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AJ Sadauskas (ajsadauskas@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Sunday, 05-Jan-2025 17:05:38 JST

AJ Sadauskas

Here's a little trick for anyone reading this on BlueSky who wants longer posts.

See the button below that reads "Original post on social. vivaldi. net"?

Tap it to see the full post, where you'll learn how I did it 👇

(You've probably seen other posts like this one. Here's how those posts are done.)

Okay.

So the fact you're reading this means you clicked the button. You're now reading a longer version of this post with a 1337 character limit.

How I did it was by setting up an account on a different social media app called Mastodon.

How you set it up is by going to https://mastodon.social and clicking the create account button.

(Sidenote: This also works with most other websites that use the Mastodon software for their social media app. I use https://social.vivaldi.net, which is run by the same folks as the @Vivaldi web browser.)

Once you've set up an account, upload your profile photo and follow @bsky.brid.gy

BSky Bridgy is a service by @snarfed.org that makes your Mastodon posts visible on BlueSky.

(Note: As an anti-spam measure, you need a profile photo and your account on Mastodon needs to be active for a week before your posts appear on BlueSky.)

Once it's set up, all your posts on Mastodon will be visible on BlueSky. Including longer posts, like this one 😊

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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 21:39:50 JST

Jupiter Rowland

in reply to

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic But I don't understand why Mastodon is so popular.
In order to understand it, you have to go back to Mastodon's origins in 2016.

Mastodon was brand-new. It was somehow discovered by German press that a German lad almost fresh out of school had developed a "Twitter killer". Searing hot story in Germany which quickly spread beyond Germany.

There was also Pleroma, also from Germany, but Pleroma got nothing because it had made the mistake to position itself as an alternative Web UI for GNU social rather than direct stand-alone competition against Twitter.

There was also diaspora*, a Facebook alternative, but it was nothing but a distant memory of a crowdfunding campaign in summer 2010, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica story, which raised $320,000 when $12,000 were the goal. But diaspora* itself wasn't released with a bang. Some six years later, it was still a public alpha, it was fairly lack-lustre, and the entire development team had to be replaced on the way. Most people had entirely forgotten about it, even tech journalists.

There were also GNU social (formerly StatusNet), Friendica and Hubzilla, but like Pleroma, the general public had never heard of them.

And so it seemed like this boy from Jena had made something that had never been done before, also because he had a ready-to-run software product and not a plan and a crowdfunding campaign.

Fast-forward to 2017. Certain fringe groups were chased off of Twitter: furries, otaku, LGBTQIA+. The only halfway Twitter-like place that at least some of them had heard of was Mastodon. So that was where they invited each other. Within no time, #awoo was one of the hottest hashtags on Mastodon.

It was especially then that Mastodon grew faster than anything else in the Fediverse.

Fast-forward to early 2022. Elon Musk had announced that he might buy Twitter. The first big Twitter migration wave was kicked off. And everyone who fled from Twitter into the Fediverse landed on Mastodon. Why? Here are some reasons.

There were many more Mastodon users who'd invite people to Mastodon than there were Pleroma users who'd invite people to Pleroma, and especially in the western world, there were far more than there were Misskey users who'd invite people to Misskey. Not to mention their respective forks or stuff that wasn't made to be a Twitter alternative.
For simplicity reasons, Twitter escapees were never given the choice between Fediverse projects. Instead, they weren't even guided to the project websites but to certain instances, mostly mastodon.social. Not only because more choice would have overwhelmed the Twitter escapees more, but also because you can only tweet so much in 280 characters.
Precious few Mastodon users even knew back then that there was more to the Fediverse than Mastodon, much less what there was. Thus, nobody on Mastodon invited anyone from Twitter to Calckey or so.
It actually seemed like Pleroma, Akkoma and the westernised Forkeys slept through the migration wave because there weren't actually masses of people guided from Twitter to one of these.
Neither of them really had that one big official lighthouse instance that could withstand a massive migration wave of hundreds of thousands or even millions of users. I guess their users were rather cautious. All this in spite of especially Pleroma and Akkoma requiring much fewer server resources than Mastodon. Only Misskey had and still has a lighthouse instance that a) can hold loads of users and b) with a domain that makes it look like this lighthouse instance is Misskey.

