this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025

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Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms (www.dailyuw.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I mean, I hate BlueSky too, but I think the reason it's more popular than Mastodon is that it's more centralized and in practical terms that means it's easier to adopt and engage with.

The biggest headache I have with Mastodon (and Lemmy, to a lesser extent) is defederation. I understand it's the most practical thing to do sometimes, but it's waaay overdone. Like, there needs to be a culture of only defederating as a last resort due to pratical concerns (e.g. bots I guess). Unfortunately the current culture is one where many instance admins treat defederation as a personal blocklist. I wish more admins would leave it to individual users to decide who to allow or not.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

When you sign up with Bluesky, it gives you the choice to sign up with the big main server or with an auxiliary server. Just like Lemmy does.

The problem is that when Lemmy got hit with a big influx of users, the main server couldn't handle the load, so they quit accepting new users. This confused and upset a lot of people, because now they had to go shopping for another instance to apply to, and many of the bigger ones weren't accepting new users, either, because of the same problem. This was a crucial moment for the adoption of the platform, and the infrastructure just wasn't there to handle it.

EDIT: Shit, I think I'm misremembering that. That's what happened with Mastodon. Although, it could've happened with Lemmy, too. In fact, it's a problem with all of these social networks that aren't run by gigantic corporations. People expect a certain level of service, and you can't provide that unless you have a ton of money.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I never had a Xitter account so take what I say with a grain of salt, as I only interacted with the platform as a spectator.

For me it was funny to watch as I slowly saw people dive into madness over the most irrelevant things.

It didn’t matter if it was left or right people still lost all senses over unimportant things like Hunter Biden’s laptop or this week’s conspiracy theory.

I opened Mastodon and as I scroll through I see the following order:

republican bad post
republican bad post
republican bad post
something linux related (usually hector martin)
republican bad post

And I get it, republican is bad, but after reading 3-4 republic bad posts my mental state needs a break or something different which is what Xitter was able to do. Some new music being announced/discussed, maybe a video game, maybe a joke.

BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.

I personally think that the problem is rooted in defederation, it’s being used willy-nilly like it doesn’t have effect on the people using the platform. But not becoming an echo chamber is essential to a platform’s long term health. If I know that a platform has the same message for me when I open the app I’ll just start using it less, which is what happened with Lemmy sadly, I open my feed and it’s full of dystopian and republican posts, I just don’t bother anymore.

Incoherent rant over.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Your rant is 100% sensible and/or valid and/or based or whatever one says these days.

If a user wants their own echo chamber, let them cultivate it themselves. The hosts should not decide for them, and the choice to defederate should be based on practical/material/legal concerns only.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I think you need to curate your feeds better. My experience doesn't match yours.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

BS suffers from the same issue, no variation in the content is what makes me not want to partake.

Isn't the whole thing about BlueSky that your feed is your feed though? You actively select and curate what you want. So if you want new music, games, comedy - follow new music, games, and comedy. Sure, those accounts might then post other things sometimes, but by and large, that's my understanding of BSky.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I haven't used Mastodon, but if it's anything like Lemmy, most people won't want to bother learning what an instance is or what federation means.

FOSS enthusiasts regularly overestimate how much hassle regular people are willing to put up with to do something, and how much they care about corporations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

To me the biggest issue with federated platforms is defederation: deliberately breaking interoperability.

Like, imagine if email servers (the original federated network) blocked whole domains as aggressively Mastodon or even Lemmy servers do? It never would have worked.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The thing is, bluesky is just old twitter, it will become X eventually...Bluesky sucks, but jessus, mastodon sucks in terms of usability. Its only for technical people and experience on mastodon is fatal compared to bluesky, sad that mastodon won't take over, as it could...at least bluesky is not bad YET.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Bluesky is more popular because it has VC money behind it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

When I first got a Bluesky account, back when it was invite-only a whole bunch of the Physicists and Astronomers I used to follow on Twitter were already there. If anything it seemed like scientists were early adopters.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

I would prefer any ActivityPub instance, but press media (and in general private entities), to which scientific institutes intend diffusion, is moving to bluesky...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Sort of like how they moved out of Florida and Texas. Repubs want a brain drain for some reason.

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