Post · bonfire.cafe

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social · 12 hours ago

A tale of two online spaces.

One: by the people for the people, with chronological feeds.

The other: funded by crypto bros and with pick-your-algorithm feeds.

I shared the exact same content.

Genuine interactions in the first place.

A grand total of ZERO reactions in the other - even if I have real life friends and contacts there.

Is the second place hiding my posts to 1100+ followers? It feels like I'm screaming into the void.

Guess which place I like best & which one I plan to abandon?

a screenshot of the same post on Mastodon with 5 replies, 94 boosts and 100 likes

a screenshot of my Bluesky post from 16 hours ago announcing my new blog post "the rebellion will be federated - 2025 edition". ZERO likes, zero comments, zero reactions (for an account with 1100+ followers)

Log 🪵

@log@mastodon.sdf.org replied · 6 hours ago

@_elena hypothesis for part of the X and/or BS algorithms:
if( post.contains("federate", MatchOptions.IncludeInflectedForms)){ post.shadowMute(); }

Arlaturi

@Arlaturi@mastodon.social replied · 6 hours ago

@_elena Have another boost for your valuable effort.

Teapot Ben

@teapot_ben@glammr.us replied · 8 hours ago

@_elena it's their loss. I'm very glad you chose the Fediverse!

adamtewodros

@adamtewodros@mas.to replied · 10 hours ago

@_elena I dont post that much as for finding content like both chronological and custom feeds and wish fedi services had them built in.

I like the argument that corporate feeds are like an addictive poisonous drink & chronological is like drinking water. Drinking water alone is the healthiest option but sometimes you want something else and that where custom feeds come in

I got that argument from this fedihost video: https://video.fedihost.co/w/kVoS82WGtnVMzDDDPGGa8p

Kat O’Brien

@obrien_kat@mastodon.world replied · 11 hours ago

@_elena contrarian here, but I really like Bluesky and get substantial interaction there as well as find far more content that is of interest.
I love the community on Mastodon, but it’s much more niche and I also prefer the format on Bluesky. Then again, I loved Twitter and built a huge part of my network in Spain via that platform back in the day (I am not on it now).
Also, I do chronological feed on every platform that has it enabled.

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 11 hours ago

@obrien_kat interesting to hear this Kat! I've been having a different experience on Bluesky and I wonder how many of my friends and contacts there use the "Following" feed... because I DO have real life friends there but they never interact with any of my posts... we occasionally talk over DM. I wonder if the algorithm doesn't like that I only post links to external sites and publish something once every blue moon...

Mr. V

@mrv404@mastodon.social replied · 9 hours ago

@_elena @obrien_kat this is exactly the point. We don't know and will never know why, because the algo is a black box that we don't control, by design.

Gualtiero

@ggrey@social.thelab.uno replied · 11 hours ago

@_elena as far as I know that's correct. Socials don't like external links and normally algos penalize those posts. Infact X recently changed the way external links are displayed on order to keep users on the platform.

One thing I read from many people was to write an excerpt of the article as the main post then post the link on the first reply (noting it on the main post).

Truth? Urban myth? Who knows.

Kat O’Brien

@obrien_kat@mastodon.world replied · 11 hours ago

@_elena that’s interesting, Elena. Do they seem to be using Bluesky a lot or maybe they aren’t active so aren’t seeing your posts? Could you ask a couple of them if they do chronological or algorithmic?
I share tooooons of links to external sites on it, so my experience doesn’t indicate throttling of links but obviously it’s anecdotal.

