific. Unfortunately everything I see in it says, it's every bit as vulnerable, and it can be good for as long as the owners care about not becoming a nazi propoganda machine. Actual recourse from it going evil... is non existant.