X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research
X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research
Data indicates more scholars turning to alternative social media site to post about their work after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover
You're viewing a single thread.
Aah, rather choosing the next company which can turn into corporate bs than using federated Mastodon. I don't get people.
It's not the users, it's the developers / investors. I've tried so many times to get into Mastodon, but it sucks compared to Bluesky. It lacks content and polish, so it's no wonder everyday people choose Bluesky over it.
The real conundrum is why isn't there a for profit company with big money behind it, investing in ActivityPub. I guess you could point to Threads? But insert your "not like that" meme of choice.
Fwiw, apparently Bluesky did initially look at activity pub, but found the protocol lacking, which is why they invented ATProto. I don't know the details though.
What do devs/investors have to do with content? The users are creating the content. And then, there's not really an algorithm rooting you in. You are free to follow the people you're actually interested in, how it is supposed to be.
I also don't have any polishing problems myself. It all just works, there are nice apps, etc.
Why would you want to have a for profit company with Mastodon? That's what would probably ruin it in the long run, as they would go for their interests, instead of interests of users and the platform itself. Of course it's hard surviving by donations and so on, but I think that's the way it should go.
Because you need network effect. Which means you need big money for marketing, content moderation and development costs. That includes algorithms, which maybe you don't want, but most people do.
It's not that I want a for profit company, I just don't think Mastodon will every achieve critical mass without one.
Yeah, but the network effect isn't really the cause of the problem I'd say. If people wouldn't just run to the next best thing and think about things, they could come to the conclusion to use Mastodon.
Probably will never happen and I don't see a solution for this, but it's still just demoralizing.
Even as a Lemmy user, I still don't know how the Fediverse works completely. You're just lying to yourself if you think understanding Mastodon is easier then just making a blue sky account.
Do you understand how email works? You dont have 1 centralised email server. You pick one and thats your email address name@emailserver. It then talks to other email servers unless its blocked emails from that server.
In principal, Mastodon and Lemmy are exactly the same.
I keep seeing this analogy and unfortunately that's not how email servers work so it never really helps honestly. The servers are the To: fields, not the From: fields. And there's also no real analogy about privacy. With most email providers the intent isn't that everyone reads everyone else's email. So frankly I really don't know what insight this is supposed to provide if it doesn't behave like email.
And there's a big safety difference. With something like Bluesky you have to trust the server admins to behave. With ActivityPub you have to trust each and every user of the service. Which is why server admins get shirty about whether they will forward messages to or from other servers. That whole situation doesn't really exist with email. It's not like you have create a Hotmail account because Gmail has decided to defederate with Google or whatever.
In the office that I work in, I'd be surprised if I'd need more than one hand to count how many people would understand this.
*in principle, not in principal.
I didn't say that. But it's still not that complicated, as someone else also replied with the email example
Apparently you don't know how it works either, read the reply to that reply.
I keep seeing this analogy and unfortunately that's not how email servers work so it never really helps honestly. The servers are the To: fields, not the From: fields.
Okay, I know that the sender of a mail can be faked to a certain degree, but if stuff is setup correctly on both ends, you can verify that an email actually is from where it is saying it is.
Even if anyone could use any email-address to send from, the point still kind of is the same: You don't have one single mailserver, where the people are required to be on that server in order to message other people on that server, but you can send messages from a different server to that target-server, where the user is residing on.
And there's also no real analogy about privacy. With most email providers the intent isn't that everyone reads everyone else's email.
This is true, but it isn't the point either with the example
So frankly I really don't know what insight this is supposed to provide if it doesn't behave like email.
The point is that with Twitter, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, every one of those platforms is closed to the outside (even tho I think Bluesky is or was thinking about opening to ActivityPub?), you create an account on Facebook and you can use Facebook, message everyone on Facebook.
With Mail, if you want to write Mail, you need a mail account from any provider, like Google (Gmail), Microsoft (hotmail?), or can host it yourself on a server of yours. Then you can write a mail to anyone who also has a mail account (which your server hasn't blocked and whose server hasn't blocked your server, which happens for example when your server is misconfigured and is allowed to send malicious mails).
It's the same with Mastodon/ActivityPub, if you want to message someone on ActivityPub, you need to choose any provider (Mastodon/yada yada/..) or can host a server yourself (which in turn can block other servers and can be blocked by other servers).
Of course there are technical differences and mail usually is 1-to-1 (there exist mailing lists though, which is basically 1-to-many/all), encryption is handled differently, but the key in the argument is that you need to choose one provider out of a list or can host yourself and after that you can message (mostly) anyone on other providers.
And there's a big safety difference. With something like Bluesky you have to trust the server admins to behave. With ActivityPub you have to trust each and every user of the service.
Why do you have to trust every user? Because they can send illegal content? Users can also do that with Bluesky.
Which is why server admins get shirty about whether they will forward messages to or from other servers. That whole situation doesn't really exist with email.
I'm probably not understanding the example you want to make. If you are really talking about the example I made above, as I already said, on any service you can send malicious/illegal content.
It's not like you have create a Hotmail account because Gmail has decided to defederate with Google or whatever.
I wrote about this above. Mailservers can actually be blocked by other mailservers, this happens quite frequently, as written above, when a mailserver is misconfigured or also when a usually "small" mailserver is suddenly sending many mails out, for example because the admin/owner is sending a newsletter to many users or invites to some event or similar.
Centralisation makes things easy.
If it takes more than 1 minute to onboard to a new service, and especially if you have to overcome any learning barrier (such as what 'instances' are and how to choose one) then the vast majority of people will immediately throw that option out and won't even consider it.
People like bluesky specifically because it gives them something almost identical to what they had before.
Much less people on mastodon, while most accounts I used to follow on Twitter have migrated to Bluesky or at least use both it and Twitter now.
But that's not a problem of Mastodon. It's the problem of people not switching here
because mastodon had an opportunity for a migration from twitter and they spent it attacking journalists who started posting on there
Do you have any summary for this? Would like to read about it