I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse. I've tried to make the answer as simple and easy to understand as possible:
🦋 BlueSky is designed to give corporations and wealthy people full control of the network. All of its traffic has to flow through expensive-to-run corporate relays.
The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.
☝️ This is a great explainer of the difference between Mastodon and Bluesky, with one correction. At present there is only ONE corporate node, and the technology to create more has not been proven.
Even worse then, isn't it! 😬
I've mainly put multiple relays on there so people can see even in the best case scenario, the AT protocol is still putting corporations in control of the network.
@FediTips @mastodonmigration apparently several people have run their own relays for personal use but it's not for the faint of heart apparently you need several terabytes of preferably solid state storage and a very fast network connection and while the code for the relay server is public it isn't terribly well documented
Take a look at these links if you'd like to learn more
https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q
These examples really just reinforce the technical infeasibility of the entire FOF scheme.
Doctorow seems to think that if there is a choice of corporate relays, that that will somehow make things okay. I admire him greatly, but respectfully think he is mistaken on this particular topic.
About the diagrams on my post, they should be explained by the text in the original post? Fediverse servers are cheap to run and talk directly to each other, BlueSky servers can only talk to expensive-to-run corporate relays.
This tracks. And it sums up my experience nicely. The only reason I’m there is to build community for when I finish my book. But it feels gross on more than one level.
There is one key question I haven’t yet seen answered anywhere:
“[…] our proposed methodology here of networking through Relays instead of server-to-server isn’t prescriptive. The protocol is actually explicitly designed to work both ways.”
https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-architecture
QUESTION: What would that look like? Would each PDS have to crawl all relevant PDSes (=very inefficient)?
Whether or not AT Protocol can be decentralized hinges on the answer.
As far as I know, in the real world AT protocol servers cannot federate without being connected to relays.
There is also only one relay at the moment.
True! But (and I’m saying that as someone who thinks the Fediverse is the better choice):
It *sounds* like the protocol was designed to support true federation (vs. “big world” design based on Relays). What would that look like?
If that works well then, in principle, AT *could* become a reasonable and open alternative to ActivityPub.
If not (which is my current impression but I may be wrong) then there is no way of that ever happening.
It sounds more like a hypothetical thing in a document rather than a real world thing actually being implemented.
BlueSky are a for-profit corporation dependent on VC money, and they've given their staff shares. That gives all of them a huge financial incentive to create a network that can be bought out by billionaires etc.
It's difficult to see why they would do anything to endanger their ability to sell themselves to wealthy investors.
@FediTips It’ll be interesting to watch for sure! They made a lot of promises w.r.t. openness.
There is also this group of people: https://freeourfeeds.com/
It’s interesting that, per their FAQ, they want to build a second Relay. That doesn’t sound like AT will ever be truly decentralized.
It feels like they could achieve their goals with much less money if they focused on ActivityPub instead of AT.
That is 100% fine! 👍 Very happy if this info spreads more widely.
@FediTips @liveloveintifada added the image to my post from earlier it tells the story straight, about time to, nice work.
https://hamishcampbell.com/public-social-media-the-choice-is-clear/
@o76923 @FediTips I also think it’s important to specify something.
The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.This is only partially true. In bluesky the way it works is that you have to be connected to the relay. Posts must be "published" to the relay and while you can get a slice of the relay with an appview it still has to connect to the relay. This is something that is expensive to run and manage. Fedi works a bit differently because not every instance is talking to each other. If I follow someone on mastodon.social I am going to get their posts, not the entirety of mastodon.social’s traffic.BlueSky is a centralised social network, it is on one instance like Twitter or Facebook. It's inherently easier to navigate a single instance network, but it comes at the cost of making it ultra-easy to be bought out, Musk etc could buy it any time.
The BlueSky interface is paid for by selling itself to VC investors. The VCs will then be demanding lots of monetisation once they've gathered enough users. They're on the path to becoming as bad as Twitter or Facebook because of this.
It's totally your call what you do, I'm not trying to condemn people's choice of platforms.
However, if we keep jumping the problem will keep repeating, and many never jump so the problem never gets solved anyway.
We have to do things differently if we want to break the cycle.
BlueSky is advertising itself as if it is breaking the cycle, the point of the post above is that they're not really breaking the cycle.
The standard. Bluesky servers can't talk to each other, they have to go through relays which are substantially more expensive to run.
@FediTips I will stick to Mastodon, but even as technical minded user, it's way more frustrating to use. I can't even see half the content that is on other Mastodon instances, let alone comfortably interact with other protocols. It's confusing and badly communicated by the UI. Things need multiple times the clicks than on bsky.
I understand the limitations, and things are getting better. But realistically there is no way an average internet user can comfortably switch to Mastodon at this point.
BlueSky isn't showing things from other instances at all though.
BlueSky is currently just a for-profit centralised single-instance social network, like Twitter or Facebook.
Even if it eventually linked to other instances (which isn't currently happening), it would be through massive corporate relays that would need to exploit user data to fund themselves.
@FediTips I understand that - and I'm not expecting bsky to stay a viable network for long (their lack of moderation will prob get them first).
