Discussion
I'm quietly contemplating why so many of my tech colleagues are on Bluesky and not on Mastodon. Not because they "Are wrong" but what are the reasons people have congregated there?
Clearly it's a one-stop-shop so sign up is CLEARLY an issue, we've known that for a while. But I think, now, given that they've got some traction, it's simply because more people are there.
Now, there is a GREAT crowd here too! I'm not too worried. Just thinking about what it would take to make them switch?
@scottjenson in my opinion, they have better marketing and onboarding. Migration is easier too due to familiar UI with X. Once there's enough cool folks hanging out, others simply follow.
Re: "what it would take to make them switch" — I'm not sure why we're focusing on making them switch? To be honest, I'm more into making people switch out from X 😬
@cheeaun
Yeah, I definitely care more about moving people off of X/Facebook/Instagram than Bluesky.
Aside from just waiting til those platforms do more invasive things, I'm not sure what can be done to convince people to move on
I don't think there is any "killer feature" we could add. Of course there is a TON of things we need to do to improve the platform. My point is that I don't think any one feature is going to make a mass migration happen. This is a game of centimeters, not meters.
@scottjenson One killer feature for #Mastodon would be that #newcomers could find such an easy-to-understand #guide like https://fedi.tips/ by @FediTips directly beside the join button!
Coming from a centralized platform, the biggest obstacle is to understand how this decentralised stuff works.
The offical Mastodon sites are "too tech", too complicated.
I only stayed thanks to this great guide!
@scottjenson I mentioned Mastodon to someone recently and they said they'd spoken to a huge fan of it, but they'd told her it took them two years to build their timeline up to be interesting and useful.
Algorithmic feeds are generally terrible, except for newcomers who aren't following anyone yet. I wonder if there's a middle option - a 'sandbox feed' for when you first register here that's made up off hashtags you've indicated are of interest'?
@scottjenson While it is by no means zero, my experience is that the toxicity factor in the fediverse is a fraction of those on other platforms, with Bluesky running a distant second and X somewhat further out than Mars.
That's the killer feature, and I believe it's based on moderation by humans who care about the experience here. Our vulnerability is that those human moderators burn out; that good instances shut down for lack of funding. We're going to need to work out how that becomes sustainable, how we build a culture of donating to our instances when we have the means.
I think it's going to take some time to work that out, because it's a cultural concern, not a technological one. I also think we should be patient and continue to grow organically until we're past that point, or we'll just continue to burn out admins and see good instances shut down.
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