Technology

Same here... even when Twitter was not even in the sights of fElon I found it to be super toxic. I signed up because "it was the best way to get the news" and left in about 4 days

Yeah, no, not anybody can host a server. Sure, you can host a PDS, but the AppView still wasn't open source last time I looked, and hosting a relay requires tens of terabytes of storage, not to mention the bandwidth to keep up.

Meanwhile, people host actual activitypub instances on repurposed routers and their car entertainment system...

Maybe it will, but for the time being it hasn't. The experience is so vastly better than Twitter, that it's a no brainer to jump over. It also helps to have a decent competing platform that people like to suck users and influence away from the platform that Musk turned into a cesspit.

Until there's overt advertising its unlikely to enshittify the normal way. That doesn't mean it won't, just that a different capital process is at work. Wikipedia has outlived most of "web2.0" because its funded by donations and run by volunteers.

It actually does exist, at least on Mastodon, but is still very janky (e.g. old posts aren't moved over due to "technical limitations")

Automatically makes people unfollow your old account and re-follow your new account, then makes your old instance's link redirect to your new instance's one.

I don't think 99% of people who have joined bluesky have any clue what federation is or means. They do know what "not twitter" is however.

People are not afraid of the term “Federation.“ They literally have no clue what it is.

It’s the instance concept I find consistently to be an issue. It’s an extra layer/barrier to entry. You don’t just create an account. You have to understand what an instance is and then determine which one you’re joining and what that means for your moment to moment usage of the platform.

I don't personally think it's because of that. Sure, federation as a concept outside of email has a bit of a messaging problem for explaining it to newbies, but... everyone uses email, and knows how that works. This is identical, just with it being posts instead of emails. Users aren't averse to federation, in concept or practice.

Bluesky was directly created as a very close clone of Twitter's UI, co-governed and subsequently pushed by the founder of Twitter himself, who will obviously have more reach than randoms promoting something like Mastodon, and, in my opinion, kind of just had better branding.

"Bluesky" feels like a breath of fresh air, while "Mastodon" just sounds like... well, a Mastodon, whatever that makes the average person think of at first.

So when you compare Bluesky, with a familiar UI, nice name, and consistent branding, not to mention algorithms, which Mastodon lacks, all funded by large sums of money, to Mastodon, with unfamiliar branding, minimal funding, and substantially less reach from promoters, which one will win out, regardless of the technology involved?

While you can't follow hashtags you can follow "topics" like movies, tech, etc. They should do a better job of explaining how to use that feature though.

As for pixelfed, I'd love to use it. But the only use I have for Instagram is following local bands. Although there is a new site that's popped up recently that's like Instagram with a forum but only for bands and musicians to communicate with their local scenes. Very cool, old Internet kind of feel to it.