Just reached 20 millions today

Bluesky: install an app and make an account.

Mastodon: first pick a server. What does that mean? You figure it out. Ok, now select a client and install it. Doesn't matter which one, but it actually does. Then use that client app to log onto the server you made an account on. Now you just need to figure out who to follow and you're ready to participate!

The how-to-search-for-people-to-follow thing caused me trouble with Mastodon. I could handle getting a client and an account, but actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge. Discoverability was pretty broken.

Bluesky doesn't seem to have that problem.

Lemmy I've stuck with because it handles that better.
- The latest version of Mastodon does suggest accounts to follow. But you're absolutely right - Bluesky being fully centralized can do a lot of things easier than it is for the Mastodon network. I have high hopes that @dansup@mastodon.social will help alleviate this a lot though with the Fediverse equivalent for "starter packs":
  
  https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113497558334297218
- actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge
  
  Isn’t it the same on bluesky? As I understand it, there’s effectively only the one instance, and the federation is theoretical.
Download "Mastodon" from an app store. Create an account. Post.

It's been a few years since you last tried, right?
- It offers you a server, which is a step up, but the option to pick a different one is still very prominent which is going to make some people ask questions and lead to the usual confusion and anxiety about picking the "right" one.
install an app and make an account

Mastodon is pretty much the same now

There is an option to pick another server, but non-technical users are probably going to glance over it entirely

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/04/official-apps-now-available-for-ios-and-android/
AFAIK, Mastodon has exactly the same experience as BS if you just download the Mastodon official client and pick the main mastodon.social instance.

And as far as finding people to follow, just follow some hashtags to start with. Like #boston should immediately got you local users and news and #mac for computer news, etc etc. Following 5 or 10 hashtags will get you a pretty strong initial feed on mastodon.social, I suspect.
This is either outdated information, or purposeful misinformation.

Gonna put this out there: the fediverse is vastly depressing and not very fun. Lacks creative-types, too.

I see why people would choose the alternative.

And full of propaganda, especially from Lemmy.ml

Not surprising to me that its faltering, but very disappointing
- Like Twitter and Meta aren't
- Hey. Cmon man, every instance has its agendas and bad apples. Some spread pro-US and anti-Russia/China rhetoric, others are flipped.
  
  Yes, a minority of the mods are fucked in some of their values and beliefs but that's true of any instance, and most of the time it's not an issue.
  
  We all harbour our strange 1% ideas that's separate us from the norm, but that's the beauty of the lemmyverse that you can find a server where that's better represented.
  
  Too much? Go to an instance where it's not and chill there for a bit.
The general user base is off putting and creates a shit experience. The fediverse will unfortunately never grow beyond a niche platform. It’s a great idea, it’s too bad so many of the people are such shit. Even in this thread another user calmly pointed out what non technical users care about and sure enough, someone with their head so far up their ass they probably haven’t been able to walk outside in weeks is blasting off while smelling their own farts because it’s so inconceivable that some portions of the population may not be as technical or similarly vested in things as they are.
- Bingo.
  
  Only place I've had folks follow me around to harass me, too. It's disturbing.
- Indeed, quite unfortunate
Something that could be fixed if creative types and fun people would just flood the place already. The place is being held hostage by social misers and digital HOA Karens.
- They will not come here because there's an absolute fuckton of hostility.
  
  My favorite woman-centric community went dark due to lack of moderation. Mods left because it was so damn hostile.
  
  The t×nkie problem is also pretty bad.
  
  Federated spaces will forever be niche spaces, because of all of this. Say "good" all you want, but it'd be great to have mass adoption.
My Lemmy experience is kinda shit, but Mastodon is alright
Hey, I'm depressive and not very fun, lack creativity too.

I'm not disagreeing, just voicing my well, fuck you too over here.

(But bring some people over, post lemmy links on that skytwatter before it turns toxic)
- Oh, I don't mind depressive, not-so-fun, lacking creativity people! They're cool! I do mind pointedly depressing and hostile content.
  
  AI art posts? Put it in the trash. Hopeless memes? No thanks. Constant politic-ing pretending to be sincere but it's actually t×nkie pushing? Nope.
I’ll miss you when you’re gone… hope you find a comfortable place that tailors to your specific wants.

Fediverse is the over-engineered great solutions that most people don't understand

I tried to explain the Fediverse to the marketing department at my company and the looks of confusion just made me gave up.
- "It's like email. We have our company domain and others have theirs and it all just works"
ATproto is way more over-engineered than ActivityPub, and due to its crypto currency roots using merkle trees it simply cannot scale decentralized.
The analogy the other day works well, aside from the LaTeX one which still feels like a stretch

Firefox : Chrome

Linux : Windows

LaTex : MS Word

actual Fediverse : Bluesky's Fediverseᵀᴹ

However I'm happy to be here. Mastodon is getting a boost right now too. Even if they didn't, and everyone on Twitter moved to bluesky, I don't expect those instances to close up shop
- https://atproto.com/guides/applications
  
  You can use atproto to build other federated applications.
  
  Just because one implementation of atproto (bluesky) doesn't have feature parity, doesn't mean it's a fake federated protocol.
  
  'actual fediverse' and 'bluesky fediverse' doesn't make sense as a comparison.
  
  It's more like, ActivityPub vs ATProto.
  
  https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto
  
  Bluesky is just one implementation of the protocol, that implementation happens to have a lot of steam, but it's not fake or anything.

