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I've spent significant time on Bluesky and Mastodon for the last few months. They're very different experiences, and I like them both for different reasons. But I think they are headed in different directions. They're going to continue to diverge in terms of what they offer.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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I can't entirely back this up, but here's what I'm feeling. Bluesky could grow to be a close approximation of what Twitter was. That will be cool for those who miss the golden age of Twitter. But mastodon has the potential to be something new and different. It's not constrained by what came before.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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Both of these are good I think. Twitter was hugely valuable for many different reasons. And we need to recreate that value in a way that isn't controlled by a bigoted and narcissistic megalomaniac. I don't know if bsky can succeed at that. But I hope it does.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
But there was also an underlying issue with social media. Because it was controlled by corporate interests and needed to make billions of dollars, there were constraints on what it could be. It has to stay vanilla so it can support the presence of brands.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
The promise of mastodon is that it doesn't have to stay vanilla. And it doesn't have to stay coherent or uniform. It provides a foundation of social media messaging. But people can put their own spin on top of it to add more value.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
If you haven't read Anil Dash's Rolling Stone piece, you should. He has always been an ambassador of the way weird subcultures help shape the web for the masses. We've been missing that, and it might come back. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/

 The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again

The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.
Anil Dash (Rolling Stone)
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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So here's what I see as the barriers for both endeavors. Bsky's biggest problem is straight forward. It seems to operate under a model that requires centralized revenue. They gotta start making money at some point.
https://bsky.app/profile/polotek.bsky.social/post/3kkjqelc3ql2w

Marco Rogers (@polotek.bsky.social)

Twitter still has revenue sources. Bluesky does not. It's still existing off the largess of billionaires. That's not sustainable.
Bluesky Social
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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When you have to make money, that means you're gonna start doing things that your users don't want so that you can make money. I don't know exactly what it'll look like. But it's inevitable. There's no other option.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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The upside is that we have experienced all of the horrors of profit-motivated social media. It's bad, but it's a known quantity at least. And we know that ultimately people will still show up. So it can work.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
The other problem that bsky has is more subtle. They took a bet on creating their own protocol. And I think that was a mistake. I don't think it will gain adoption, and I don't think they're going to succeed at becoming a truly distributed system.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
If bsky stays centralized, then it's just another upstart platform trying to compete for users in a market of huge players. For better or worse, Meta got threads to work. So along with Twitter, bsky is competing with two giants and not just one. It's not looking good tbh.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
With mastodon, the problems are completely different. It still has a revenue problem. But it's not centralized. Which means it can't depend on collecting large pools of capital. Some things can only happen quickly when you pay people lots of money to do it.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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Mastodon is missing lots of polish. The experience is slow and laggy. Not just on the official client. I mean everywhere. The UI on most clients is bad. Not ugly per se. But you can tell that it doesn't have a team of professional designers going that extra mile to make it great.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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Maybe most people don't know the difference. But they can feel the difference. We know that because we study it and measure it. Mastodon is not nice to use. Right now, people are getting unique value from it, so that is overcoming the UX problems. I don't think that will stay true.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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I think mastodon has to lean into getting weird. It has to really open up the ability for developers to add things that aren't allowed on centralized platforms. I'm not sure what that looks like. But I'm going to try to get closer to it myself.
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
• •
Anyway, I'm gonna wind this thread down. Mastodon and bsky are the only two viable options for me currently. I won't be going back to twitter. I'm not joining another Meta-controlled platform. So threads is out. I don't do video, so Tik Tok is out. (I also believe Tik Tok is harmful)
in reply to Marco Rogers

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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This is my call to action for this community. Right now it feels like mastodon is not moving fast enough to establish itself as a truly unique social media alternative. Instead it just feels like the worst version of the Twitter replacements. We need to invest in mechanisms that allow mastodon to grow new features that you can't get anywhere else. (And ideally solving the lag problem specifically. It's bad.)
in reply to Marco Rogers

Martin Owens :inkscape:
Martin Owens :inkscape:
• •

The lag problem is the most interesting thing you're seeing. It's the one thing I don't see here on floss.social

To confirm is it the software UI that's laggy, or is it the time it takes messages to appear in your notifications?

in reply to Martin Owens :inkscape:

Jill •-□
Jill •-□
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I agree. I don't see any lag. No lag when I was on tech.lgbt and no lag on my own instance.
in reply to Jill •-□

Marco Rogers
Marco Rogers
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@JillsJoy @doctormo this is one of the core problems with a decentralized platform. It doesn't matter if you're hot seeing lag. I am. And there is no centralized team that is trying to make the experience more uniform for all users. So there is no way of examining why various people are experiencing it or how often.
@Martin Owens :inkscape: @Jill •-□
in reply to Marco Rogers

Martin Owens :inkscape:
Martin Owens :inkscape:
• •

@JillsJoy

Oh, i absolutely believe your report.

Should the software snitch on the admins running instances in bad ways?

Or should the branding be more specific so users aren't confused into thinking thry are using "mastodon"?

@Jill •-□
in reply to Marco Rogers

Sam :verified:
Sam :verified:
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I think Mastodon fundamentally does not have the ability to do this under its current structure + governance. The BDFL has floundered for years on simple features that the community wants (quote posts, full text search), and the implementations of them are just... eh. Not good.

Mastodon requires too much explaining because it doesn't operate enough like other social media platforms. It feels like you have to read a manual to begin using it. I don't think we should lean into that.

in reply to Sam :verified:

Sam :verified:
Sam :verified:
• •

It's a lot of little things.

Why are favorite counts never accurate?

Why do some replies federate over but other replies don't?

Why do I have to follow someone to add them to a list?

Why is there no good discovery service?

Why do some instances have higher character limits but other instances don't?

Why are there 'live feeds' for my server and 'federated'? What do those mean?

All of these require explanations. Instead of getting weird, I think Mastodon has gotta fix the basics.

in reply to Marco Rogers

Adam Dalliance
Adam Dalliance
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That is indeed how we win, by doing thing they can not do.
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