It makes sense that they would go where the users are.
But not having a separate, European instance federated into the BlueSky network, that’s the real wtf.
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Surely that’s a bit unfair to BlueSky.
From my brief lecture of the underlying protocol, public instances could exist and federate, it’s only that they become quite expensive to run if done right.
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I’m not even going to pretend that BlueSky is more open than any Fediverse tool designed with federation in mind from the ground up. BlueSky is certainly not Mastodon or Lemmy, but it’s not Meta AI-pushing crap like WhatsApp either.
Let’s do a thought experiment. What if we would get a Wikipedia like NGO with proper funding setting up a EU based BlueSky instance? It won’t be the decentralized dream of Fediverse, perhaps, but it could still prove useful. I think Twitter was successful because of its unified, global reaching platform appeal, not in spite of it, and the fact that users flock to BlueSky tells me that appeal is still there. Having a bit more decentralization in that mix just makes it better, but Mastodon shows that decentralization is not sufficient to give a platform a wide appeal.
As context: I’m one of those people that donates annually to Wikipedia, but I have no interest or capacity in managing a decentralized federation server in my basement. Lots of kudos to the people that do!
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Ah, the “don’t be evil days”. I’m old enough to remember Jabber was a thing. We really took a hard right at some point, didn’t we? Technologically speaking, I’m not getting political.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a BlueSky fanboy either. Their implementation of DMs simply sucks from an open standards POV. I just think they deserve a bit more credit than Zuckersoft. A lot of people I admire are active over there, reason enough for me to stick around. But I’m not giving up on Lemmy either.
I think what we are missing is some sort of “unify onboarding portal”
Just fyi, you need to use two tildes to for strikethrough. With only one tilde you get subscript.
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Shoutout to the European Commission: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
Also: Court of Justice of the EU @Curia@curia.social-network.europa.eu
These stopped being maintained in 2024 unfortunately:
- EU Food Safety Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EFSA
- EU Data Protection Supervisor https://social.network.europa.eu/@EDPS
- EU Space Program Administration https://social.network.europa.eu/@EUSPA
- EU Aid and Crisis response https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_ECHO
I wish people appreciated lemmy more than mastodon
As long as we’re throwing fediverse wishlist items out there, I wish the Lemmy core developers/founders didn’t have such gross political views.
Yeah
I wish the Lemmy core developers/founders didn’t have such gross political views.
Which are? A link to a story or something will suffice.
They run lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, they claim to be Marxist-Leninist and communist, they have profile pictures of both Mao and Fidel Castro respectively. They seem like generally reasonable people on a personal level but they do a lot of apologism of awful regimes under the typical guise of “just asking questions” and “free speech” and frankly I have no patience left for that kind of garbage.
Is it a fact that they run lemmygrad also? I thought it was just some truly crazy people in there.
Yes, it was the second lemmy instance created, and their own wiki says it was created by Dessalines and he is active there.
Thank you. I almost donated, bullet dodged.
You can look into mbin. I prefer it to lemmy, personally.
Boomers are used to Twitter- and facebook-like platforms
They probably do, but that just means that they hate Mastodon and have never heard of Lemmy.
I don’t understand why govt institutions don’t just band together and use one of their many already running servers and add a mastodon or similar instance, so they won’t ever need to worry about their shit being taken offline
Like, get all federal agencies and currently serving politicians to post on the govt-run mastodon, instead of bsky or xitter.
Me like other people, had the idea of ECI (European citizen initiative) to ask EU level entities to start using the Fediverse. The process is quite slow as I do not have much time but, if you are European and can help, have a look here:
An European Citizens’ Initiative for the adoption of the Fediverse in the European Union’s institutions:
I’ll say it again and again and again:
The fediverse is hamstrung by the need to choose a specific server.
I remember trying to help people join Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter. Every question I heard was about picking a server.
What’s a server?
Why do I have to pick a server?
How do I pick a server?
Then there were the more thoughtful questions.
What happens if the server I chose goes down?
What happens if someone chooses the same user name as mine on a different server?
Mastodon, Lemmy, etc. won’t get mainstream traction until someone solves this simple hurdle.
I keep hammering home: instance doesn’t matter when you start. It’s more important for you to join. Once you join, you’ll figure out the instance and then you can switch.
Can you though? You’ll lose all your data, your posts, your liles, your comments, your curated list of communities and usually also your Username. People don’t like giving up their entire existence just because they made a wrong choice in the beginning.
This is the position of migrating social medias in the first place though.
Which is why it’s such a hurdle for those that get attached. They don’t want to go through that again with no notice.
The first time someone told me about mbin/lemmy, I had that exact issue and just gave up on it for a few months. This is especially true as there doesn’t really exist any account migration (nor, probably, can there be one without any kind of centralized auth server or the like). I finally did move over, but two of the instances I used just shut down, one with basically no warning.
@DemBoSain @Sunshine
I think that a part of the “server hurdle” can be solved - at least for brand new users - by initiatives like the Vivaldi Social network.New to Vivaldi? Nice - welcome. Would you like to join Mastodon? Register here. Boom.
If people have heard about Mastodon and are curious about it, this is the easy way to get them hooked. No talk about servers or instances - you register and you are off to the races.
