I largely agree, but it is odd to write that column and not mention Mastodon/ActivityPub.
On one hand, it is another alternative if Bluesky falls, but on the other hand I feel like the algorithm makes it a different sort of community.
On one hand, it is another alternative if Bluesky falls, but on the other hand I feel like the algorithm makes it a different sort of community.
Is that an omission, or is that because Mastodon is already in the process of "establishing a new legal home for Mastodon and transferring ownership and stewardship"¹, and because ActivityPub was published as a W3C Recommendation back in 2018?
¹ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-...
ATProto is still young, even compared to ActivityPub. It will continue to evolve and improve. It certainly has the momentum compared to ActivityPub
The only headache is picking the server. If I pick one for them it's pretty smooth sailing from there.
If someone can't handle the basic interface, there's a really really high chance he doesn't have much of value to say.
The problem isn't that it's "complicated". It's that they have no incentive to sign up.
As much as the HN crowd hates it, ads and marketing work. People went to Bluesky not because it's easier but because several famous people talked about it loudly and everyone knows the people behind the original Twitter are behind it.
Marketing.
ATProto removes the switching cost. This is a significant difference from ActivityPub
Moderation policies change even with the big ones (Twitter, etc).
I suspect you're referring to the confusion due to different servers having different moderation policies, and that could effectively make you invisible to others or vice versa merely by being on a given server.
First, my guess is that this is a problem with a tiny percentage of servers. I've not had to deal with this even once.
Second, when you say you "heard others bring it up", my guess is these others are highly technical folks. Not a single "average" person stayed away from Mastodon due to this. I suspect perhaps 99% of active Mastodon users are not even aware of this.
These are valid criticisms of Mastodon. But they're not the reason people didn't sign up for it. Name recognition is.
> You can either deal with it or start over again on another server. Losing all your followers is why people put up with bad social media overlords.
FYI, for quite a while now you can switch servers, and have the followers automatically follow your new account.
The problem discussed here is that Mastodon is not simply de-centralized, but its superstructure upholds a segregation policy and loves to ostracize admins based on, ahem, preferences. This in turn encourage admins to join a virtue signaling zeitgeist, and towards assuming more divisive and dismissive stances, out of fear. As a second order effect, regular non-admin users and their ability to communicate would be not only at whim of the server owner but also that of the inner group cast towards the admin.
Bluesky doesn't have this type of problem, precisely because it's not too decentralized. Either you individually get banned or not, based on levels of value alignment between you and the corpo outsourced moderators. There are also blocklist feature as well as third party voluntarily applicable moderation framework in Bluesky, but personally I can't imagine majority of users using it, or dividing the network into fragmented subgroups, and are non-factors in the grand scheme of things.
(By the way, I sometimes wonder how moderator value alignment is going to inevitably drift over time; as I understand it, social media content moderation is partially automated and exploitatively outsourced to workers from low income regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa. This phenomenon is almost exclusively discussed in context of human rights and fair worker treatment, but I think this also means a lot of people with minimal prior exposure to media, let alone the anaerobic layer of the Internet, are being trained to develop preferences on such content and especially the more flaggable yet less hateful and flaggable-but-less-flag-deserving content. i.e. stimulative but not blood and gore. If anyone is reading down to this line, you know what I mean.)