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alias_sqbrI never clicked with twitter, so I was pretty quick to jump ship after Elon took over and try out some alternatives, namely bluesky and mastodon. I liked them both more in some ways, but my timelines were achingly quiet which made the experience pretty dull.
But then I got frustrated at having like ONE follower at each of my game dev accounts and looked around for ways to meet at least enough people to feel like I wasn't posting into the void, and that quickly gained me enough mutuals and fun people to follow that I now genuinely enjoy checking my timelines, especially on bluesky. And then Twitter was banned in Brazil and a whooole lot of Brazilians joined bluesky, which caused the site to strain for a few days but now it's even more vibrant, though obviously some of that is temporary.
I'll put more thoughts under a cut but if you just want to see my accounts here's sqbr at bluesky and sqbr on mastodon.
The post that initially helped me find my way on both sites was this introductory guide for game devs on bluesky which I found by googling something like 'bluesky game dev' and hoping for the best.
The main trick for both sites turned out to be finding popular hashtags for subjects I'm interested in, and then subscribing and making posts(*) that included them. The main hashtag I like on mastodon is #VisualNovel while on Bluesky it's #GameDev.
Also on Bluesky there's a bunch of opt-out lists which compile all recent posts containing multiple related popular hashtags, here's the one for game development I follow. So far I've only had to mute two irritating people who were flooding the tag with self promotion, most people are friendly and sincere, and I've thus far had very good experiences when I've replied to random strangers asking questions I knew the answer to.
Here's a list for artists, since the official Bluesky Art feed crashed when I tried to open it haha. EDIT: Huh, when I check that link logged out I only see one post! There's a bunch when you're logged in but that's not much good as an example for people considering the site, oh well.
There's also more curated opt-in lists which are a cool idea in theory but I haven't happened upon any that appealed to me and were being actively maintained, they seem like the kind of high effort resource people get bored of keeping up to date.
Bluesky has some nice tools around hashtags and lists, specifically: ORGANISATIONAL TAGS MY BELOVED. Of course there's the classic tumblr problem where there's no distinction between hashtags as a way of organising your personal blogs, and hashtags as a way of connecting with the wider community discussing that topic, which is one reason I had to specifically create a hashtagged post for that link.
Both sites also have occasional big "reply if you're interested in X" threads. I haven't had much response when I've posted to these myself, but have found cool people to follow. This huge list of Brazilian artists introduced me to some cool people to follow, some of whom followed me back.
Like tumblr and dreamwidth, one of the advantages of both sites is that they aren't currently super well known and popular, so the community tends to be more sincere and less full of clout chasers than twitter was even before the fall. That could easily change on bluesky if it does take off, I feel like Mastodon is more inherently niche especially since you can always move to smaller instances.
Moderation on mastodon depends on the instance, I'm not sure how reliable it is at bluesky. I have not personally had many bad experiences with bots, nazis, trolls, bullies etc, but I don't know how much of that is good luck. I have seen the occasional bluesky post get some "this post sucks" responses from strangers, with all the examples I've seen it was at least somewhat justified if maybe harsher than necessary, eg in response to bitcoin spam, but I'm sure people are just Mean sometimes.
I have not had to block/mute any people on mastodon, and the ones I did on bluesky were just annoying spammers on the game dev feed, I know some people really dislike how bluesky handles blocking/muting but haven't looked into it.
A lot of dogpiling on twitter was in the form of quote retweets going "Look at this idiot! Go say mean things to them!". Mastodon simply doesn't have quote reblogs. Bluesky does, but if you block someone that immediately removes your post from any past quote reblogs they've made of you, so that will hopefully help.
Mastodon can get pretty rigid about social expectations on posts that show up on the public timeline, I get around this by simply not posting on the public timeline with my personal account, and mostly posting inoffensive game updates on my game dev account. I have not heard about any conflict over What Should Be In The Hashtag on bluesky but am sure it happens. Both sites socially encourage the usage of image descriptions, I know on Mastodon that can get didactic but I get the feeling it's more of a "people just won't reblog you as much" effect on bluesky.
Both sites have some janky or irritating aspects, eg threaded conversations on bluesky can be weirdly hard to follow.
Thinking about stuff youse would be interested in... I have mostly been looking at G rated art and game dev stuff, with a preference for following non-binary creators. I have not looked especially hard into nsfw, scifi nerd, other kinds of queer, or disability stuff on either platform, but have definitely seen that sort of thing around. I know finding nsfw friendly servers on mastodon can be troublesome, I'm not sure what the situation is like on bluesky.
EDIT: After posting this I poked the #bluesky hashtag on mastodon out of curiosity, and it was a lot of people discussing why they didn't get the same bump in users from Brazil that bluesky did (2 million new users in a few days!). The main conclusion was the mastodon is simply too much harder to use, and most people will go for the easier option. And looking at the that link, I think it's just posts on my instance, not mastodon in general.. wait no it's not? I am confused, which kinda illustrates the problem!
Overall I am enjoying Bluesky more, but I am also aware that it is a commercial site, and thus more inclined to start off shinier and then descend into becoming unusable as it tries to Monestise the Userbase. Mastodon is solidly open source and seems more likely to stay as it is, for both good and ill. Bluesky is THEORETICALLY part of a broader mastodon-esque open source thing but it feels commercial so I have my doubts.
I've never tried threads, since it's run by Facebook/meta. Also while I know it's super popular on paper I never actually see anyone link to it or express any enthusiasm for being there, which isn't very enticing. But it does exist!
But nothing will beat dreamwidth for when I want to write long rambly posts ;)
(*)Or 'toots'/'skeets', both of which still sound SO silly to me.
