mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

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So, assuming I'm not interested in answers like "neither! use !", why would someone use over ? My wife is on Threads and says there's a good vibe over there. I'm not going to join because I don't want any Facebook any my life, but I'm also not representative. Who does bluesky target? People who are anti-Meta but can't figure out signing up for an account like you would email?

That kind of took a turn I don't mean. I know a few folks on bluesky and they're fine people, but their vibe seems to be entirely "we're not mastodon because we refuse to talk about ". But I have a very, very small sample size.

@gulfkiwi I don't see a reason to join BlueSky.

They're strategy seems very suspicious and totally based on corporate bullshittery regarding decentralization, the federation protocol, and confusing people enough about those things so that people don't really try messing around with those parts of the infrastructure...🤦‍♂️

@BeAware I don't disagree, but people are clearly deciding Bluesky vs. Threads (and mutually rejecting mastodon) and I'm curious who "bluesky voters" are, what they perceive bluesky as offering.

@gulfkiwi @BeAware The reasons I've been given/observed: a more familiar interface (it looks more like Twitter); easier to get started (it has a few nice onboarding features that Mastodon does not); less nerdy; less scoldy and lecturing. Those last two come up a lot. Seems many people joined Mastodon, found it to be quite severe in tone, often getting "scolded" (that term comes up a lot) for various things. The experience on BS is lighter in tone; more liberal and forgiving.

@hallenbeck @BeAware The strange thing is that I didn't find the onboarding experience to be materially different between the two EXCEPT that BlueSky doesn't (yet) have multiple instances. I don't even see the interface as being much different. I'm perplexed by the visceral reaction the BlueSky folks have to Mastodon. A couple of good friends have given reactions that cannot be interpreted as anything other than "ewww communism" because mastodon isn't owned.

@gulfkiwi @hallenbeck oh, mastodon is DEFINITELY *owned*. Not sure where the idea that it's not, came from...😳

It's owned by Mastodon Gmbh and with that, Eugen Rochko...they're in control of how every mastodon user interacts with the wider Fediverse and can change that at any time without your permission.

gulfkiwi

@BeAware @hallenbeck mastodon is AGPL-licensed. Anyone can fork it. There's a governance structure for "mastodon" but I don't see that as any different than something like the nixos foundation: the community can take the platform wherever they want.

@gulfkiwi @hallenbeck sure, but how many of us are on forks?

Naivety only goes so far.

Mastodon Gmbh *is* in control here for the most part.

You can fork it, but there's very few who have done so with any major changes.

Forking is only good if it's actually done.

@BeAware @hallenbeck And forking is only necessary if there's a fundamental disagreement regarding direction, which there doesn't seem to have been. Having a governance structure, on the other hand, is a smart organizational strategy.