Mastodon, the Only Good Choice

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/07/05/Choose-Mastodon

by zdw • 10 days ago

26 14 10 days ago

Zambyte2• 10 days ago

Their most valid criticism of Bluesky is essentially that they don't understand it (they quite clearly haven't tried it, but feel validated in sharing their opinion anyways).

I'll share two reasons why Mastodon is not "the Only Good Choice", as someone who hosted multiple Pleroma instances for myself and others, for years.

- Where do you sign up? The fact that if anyone asks this question for Mastodon, they are almost certainly not directed to a sign up page is far more friction than most people are able to allocate effort to overcome. I went out of my way to host instances so I could have an obvious answer to this question. This is far more friction than the average person would be able to allocate in order to have access to an obvious answer to this question.

- Conversations are simply broken. If you communicate at all in a decentralized way, you will interact with threads where you do not see whole branches of the conversation. Not even due to defederation, just because the branch hasn't naturally federated to your instance. This is not a good social experience.

I encourage people to not accept the articles shallow claims that Bluesky is not decentralized and that it would fail if the company behind it did. Just because Bluesky actually works does not mean it is backed by centralized infrastructure. The data is decentralized, and that is what matters.

verdverm• 10 days ago

My feelings ever time this comes up on HN lately

(-_- )╯ vim vs emacs

( ^_^)σ AP vs AT

The truth is that both AP and AT made steps in the right direction but also contain fundamental flaws. The next protocol will hopefully draw on both but make permissioning first class and core.

lapcat• 10 days ago

Their most valid criticism of Bluesky is essentially that they don't understand it (they quite clearly haven't tried it, but feel validated in sharing their opinion anyways).

https://bsky.app/profile/tbray.org

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zcjwxwfgk756to5cl52crfue

kgwxd• 10 days ago

There's no money in online brands anymore anyway. Who cares if Bluesky, or any other platform, goes south? Just move on to the next thing. Have 2 things at once. Don't use any thing. These platforms don't own you.

Zambyte2• 9 days ago

Importantly, Bluesky going south means nothing for your profile or all of the associated data. Your home Mastodon instance going south likely means starting a new account from scratch.

OhSoHumble• 10 days ago

Where do you sign up?

This is such a problem for any federated platform; there really isn't an obvious front door. And I'm sure there is some principled theology behind why this shouldn't be the case but ultimately I think there should be a front door somewhere - even if the front door leads you to the most blandest instance around.

abc422• 10 days ago

they

Don't misgender Tim Bray.

commoner• 10 days ago

"They" can always be used to casually refer to someone when their gender is irrelevant to the conversation.

yogthos2• 10 days ago

The article would've been more powerful if it focused on ActivityPub rather than presenting Mastodon as the only option. The whole benefit of having a common protocol is precisely that Mastodon isn't the only option. We have Pixelfed, Lemmy, PeerTube, Friendica, BookWyrm, Funkwhale, Pleroma, and so on.

All of these platforms interoperate which means growth on any one of them grows the fediverse as a whole. This is the direct opposite dynamic from what we see with corporate platforms which compete for users and create walled gardens making it really hard to share content from one platform to another. Hence why sharing screenshots has become so common now.

The beauty of the fediverse is in its interoperable design, and Mastodon is just one piece of the puzzle here.

colesantiago• 9 days ago

I know exactly zero people using any ActivityPub service.

yogthos2• 9 days ago

I use Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Lemmy every single day. Just because you live in a particular bubble doesn't mean people don't use these platforms.

jimmydoe• 10 days ago

Jack Dorsey resigned from Bluesky years ago, but smart people still smell his ghost and shake their head.

If Bluesky close door now and all did:plc get magically migrate to did web, Ill probably all in on atproto.

ChrisArchitect• 10 days ago

ActivityPub over ATProto

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859784

Mastodon, the Only Good Choice

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