this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
1182 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
63186 readers
3488 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm on both and Mastodon is missing (at least in any easy to use way) most of the features that make Bluesky such a good destination:
All these things (and more I'm sure I'm forgetting), make Bluesky very quick to get started with and very powerful for honing your feeds to be exactly how you want and free of harassment and trolling.
I am still trying with Mastodon, but it's really slow going and I can fully understand why people wouldn't bother. After a year I am way behind where I was in a week with Bluesky.
It does have keyword blocking.
Not sure what nuclear block means but I can't think of any way a blocked person could be seen again. It even has above nuclear blocking where you block their entire server.
It has custom feeds but the implementation with lists is very fiddly and I wish it would be improved.
There is a trending posts section but I think you want a personalised discover feed? Which will never happen of course.
Thanks for the update. Yes the recommended feed is personalized. It's optional. The main feed has no algorithm, just who you follow.
Keyword blocking is a bit more sophisticated on Bluesky I think as they have a crowdsourced tagging system which allows you to opt in an out also of tagged words regardless of whether they appear in the body of the post.
The tagging sounds great. One of the problems with masto is showing the hashtags in the body making posts that use them look awful, and of course being entirely set by the author
Yeah it makes it look like a 4chan post.
The thing is, a lot of social media sites have or had this. YouTube has the subscriptions feed. Twitter has (I don't know anymore) a following feed. Reddit used to keep posts on your homepage only being from subscribed subreddits.
One problem. People don't use them. They see maintaining subscriptions as work and so want to be fed posts by algorithm.
I use them. I use platforms more that have them. I leave platforms that don't.
But to each their own I guess.
Been watching @TechConnectify 's latest?! He has some interesting stats on the subscriptions feed on YT in there - and yes, it's shockingly low.
I think people want plug and play. Maintaining subs isn't work as such after you've set it up, but it does take that initial setup. https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
Yes. Yes I have.
Thanks for the list! As someone who has never used any Twitter-like site before (I guess microblog is the right term...?), and recently made a profile on Bluesky only to support it (I have used it briefly ~3 times since joining): what are the pros of Mastodon that Bluesky doesn't have?
As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:
Haha, thanks! I know it's quite important for a good bunch of people here (on a federated site), but I guess I'll stick with Bluesky then. Thanks for the insights! : )
It's important because, along with the ability to migrate accounts, it prevents/deters enshittification. In betting Bluesky will hit that wall in the next few years (I'm guessing they'll never properly implement federation).
Yeah I agree that we will probably happen, but the problem is using Mastodon is such a pain for the vast majority of people, it's not worth the hassle.
And I say that to someone who uses both platforms.
I know; as much as I love the concept, I can already see .world soaking up most of the users, which might not be the best thing for federation - but TBF when I came over from Reddit, my main goal was to find something decent and similar, and federation was secondary at best for me; so I'll see if it gets any worse, but for the moment, the first list definitely overweighs the second "list" for me.
Bluesky's main feed is totally algorithm free, it's just the people you follow's posts in chronological order, same as mastodon.
Starter kits are optional, but they allow you to get started in hours rather than months. For me, they made the difference between a vibrant and interesting feed well tailored towards my interests, and a very sparse feed that I didn't use on Mastodon. For me they were the difference between a useful social network and a non-useful one.
Main one is that it doesn't manipulate your feed with stuff "you might enjoy" so you can't be easily manipulated by the people setting the algorithm. Of course, this is exactly why people find it hard. People want to be fed stuff and told what to consume.
That's not really a fair description of what's going on.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a recommendation algorithm, can you imagine trying to use Netflix if it didn't tell you about any of the shows and you just have to guess and type in a film in order to see if it existed?
The problem with algorithms is when they're the only option, or when they are invisible and you think you are getting a timeline of people you've subscribed to, but really you're getting an algorithm optimizing retention. As long as it's just recommending stuff there's nothing wrong with it, in fact as a lot of people point out, it's kind of necessary.
The world functioned before recommendation algorithms. Even the internet did. Once upon a time, when Goggle worked, it didn't modify its results based on your history.
Netflix could operate fine with classifications, ratings good tagging and search. It doesn't need to monitor your viewing habits and recommend something based on them.
Bluesky also has the option of doing this, or not.
Do you refer to the "Following" Vs "Discover" feed?
Apparently it's very noticeable when a post hits the discover feed. The quality of responses dives off a cliff.
There's a new option available now for reply controls, you can limit it to just people who follow you. While it's a very low bar, it's enough of a threshold for most randoms to not bother following just to reply to you
And even without that, I still have felt that the quality of replies doesn't drop THAT much one it hits Discover - but it may be partly who I follow/am recommended, that block lists are doing a great job of eliminating trolls+spam, and I just automatically ignore any stupid/low effort stuff ("wow you are the best at that thing you posted about", "that js amazjng i have never seen a linux before" or whatever).
This option will only help, though.
This one is so important. After a year my mastodon feed is perfectly tailored for me. When I open it I enjoy my time there and the posts I see. I can leave whenever I want, and without a feel of rage or anxiety. But the most important part is that I don't feel the compulsive need to open it every other second. It's to liberating in contrast with the algorithm led manipulation.
I've seen a few larger creators say the reply management is bad at scale, too. The thing I mostly like is that here I am, reading Lemmy from Mastodon.
Yeah I'd prefer Mastodon to implement all these features and win, but I understand why it's not winning ATM.
Same. Plus I came back here because Bluesky got too noisy so I'm kind of happy if it stays small!
Lemmy is still my favorite, I was never a huge fan of the Twitter model, but I enjoy taking part in the destruction of X.
over time I'll probably end up moving over to Lemmy tbh. I think I'd prefer more of a forum vibe. I was never a Redditor so I didn't "get" it until I started following Lemmy feeds.