Hey, I wanted to ask someone who has probably more knowledge than me about it - what’s the difference about these two services? I know Mastodon has ActivityPub, so it works with Lemmy, and BlueSky has it’s own kind of federation, but does it even has anything to federate to?
I’m asking not which one is better, I’m searching logical argument for one or other. I’m obviously more leaning toward Mastodon since I’m here, but I wanted to give my friend, who is thinking about joining, some real arguments.
That question would start a very long post. Let’s keep it simple:
- you may never find your communities again (hashtag ? what is that ? why should I hashtag to make it searchable and make it stick…)
- your posts may never reach your friends, or general audience (defederation, admin instance ban…)
- the global timeline is not a global timeline as in X or Bsky, or Insta or any other social media, just what your instance admin and federation relatations “agreed” to show you …
Why do you need to understand any of that? Now, none of it is wrong - but it’s not something anyone signing up at a Mastodon instance absolute must know about to use the system and have a good troll-free social network experience.
On the contrary. Maybe those are exactly the things needed to avoid becoming Xitter. Bluesky is rapidly becoming another instance of the hellhole at this very moment.
