Mastodon vs. Bluesky

The Eternal Dilemma. The first door that opened when I decided to leave Twitter was Mastodon, and I have a special fondness for it because of that. It also gave me the chance to experience what it’s like to run an instance with actual users. Does it have its problems? Absolutely:

• It’s more “complex” to understand.
• Migrations are a headache, upgrades too.
• Development is slow; they say everything depends on one person’s decisions (although that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

However, Bluesky is where most people have decided to go. Its ATProto is being designed in a very different way, learning from some of ActivityPub’s mistakes, and it’s said to be “better” thought out. Still, there are things that concern me:

• Right now, there’s funding because a VC invested, but at some point, they’ll want ROI. Will we become the product?
• I’ve read somewhere that crypto is involved, which raises some red flags.
• I’ve tried replicating the same setup as Mastodon to have my own independent instance, but as of today, it’s practically impossible. Sure, you can set up your PDS, Relay, and Jetstream… but with AppView, I lost all hope.

Both platforms are still in their infancy, and neither is anywhere near perfect. I feel more at home on Mastodon, but the Bluesky bubble has people I can’t follow anywhere else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I’m still undecided, so I’ll try to stay active on both until something happens that makes me change my mind.