Comment by echelon
18 hours ago
> The fediverse is a viable alternative
Bluesky attracted socialist progressives, furries, and kink-positive folks early on.
I'm not making any value statements, and there's nothing wrong with the userbase, but this is what dominates the feed for new users.
A lot of people are turned off by that when they see it as their first experience with the platform. Or they're actively turned away upon interaction. That's not how you build a big social network.
Mastodon is the exact same.
These platforms are also not winning people over by calling them "toots" and "skeets".
It's like Gimp refusing to adopt a Photoshop style UI for years and not changing their name.
Despite stated intentions, I think these platforms want to stay small and niche and non mainstream. If they wanted to grow big, they'd behave much differently. They'd try to get the Kardashians and would welcome posts about handbags and guns and sports.
Mastondon/the fediverse feels even worse. Super lefty, super kinky, furry etc. Super weird. Fine that people have their bubbles, but as a normal person you feel totally alienated. X became a nazi dumpsterfire.
> Despite stated intentions, I think these platforms want to stay small and niche and non mainstream.
I think that's essentially it, whether they are doing it intentionally or not.
Running a social network is like curating a party or conference. Who you do and don't let participate, and who you do and don't promote above others, is essentially the product. And that is a lot of work.
Open protocols don't solve any of these problems, and people who care about open protocols don't tend to be the same people interested in curating giant parties and conferences for a mass audience.
Is that not precisely how Twitter built their original social network...?
> Bluesky attracted socialist progressives, furries, and kink-positive folks early on.
> I'm not making any value statements, and there's nothing wrong with the userbase, but this is what dominates the feed for new users.
As someone who's never joined Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc., I find it weird that this would be the case. If I join as a new user, why would my feed not be empty, until I choose who to follow? If I don't want to see furries and kink, I'll never follow such users, so I'd expect that content will never show up the first place. But if these services pre-populate new users' feeds with random people's posts, well, that's just bizarre to me.
They don't pre-populate the feed, no. I believe they suggest users to follow (on Mastodon that's a per-instance choice based on the administrator), and have sort of generic popular feeds. If you want to see what that looks like on Bluesky, just open up "bsky.app" when you're not logged in. You absolutely do not see a parade of kinky socialist furries.
You're right
I'd say Mastodon at this point is mostly people talking in a vacuum (even more than BlueSky)
No mainstream discussion or debate comes from Mastodon, you don't see screenshots around (and you do see skeets around)
As much as SpaceXAi lost audience, there's a lot of discussion still going around there