Mary Branscombe comments how the conversation on Bluesky is a lot more enjoyable than that she found on Mastodon:
Mastodon has a bunch of people I want to talk to but Bluesky has the culture to make talking to people enjoyable
— Mary Branscombe (@marypcbuk.bsky.social) September 4, 2024 at 3:03 PM
[image or embed]
She was referencing a skeet by Ian Coldwater on how Mastodon and Bluesky have handled large influxes differently which, while seemingly dramatic, it’s sadly an accurate description.
The difference between Bluesky and Mastodon is that when Mastodon got a large influx of new users people posted things like “I feel TRAUMATIZED and VIOLATED by the experience of these invading hordes” and when Bluesky got a large influx of new users they were like “hell yeah, welcome new neighbors”
It’s entirely a pity, because I had high hopes for Mastodon and the FediVerse since 2017, and even got NEXT to give them a couple of grants, but most instances’ cultures ended up developing in a way that is highly hostile to newcomers.
I suspect the fact that you are meant to customize your experience by choosing an instance has something to do with it. It feels like a case of “most intolerant minority wins”, which may be acceptable in a single instance, but then all these intolerant behaviors get aggregated into absurd as they get federated.
Say… seeing people dogpiling someone because they posted a color photo without a content warning “because true photography was black-and white”, then lets others feel justified to insist to newcomers they should content-warn their selfies “because some people are uncomfortable with eye contact”.
Meanwhile, Bluesky’s composable moderation means that if you don’t want to see or interact with something, you can customize the experience to your liking, but the community as whole will not stand for customization through bullying.