mccNov 23, 2024

I like having Bluesky because it is a non-Twitter, non-Facebook space where I can hear from all my friends who are unable or unwilling to use Mastodon (a site with real barriers to entry). I haven't talked to a lot of those folks much since 2022 and I missed them.

I have intricate arguments why Bluesky is the wrong technical model for a distributed social network. But if a person has already decided *for nontechnical reasons* that they aren't using Mastodon, those arguments mean nothing to them

Show threadCurtolian
I still don’t really understand instances. There is a (relatively) easy button called mastodon.social, though, isn’t there? What do I miss from having taken the easy route?
Nov 23, 2024 at 1:22amMastodon for iOS
Show threadNFGNov 23, 2024

@Curtolian Mastodon still falls down hard when it tries to do search or threads across multiple instances. Hell, even following someone is a tedium of copy-pasting their name into your instance.

I've run Mastodon. I've run several. It's a massive resource hog that somehow, with all that it has going on, still can't manage to count replies accurately.

Lotta good stuff, lotta dumb stuff too.

Show threadKen Butler has movedNov 23, 2024
@Curtolian that was about what I was going to say. I made an account on mastodon.cloud, followed some people and some hashtags, and that was about it. I think there was a mechanism for finding people that had been on twitter that were now on mastodon (since I was coming from there).
Show threadSwift (will be at EMF)Nov 23, 2024
@Curtolian you miss better moderation, and any particular local community. M.s forms sort of a monolithic blob. The people that land here and truly embed, they tend to do so on smaller instances where they end up recognising their neighbours.
Show threadEty, Ringer of Bells ^GNov 23, 2024

@Curtolian Adding to what others here have said -- it's not uncommon that other Mastodon instances limit interactions with mastodon.social in some way.

Those reasons range from practical to ideological, and the limitations themselves range from 'dont show these users in home feeds' to 'completely ban anything to do with mastodon.social.'

If the only people you're interacting with are on .social it's probably fine, but it is a thing to be aware of!