this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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496
Bluesky Social surpasses 19 million users as more celebrities leave X (jewelcitytimes.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Mastodon and open platforms will eventually win out in a divided social media ecosystem anyway, in my opinion.

No they won't, Reddit killed Internet Forums, Threads has over 200 million active monthly users, and BlueSky already has double the number of users of Mastadon and is adding 10 new ones PER SECOND . Mastadon will be entirely irrelevant by the end of Q1 2025.

What we're watching right now is the exact same fight that the chat platforms had back in the early 2000s. AOL chat vs IRC vs Yahoo Chat vs Microsoft Messenger. That was temporarily addressed by using multi-service clients like Trillian...and then Facebook rolled in and squashed them all. BTW there are several multi-platform clients out there right now that will allow you to interact with Xitter, Threads, BlueSky, and Mastadon simultaneously just like the Trillian of old.

I've been around the Internet since the BBS days and I can't think of a single time where a de-centralized platform has out competed a centralized platform with "normal" users.

[–] evatronic@lemm.ee 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’ve been around the Internet since the BBS days and I can’t think of a single time where a de-centralized platform has out competed a centralized platform with “normal” users.

I'm right there with you. I'd love to see the dream of the decentralized media return, but it's long-dead. The "Normal" user doesn't give a fuck about the benefits and even the moderate barrier to entry over some centralized platform is enough to keep them away.

Tech-minded people seem to often forget that even the most simplistic choices like "Choose an instance" is a big deal for people. The platform that's the most familiar, and easiest to use is going to be the one that wins, and, right now, that looks like it's Bluesky.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago

It's not even "chose an instance". This is what my journey has been:

  1. Chose an instance
  2. Write an essay about why you wanted that one 3 never her reply, repeat 1 and 2
  3. Get access, then instance goes offline. Repeat 1 and 2
  4. Get another instance. They then bock piracy communities. Repeat 1 and 2
  5. Land in lemm.ee.
  6. Wait until I can block instances to get rid of nuances (everybody knows who I'm talking about)

Now try to get your non tech friends on board.

[–] maplebar@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There's a lot you aren't taking into consideration, for example where those users are coming from.

  • Threads is just Instagram, it's essentially the same account, so its users were baked in from the start. How many of those Threads users are just people who already used Instagram?
  • BlueSky really isn't pulling users from Mastodon, it's pulling them from "X.com", which if nothing else represents a breaking up of old Twitter, which is good for decentralization in general. Any fracturing of social media is good for the fediverse.
  • Both Threads and BlueSky are, to some degree, copies of Mastodon in terms of their relationship with federation. Threads uses ActivityPub itself (a win for the fediverse, depending on how you look at it), and BlueSky has their own AT federation protocol, which shows that the ideas behind the fediverse are already winning out. It's entirely possible that, at some point in the future, BlueSky and Mastodon learn to speak to each other using one of those protocols (or a new one), and then the fediverse wins by default.
  • Fediverse apps like Misskey are apparently doing great in Japan, which is great for the existence of Japanese artists and the international side of things.

The fact that we're here, right now, discussing this on the fediverse, shows that ActivityPub has come a long way. Bluesky is nothing more than a shallow copy of Mastodon with far less federation and far fewer features.

Mastodon is a bit like Linux, due to its free and open nature. It can be in 3rd place for 20 years, but it'll keep chugging along, improving and growing over time until it snowballs into something truly formidable. Linux doesn't need to be the most popular operating system ecosystem to be great, nor does Mastodon need to be the most popular social media server. Unlike a corporate product it's not just going to die and disappear just because it isn't the most popular of the social media platforms.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

IRC was king for a while but then it rotted and nobody repaired it