Gee . . . I wonder why

Users: ermagerd, I haVe to ChoSe a SeRveR! tHiS is SO diFFicUlT!!! 😭😭😭

"but you need to do the same for email..."
- Discovery sucks out loud, federation is all to often at the whims of some admin in a pissing match with another server, even when you know someone you want to follow locating their account is a hassle, it's slower than Bluesky to populate across federated instances, there isn't a good app design out there for free, the web portal is inferior in both UX and UI to even Twitter, I could go on.
  
  If you want to make strawman arguments, go ahead; but, you're ignoring the real problems with Mastodon that have caused users to avoid it.
- but you need to do the same for email...
  
  And that's a huge part of the reason why email has basically been centralized into Gmail for the general user... I find the e-mail argument to always be odd given how it's literally proof of this problem...

20241120_114944

Lol, I think you haven't explored the furryverse, my friend.
What does Loona from Helluva Boss have to do with this?
Yay! I'm part of the problem!

Happy twitter is dying. For awhile I though modern society will take anything from fascists, but maybe there're still some lines normies won't cross.

And yea bluesky is just infant twitter, but it's like vaping: may be not great for you but hella better than smoking.

Twitter is taking punches but far from dying. 586M MonthlyActiveUsers
- I couldn't tell if that was using recent data. Several statistics cited are from 2023

I want Mastodon to work as much as I want Lemmy to work but as long as all the people I want to follow are on/going to Bluesky I'll be on Bluesky too. At least until it gets entshitified and everyone flees again.

yet onto another centralized platform

Honestly it's fine. Keep fedi niche, it's why it continues to be comfy.

Yeah, let the project serve a few thousand then die off entirely well before 2030. That's what this should be.

Let's barely be a blip on the radar and make no difference at all to how the future of Internet fora goes.

Let's do to the fediverse idea what some families do to a discounted grill, use it a few times a year then throw it in a dumpster when it gets rusty.
- I rather it grow organically than go viral.

Great! I never wanted 20 million users in my subreddits or irc channels or friend list.

We'll all be happier this way. I'm happier this way, anyway.

Fiddling while the first real chance at breaking the corporate capture of the web burns because you want to feel intellectually superior to the normies is kinda shit, ngl
- It would be super shitty if that's how i felt.
  
  I like that lemmy is small, and that people are kinda nice and that if you tell someone that they're wrong about something its not a flame war.
  
  20 million users is going to change that.
  
  Also, if there was 20 million more users worth of content, the cost of running the infrastructure would increase as well.

Fediverse still has linux and github vibes. Which is good in terms of functioning and free and made in the spirit of comraderie. And bad in terms intuitive and easy usability.

Programmers either don't understand that "nice to look at and use" is actually a really important aspect of an app/program, or it's a lot harder to do that well than it seems from the outside. I really don't know. When it's just one person making the whole thing, it makes sense that they split their work where they can.

But when you're dealing with a serious contender for a major platform, it's not optional anymore, and it's not a normie thing.

Programmers either don’t understand that “nice to look at and use” is actually a really important aspect of an app/program, or it’s a lot harder to do that well than it seems from the outside. I really don’t know. When it’s just one person making the whole thing, it makes sense that they split their work where they can.

It could be both. I guess the former is widespread amongst Linux-based hobby coders who use a minimalist window manager or even a terminal multiplexer instead of a full-blown desktop environment. They don't see the appeal in good UIs.

But they may also fall victim to the latter because they see good UIs so rarely that they simply don't know what good UIs look like. That, and most hobby FLOSS coders are backend devs above all. Even if you assemble 20 hobby coders for a project, you may have to appoint one who'll begrudgingly have to make a UI without actually knowing how.

At least, some Fediverse server applications can not only be themed, but you can replace the entire Web UI. And there are capable UI designers in the Fediverse, just not so many as capable full-stack devs. Granted, they may not be on the same level as frontend devs with Apple paychecks, but still.

For example, Pleroma and Akkoma have gotten to a point where, I guess, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE only see so much use because not everybody has heard of stuff like Mangane yet. But people who have gotten a taste of Mangane usually don't want to go back.

Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are so extensively themeable that a user-selectable theme is very close to an all-new frontend. In practice, Hubzilla's themeability fell victim to the effort of keeping Hubzilla's monstrous backend maintained, and so it's down to one theme whose name is not the only hint at it being stuck in 2012. Well, enter people who make new third-party themes to stop Hubzilla being as unuseable as it's being made out to be.

why is the fediverse the girlfriend. I mean ewww. it whoudl be like bluesky and fediverse as a lesbian couple with xitter checking them out from a construction site.

I want you to know that you were the highlight of this thread for me. Your comment hit me like a stray bullet to the head in Chicago, except I desperately didn't want to go to work, so really, you practically did me a favor.
You must do some pretty niche searches on PornHub.
Because for some reason people in the fediverse are obsessed with getting others off of mainstream socials

Permanently Deleted

I've been waiting for my 2^68th Linux circlejerk post, I love Linux

That’s cause the Twitter format is not for people who want the open source experience.

Twitter format is about self promotion, it’s not a place to discuss ideas anonymously.

Breaking: Musk offering to buy BlueSky.

/s, but barely.

That's pretty good though, there's a whole lot of people on Melon Husk's site that i wouldn't want to see in my Fedi Timeline.

I usually go with "Elon's Musk" cos it sounds gross and he is gross

He was never our boyfriend

The Fediverse will exist henceforth as the place people go who are "fed up" with wherever they were.

I have zero worries about Lemmy or Mastodon over the long term, but I have no hope whatsoever in their popularity. We will always be one of the smaller, peanut-galleries of the internet, and that's ok.

That's preferred. I remember when reddit absorbed all the outflow of Boomers from Facebook, and they slung shit on the walls with abandon until every corner reeked.