And so the Fediverse ended up with millions upon millions of people who initially thought that Mastodon, or even the Fediverse itself, was only mastodon.social. Or mstdn.social or mas.to if their inviters were too lazy to type on their phone screens. But most of the time, it was mastodon.social.

A typical Fediverse invite tweet looked like this back then:
join mastodon its twitter without musk https://mastodon.social

No link to joinmastodon.org. No mention of instances, much less other instances. And no mention of the rest of the Fediverse.

Well, and now that Mastodon makes for 70% of the Fediverse, and at least every other Mastodon user still doesn't know about the existence of a Fediverse outside of Mastodon, there are still more people trying to invite 𝕏 users to Mastodon than people trying to invite 𝕏 users to anything else in the Fediverse combined.

Tech media and mass media don't help either. Mastodon had a huge boom, but everything else in the Fediverse didn't. Thus, Mastodon was noticed by tech media and mass media, and everything else in the Fediverse wasn't. Thus, tech media and mass media only wrote about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse itself and never at all about Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey/Firefish, Sharkey, Iceshrimp etc. because they never even noticed that any of these exist. Thus, the general public read about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse and not at all about anything else in the Fediverse. Thus, people only know Mastodon.

And now you have next to nobody on Pleroma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Pleroma.

You have next to nobody on Akkoma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Akkoma.

You have next to nobody on Iceshrimp trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Iceshrimp.

You have next to nobody on Sharkey trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Sharkey.

But you have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Mastodon.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from Facebook to Mastodon because they've never even heard about the existence of Friendica, much less Hubzilla, (streams) or Socialhome.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from all kinds of commercial silos to Mastodon because Mastodon is all they've ever heard of, and besides, they try to race Bluesky in terms of user numbers.

When it comes to microblogging, we now have:

Bluesky: the next Twitter. Also with easy onboarding because it's centralised. (Bluesky nerds: "Ackchually..." @Christine Lemmer-Webber: "ACKCHUALLY...")
Threads: Meta Platforms = Facebook = Zuckerberg = evil!1!!
Nostr: Either you've never heard of it, or it's a playground for cryptobros by cryptobros.
Mastodon: The only non-commercial alternative to the Birdcage known to mankind, but WAYYYYYY too complicated because you have to choose an instance! (Not like both joinmastodon.org and the official app railroad you to mastodon.social. Not like the official Bluesky app doesn't let you pick a PDS to join.)
Pleroma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Akkoma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Misskey: only known in Japan.
Firefish: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Iceshrimp: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Sharkey: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that. Apparently, not even the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Catodon: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Mitra: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
And so forth...

In short: Mastodon is only so popular because nobody knows anything else. Its only advantage over the rest of the Fediverse is that many more people know it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon

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katzenberger (katzenberger@mastodon.de)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 20:09:19 JST

katzenberger

in reply to

@ayoub you can search your account @ayoub directly at https://mastodon.social, click on the profile found, and when it is hidden, you will be told so. I've checked this today, and it was no longer reported hidden, as it was before.

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Darnell Clayton :verified: (darnell@one.darnell.one)'s status on Monday, 22-Jul-2024 01:17:32 JST

Darnell Clayton :verified:

in reply to

@Sujiyan @DavidBHimself @syuilo As far as I can tell, all three of your instances are on the ban list by #Threads: https://www.threads.net/moderated_servers

👉🏾 Mastodon Cloud (https://mastodon.cloud)
👉🏾 Pawoo (https://pawoo.net)
👉🏾 MSTDN Japan (https://mstdn.jp)

Previously the flagship instances of #Misskey (https://misskey.io) & #Mastodon (https://mastodon.social) were banned, but after many of us brought it to #Meta’s attention they removed them from the list.

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votejainism (votejainism@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jun-2024 02:06:21 JST

votejainism

in reply to

@Gargron

Hi Eugen!

Perhaps if http://mastodon.social committed itself to not interfering in elections around the world, then governments around the world might start to recommend it.
Currently, Twitter/X seems to have free rein to do whatever it wants.
They shadowbanned and then fully suspended my account, which affected my ability to enter the final stage of the General Election here in the UK.

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Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋 (mackuba@martianbase.net)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 10:16:41 JST

Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋

One thing that's definitely in the top 3 most annoying things on #Mastodon for me is that I see a post on https://mastodon.social now on the #bluesky feed, I want to reply to it, and there's literally no way to do it… nothing works, I don't know why, no error messages, who the hell thought this is good UX 😖

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