But the fact that Mastodon, at it's current state, is not usable for tech-noobs, is true at the same time. I directly experienced that when trying to get some to use it.
If you're on different instances, then you can only see content that somehow ended up on both.
So in the case of your profile: If I click it in my #mastodon browser client, I see that it says you made "63 posts", but shows only one in your timeline. I see you have "14 followers", but I can see none of them in the list.
I could click through to your instance, but then I can't interact.
You'll probably have the same when you check my profile.
...
In the profile at least you can see that stuff is missing. And sometimes you get a "visit instance" button... but I suspect that in discussions such as this one, I also only see a fraction of the replies and boosts.
Add to this, that different clients (like apps) act differently and give me different counts. So it's all very confusing and frustrating.
Now imagine explaining this to some non-techy... starting with what a network instance is. I've been there. 
The green dots on the bottom image could be labelled "just an everyday person", "a small group", "a non profit organisation", "a media that has a vision", "an enthousiast hobbyist", "not a billionnaire", "a cooperative", #GeorgeTakei, "an association", " "just regular folks like you", "just an other everyday person" and so on.
@FediTips Failing to mention that for the average (non-tech-savvy) user Bluesky is *significantly* more user-friendly than Mastodon and the Fediverse makes this not a very honest comparison.
Mastodon has real advantages and should in an ideal world be the main social network, but it is unable to reach that critical mass because Fedi-enthusiasts refuse to look critically at what could be improved (a lot).
Usability is simply not where it needs to be to reach a wider audience.
@FediTips There's a reason the Fediverse skews heavily towards Linux users... It's the Linux of social networks.
Solid and dependable, open and free, but far too opaque and difficult to set up and use for most people (many try it and bounce off), and very easy to break for someone who doesn't already know what they are doing.
BlueSky is easier because it's centralised, like Twitter or Facebook. And it's going down exactly the same path to become just as awful as they are, because it is structurally the same: VC backers on a centralised for-profit corporate network.
Even if they "decentralised" with the AT protocol, it would still remain in corporate control.
If someone doesn't mind them becoming awful like this, then they might as well stay on Twitter or Facebook. What's the point of moving?
@FediTips That's just one of the reasons it's easier.
It's orders of magnitude more usable than both ex-twitter and FB and it's not run by (or overrun with) literal nazis. If you want twitter without the nazis and other shit, that's Bluesky... if you don't mind jumping through myriad technical hoops and a much smaller audience, there's Mastodon.
I'm still detecting zero willingness to look critically at Fedi and its UX issues here.
@FediTips If you want to be smug and look down on people who choose usability over the abstract virtues of open source, knock yourself out, but it's not going to help reach more people who are unconvinced by the Fediverse as it stands (many of whom in fact tried Mastodon during recent twitter exoduses and did not like it).
That failure is on Fedi, not the users.
@ninjadodo @FediTips I agree, although I would also argue it's better for Mastodon that the public not find it accessible in its current state. The sheer amount of traffic and new users BlueSky took on post Nov. 2024 would be daunting for well-established networks, nevermind one that's been public for less than a year. The *only* reason they survived that influx is because their minority-group users and those experienced in trust & safety beat the staff over their heads to implement robust safety features in the product and have a dedicated T&S dept. in the org.
Mastodon would not survive a similar influx. It lacks the necessary safety tooling (the protocol ITSELF is not secure), and the majority of instances lack both the knowledge and the governance to keep users safe on a major user-content network. So many on the fedi preach about the bad things that *could* happen to BlueSky without talking about the existential threats Mastodon *currently* faces.
"and it's not run by (or overrun with) literal nazis"
Because of the way Bluesky is structured, Musk could buy it tomorrow. There's nothing to stop Twitter happening all over again.
"If you want to be smug"
I'm not being smug, I am being deeply worried by what centralised corporate social networks have done to the world:
This is caused by centralised networks run for profit. It doesn't happen at first when it's building up, but it happens eventually.
@FediTips Yes, any private company could in theory be bought and change how it operates, but what *could* happen at some unknown point in the future is not what is happening right now, and this again does not address the real weaknesses of Fedi.
The fact is that for most people Bluesky TODAY is a better alternative than Mastodon. This is not because they are stupid, this is because for a non-tech-savvy user basic usability far FAR outweighs any potential advantages of open source independence.
@FediTips "You might have to move somewhere else in the future" is not much of an argument because that has been true of ALL sites and services for the entire history of the internet.
Also conveniently ignores that people far more frequently have to change Mastodon servers because their chosen server decided to shut down for whatever reason (drama, lack of funds, personal circumstances, etc) and the moving process is anything but convenient... and that's IF you even get there in time.
@FediTips I find this picture to be misleading.
It seems to imply that users are the green dots for BlueSky and they communicate with servers (red dots) which are (so far) run by corporations. No complaints, that's all pretty accurate.
But when you use the same green dots for the Fediverse on the bottom, it seems to imply that individuals are directly connecting to each other which is NOT accurate. Servers are still intermediaries on the Fediverse. I don't believe this is a minor distinction.
The green dots are servers, I tried to mention this in the captions and alt text?
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