But then I got frustrated at having like ONE follower at each of my game dev accounts and looked around for ways to meet at least enough people to feel like I wasn't posting into the void, and that quickly gained me enough mutuals and fun people to follow that I now genuinely enjoy checking my timelines, especially on bluesky. And then Twitter was banned in Brazil and a whooole lot of Brazilians joined bluesky, which caused the site to strain for a few days but now it's even more vibrant, though obviously some of that is temporary.
I'll put more thoughts under a cut but if you just want to see my accounts here's sqbr at bluesky and sqbr on mastodon.
The post that initially helped me find my way on both sites was this introductory guide for game devs on bluesky which I found by googling something like 'bluesky game dev' and hoping for the best.
The main trick for both sites turned out to be finding popular hashtags for subjects I'm interested in, and then subscribing and making posts(*) that included them. The main hashtag I like on mastodon is #VisualNovel while on Bluesky it's #GameDev.
Also on Bluesky there's a bunch of opt-out lists which compile all recent posts containing multiple related popular hashtags, here's the one for game development I follow. So far I've only had to mute two irritating people who were flooding the tag with self promotion, most people are friendly and sincere, and I've thus far had very good experiences when I've replied to random strangers asking questions I knew the answer to.
Here's a list for artists, since the official Bluesky Art feed crashed when I tried to open it haha. EDIT: Huh, when I check that link logged out I only see one post! There's a bunch when you're logged in but that's not much good as an example for people considering the site, oh well.
There's also more curated opt-in lists which are a cool idea in theory but I haven't happened upon any that appealed to me and were being actively maintained, they seem like the kind of high effort resource people get bored of keeping up to date.
Bluesky has some nice tools around hashtags and lists, specifically: ORGANISATIONAL TAGS MY BELOVED. Of course there's the classic tumblr problem where there's no distinction between hashtags as a way of organising your personal blogs, and hashtags as a way of connecting with the wider community discussing that topic, which is one reason I had to specifically create a hashtagged post for that link.
Both sites also have occasional big "reply if you're interested in X" threads. I haven't had much response when I've posted to these myself, but have found cool people to follow. This huge list of Brazilian artists introduced me to some cool people to follow, some of whom followed me back.
Like tumblr and dreamwidth, one of the advantages of both sites is that they aren't currently super well known and popular, so the community tends to be more sincere and less full of clout chasers than twitter was even before the fall. That could easily change on bluesky if it does take off, I feel like Mastodon is more inherently niche especially since you can always move to smaller instances.
Moderation on mastodon depends on the instance, I'm not sure how reliable it is at bluesky. I have not personally had many bad experiences with bots, nazis, trolls, bullies etc, but I don't know how much of that is good luck. I have seen the occasional bluesky post get some "this post sucks" responses from strangers, with all the examples I've seen it was at least somewhat justified if maybe harsher than necessary, eg in response to bitcoin spam, but I'm sure people are just Mean sometimes.
I have not had to block/mute any people on mastodon, and the ones I did on bluesky were just annoying spammers on the game dev feed, I know some people really dislike how bluesky handles blocking/muting but haven't looked into it.
A lot of dogpiling on twitter was in the form of quote retweets going "Look at this idiot! Go say mean things to them!". Mastodon simply doesn't have quote reblogs. Bluesky does, but if you block someone that immediately removes your post from any past quote reblogs they've made of you, so that will hopefully help.
Mastodon can get pretty rigid about social expectations on posts that show up on the public timeline, I get around this by simply not posting on the public timeline with my personal account, and mostly posting inoffensive game updates on my game dev account. I have not heard about any conflict over What Should Be In The Hashtag on bluesky but am sure it happens. Both sites socially encourage the usage of image descriptions, I know on Mastodon that can get didactic but I get the feeling it's more of a "people just won't reblog you as much" effect on bluesky.
Both sites have some janky or irritating aspects, eg threaded conversations on bluesky can be weirdly hard to follow.
Thinking about stuff youse would be interested in... I have mostly been looking at G rated art and game dev stuff, with a preference for following non-binary creators. I have not looked especially hard into nsfw, scifi nerd, other kinds of queer, or disability stuff on either platform, but have definitely seen that sort of thing around. I know finding nsfw friendly servers on mastodon can be troublesome, I'm not sure what the situation is like on bluesky.
EDIT: After posting this I poked the #bluesky hashtag on mastodon out of curiosity, and it was a lot of people discussing why they didn't get the same bump in users from Brazil that bluesky did (2 million new users in a few days!). The main conclusion was the mastodon is simply too much harder to use, and most people will go for the easier option. And looking at the that link, I think it's just posts on my instance, not mastodon in general.. wait no it's not? I am confused, which kinda illustrates the problem!
Overall I am enjoying Bluesky more, but I am also aware that it is a commercial site, and thus more inclined to start off shinier and then descend into becoming unusable as it tries to Monestise the Userbase. Mastodon is solidly open source and seems more likely to stay as it is, for both good and ill. Bluesky is THEORETICALLY part of a broader mastodon-esque open source thing but it feels commercial so I have my doubts.
I've never tried threads, since it's run by Facebook/meta. Also while I know it's super popular on paper I never actually see anyone link to it or express any enthusiasm for being there, which isn't very enticing. But it does exist!
But nothing will beat dreamwidth for when I want to write long rambly posts ;)
(*)Or 'toots'/'skeets', both of which still sound SO silly to me.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-04 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-11 10:06 am (UTC)Yeah I don't mind having the two sites but bluesky is definitely more active right now.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-07 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-08 05:13 am (UTC)I'm really glad it helped!
no subject
Date: 2024-09-10 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-11 01:54 am (UTC)Yeah, I guess we just have to wait and see how it plays out over time.