It’s not the users, it’s the developers / investors. I’ve tried so many times to get into Mastodon, but it sucks compared to Bluesky. It lacks content and polish, so it’s no wonder everyday people choose Bluesky over it.
The real conundrum is why isn’t there a for profit company with big money behind it, investing in ActivityPub. I guess you could point to Threads? But insert your “not like that” meme of choice.
Fwiw, apparently Bluesky did initially look at activity pub, but found the protocol lacking, which is why they invented ATProto. I don’t know the details though.
Because like it or not, actually paying for stuff is the only way to save journalism and by extension our democracies.
The alternative is to link shitty clickbait / AI spam. At least this way:
- People might be encouraged to pay for journalism.
- There are many ways to bypass the paywall for those who won’t or can’t pay.
Please don’t ban paywalls.
At least you aren’t going to die becoming a southern belle.
I used to equate Sync with Reddit too, but now I have a different perspective.
Reddit is nothing but a glorified link aggregator. Sync was my preferred way of viewing said list of links. Now that I have the exact same experience on Lemmy I’ve realized that Sync wasn’t Reddit, it was link aggregation and where those links come from doesn’t really matter.
It’s kind of poetic because that’s the promise of Lemmy. It doesn’t matter where the links are hosted.
Because you need network effect. Which means you need big money for marketing, content moderation and development costs. That includes algorithms, which maybe you don’t want, but most people do.
It’s not that I want a for profit company, I just don’t think Mastodon will every achieve critical mass without one.