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 11 hours ago

@obrien_kat actually even @liaizon and @stefan wrote about their inexistent interactions on Bluesky...to the point that even Bluesky's own Paul Frazee chimed in, saying it was odd:

https://bsky.app/profile/wake.st/post/3lyvezgizyk23

(I had bookmarked this because it really resonated with me)

https://bsky.app

View

Kat O’Brien

@obrien_kat@mastodon.world replied · 11 hours ago

@_elena @liaizon @stefan that is interesting. Most of what I post about/interact with is related to the U.S. crashing out of democracy, sometimes journalism or news or Spain or NYC or my home state of Iowa or an event I went to/am organizing. With a little bit of personal like running or pretty pictures.
I’ve got ~2.5K followers but prob more influential is that a decent minority of those have large followings and frequently interact with my posts.

tanavit

@tanavit@toot.aquilenet.fr replied · 11 hours ago

@_elena

As your post on BlueSky is an "advertisment" for a concurrent network, I am not sure that the Algorithm pushes it......

cwicseolfor

@cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca replied · 11 hours ago

@tanavit @_elena Yep, I think corp socials are starting to feel the threat. I very rarely post on Facebook and only log on once in many months, mostly to verify there’s no impersonation happening, but because of that I usually get quite a lot of activity on those rare posts… until I used one to encourage people to check out the fediverse. Suddenly it was crickets.

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 11 hours ago

@tanavit actually nobody ever sees any of my posts on Bluesky. Even monthly updates of what I'm up to, where the title is super vanilla and innocuous

Robert Kingett

@WeirdWriter@caneandable.social replied · 6 hours ago

@_elena @tanavit Have you tried just text and no links? It wouldn't shock me if the BS Team started making links far less reachable already. I'd imagine that would be the point, getting people to stay on your thing so have you tried posting just text stuff?

RaymondPierreL3

@RaymondPierreL3@aus.social replied · 12 hours ago

@_elena
No need to guess Elena… we know.
But perhaps the federated revolution will take a little more time to unseat the #TechBros dominant position…

Sar

@Sar@masto.ai replied · 12 hours ago

@_elena

This is my experience as well. Mastodon has far more people interacting with posts than either Bluesky or Threads combined!

I cross-post a lot via Fedica, and the amount of interactions I get on either of the two tech-bro platforms are nearly non-existant compared to here 😁

Not to say Mastodon doesn't have issues - one glaring one is .social starting to centralise Mastodon on 1 server due to it's sheer size, and the refusal of the gmbh to vary the sign-up server on joinmastodon.com.

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 12 hours ago

@Sar yeah I was only posting links to my blog posts on Bluesky... but what's the point if nobody ever sees them?

It's particularly shocking given the audience size - 1100+ followers and zero reactions? Not worth wasting my time there to be honest... I'll stick to doing POSSE on the Fediverse 🤗

Robert Kingett

@WeirdWriter@caneandable.social replied · 6 hours ago

@_elena @Sar I mean, alternatively, you could just automate posts and stuff over there? But that could be just me never wanting to give them any real effort. I know people go there but to me the Fediverse holds all my people.

Sar

@Sar@masto.ai replied · 12 hours ago

@_elena Yep, precisely. I'll carry on posting to Bsky & threads as it's no different to just posting here when using fedica, but 99% of my time spent posting replies, or boosting posts is done now on Mastodon.

And I'm quite happy about that, because Mastodon, despite its issues, is the vastly superior platform of the three 😀

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 12 hours ago

@Sar 🙌 🙌 🙌 🙌

Sar

@Sar@masto.ai replied · 12 hours ago

@_elena Currently around 30% of the entire population of the fediverse is on one single server, which is a problem now and will become even more of a problem as time goes on.

Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena@mastodon.social replied · 12 hours ago

@Sar agree but in contrast on the Fediverse one could set up a self-hosted instance in minutes and move there... For as little as 5 Euros a month... whereas on Bluesky I wouldn't even know how to get started and costs could be far far higher

Sar

@Sar@masto.ai replied · 12 hours ago

@_elena Yep, that's another massive plus in the Mastodon column for me - self-hosting.

I don't host my own instance, but I *love* the fact that the option is there should I ever want/need it.

I just worry that over time .social is going to get over 50% of that total figure, at which point the Fediverse effectively isn't decentralised, it'll be largely centralised with satellite instances, and be too large to de-federate from, compounding the issue further.

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