How this all plays into the decentralized nature of the Fediverse and who is going to fund those servers is a different question - but it is definitely the easiest gateway for new users (as you can see, I was one of them).
@DemBoSain @Sunshine you’re like my dog on walkies.
What’s a tree?
Why do I have to pick a tree?
How do I pick a tree?
What happens if the tree I pick suddenly moves?
What happens if there’s already another dog at that tree?Jokes aside — as long as people desperately try to see problems where there in fact aren’t any, people will have problems.
And no, explaining the fediverse to newcomers isn’t a problem. Never was, unless people wanted it to be, so they have an excuse to join bluesky.
First of all, please read my comment again. These aren’t my comments, these are questions from other people. I have a Mastodon account. I’ve had one since Musk bought Twitter, and the one I have now isn’t my original. Because I moved servers and didn’t have a problem doing that.
Second, grow up. You’re ridiculing people who have used Facebook since it opened up to non-students. And some of these are valid concerns. For some people they’re deal-breakers, and they should be addressed of we want the fediverse to grow.
@DemBoSain so the restaurant industry is hamstrung by people having to choose a certain restaurant if they what to go out eating. Do you sometimes read that stuff that you’re posting?
People managed to choose phone or computer to buy. Then they managed to choose an internet provider. Both are way, waaaay more difficult and complicated than choosing a fediverse server.
People would manage to choose one as well. They decide to choose evil companies like bluesky voluntarily. Very much so.
Holy shit. These are REAL WORLD EXAMPLES. goodbye.
@Sunshine The EU commission is on mastodon though, over at @EUCommission :GigaChad:
Some people don’t want to hear this but Mastodon will never be mainstream without major changes. Even Mastodon users are all on other platforms. I’m not planning to go to Bluesky tho.
I’m not on any other platform except Lemmy and Mastodon. Well, I’m on Facebook but only to find events nearby and have been considering deleting it for a while.
Mastodon and Lemmy are better off not being “mainstream”. There’s a huge amount of crap that comes with being that.
I use only Mastodon, even though I got accounts on other platforms too. I’m not super sure what the issue is with Mastodon, but, as I’m moving away from Youtube, the thing I’m missing is, paradoxically, the algorithm suggesting different creators or videos. To clarify: I hate that, I think is sick and controlling, but, as I have used that social for so many years, I think I got quite addicted. Can be the same for other users?
I get it. But also I have about ten content creators on YouTube that I love that aren’t hosted anywhere else other than scalping reposters. I try to go there and only watch the handful of new videos from those channels but occasionally I get sucked in by the algorithm with other videos I end up liking pretty well.
It also has the network problem now. BlueSky quickly got the numbers because it was easy at the right time. It was perfect for the Xodus. Mastodon missed that window. It can get easier and sexier, but it missed that window and will need another.
Mastodon has been going for almost ten years, it’s proven reliabile but people preferred the more clearly twitter clone blusky by a big American company.
In my opinion it’s not bad to have a diverse landscape with different options. I believe the best course of action for many institutions should be to use both of these options simultaneously. Any organisation with a social media, communications or other type of public relations team should be able to set up a crossposter easily enough.
But they don’t. Organisations seem to be unable or unwilling to have a presence on multiple sites, or at most they seem to choose either X+BlueSky or X+Mastodon
In my opinion it’s not bad to have a diverse landscape with different options.
Not with Comms tools. We had this in the 90s with email and the various walled gardens like CompuServe and AOL. You couldn’t talk to your friends if they were on another system.
Mastodon is SMTP for micro logging. Different servers is fine, but they all need to talk to each other.
Lemmy is NNTP. It’s just the same thing reinvented 30 years later and lower latency.
Most are still on X here :(
X lost 11 million users in the EU
Not really happening in the Czech Republic
Japan still stubbornly holds on as well. Insta eventually started to take over some things from Twitter, but tons of stuff is still there. I created a BlueSky for the small business I’m starting here in Japan and my wife asked me what that was and why no twitter.
Particularly considering Facebook (I will die before I call it meta) blocked major Islamic Indians on their platforms as well as the biggest Islamic news outlet in India. Standing up your own instance on mastodon/lemmy/friendica/Pixelfed is the best way to avoid getting shut down by billionaires who kowtow to fascists.
Is that due to the war/skirmish/thing with Pakistan?
I think it’s due to the Modi government’s naked Hindu nationalism.
I use Mastodon the exact same way I used Facebook and it works out great.
It’s just posts and updates on my life and projects, and it just works. Sometimes I get feedback, sometimes not.
Photo of a meal, my cat, projects, car repairs, shit I see around. It works fine.
I don’t get why more companies. Especially ones who might be concerned with control of their content like I dunno. lets say news agencies and the like. I don’t get that they would not want to run their own instances and federate.
Especially when the Canucks account was hijacked by Elon Musk placing his crypto scam video as the top post on their page.
@Sunshine Honestly, though, many of them should just be running their own instance.
@Sunshine „Das einzig Vernünftige wird immer erst dann in Erwägung gezogen wenn alle anderen Möglichkeiten ausgeschöpft wurden!" Es wäre ja auch zu Blöde wenn man das Richtige macht solange man noch die Wahl hat zu Spinnen, sich Illusionen hinzugeben, Zeit zu verlieren und Geld zu verbrennen.
Tbh I have little interest in either of them
