The community has voted for convenience over privacy, and twitter and bluesky have won over mastodon. You're right, but people don't actually care about privacy
The community has voted for convenience over privacy, and twitter and bluesky have won over mastodon. You're right, but people don't actually care about privacy
Bluesky is very intentionally about public posting. It's a bit weird to say people "don't care about privacy" when speaking of a platform designed to amplify and distribute posts as widely and effectively as possible.
There is a lot of weirdness around Mastodon, particularly some people can’t seem to make up their minds if they want the stuff they post to be visible or not.
Exactly. And I'm willing to be that Bluesky folk might be somewhat similar because they haven't figured it out yet.
Except that the design of Bluesky severely increases the possibility of your data getting out of your control. And I can hear the immediate responses of "oh if you didn't want it public, don't post it," but as should be frightfully obvious -- not everyone thinks like that.
I'd rather say Twitter and Threads are the current winners if we're talking about userbase. Bluesky is basically in the same league with Mastodon while those two are so far above that you can't even see them without a telescope.
I mostly don't like this take because it presumes a precise definition of privacy that we all agree on. And it's not even remotely close to that, which is why I think the Bluesky model is perhaps insidious.
Good point. For sake of argument, how about this stratification of privacy levels:
twitter/x/bluesky - a big tech company owns your data
mastodon - a grassroots community organization owns your data
zulip - someone you've met personally owns the data
your blog - you own the data
(and yes these are a bit of a category error, but to achieve privacy maybe we should broaden the category and sacrifice reach)
Well, the problem is, now the word "owns" isn't really helpful either?
Because you have "possesses" (which can be anyone) vs. "controls?"
Twitter - single point of big company external control
Mastodon - One or multiple unverifiable fallible likely grassroots, points of external control
Bluesky - Once out, merely the illusion of control, because your data is out there, verifiable?.
As someone who was once an avid twitter user, my sense is that Mastodon--after a somewhat hopeful start just never gained the network momentum. Bluesky came closest to Twitter's old reach but is still something of a shadow of the old Twitter (as Twitter/X is these days as well).
Bluesky is not just a shadow, it's on a pretty steady decline. Their DAU numbers are dropping every month. Which probably tells you something about the unspoken reason for this change.
No they’re not? https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
Yes they are? E.g., https://api.backlinko.com/app/uploads/2025/11/bluesky-websit...
This is also visible in your stats if you extend the time window. They had a peak in 2024 and are pretty much declining month to month ever since.
Are we seeing the same? All the stats are steadily going down https://i.imgur.com/QJakG56.png
I’d describe that last six months as ‘sideways’ —- what was that surge near the end of last year?
I believe that surge was Elon announcing AI image editing on X and a bunch of Japanese artists and their followers trying out Bluesky.
My understanding was the end of year time off / holidays, as compared to the dip around thanksgiving.
Jaz's stats are sus, use this instead: https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/index.html
Without researching actual numbers, it feels like that whole category of social media is pretty much uninteresting at this point. Not sure what really replaces it given that Facebook seems increasingly infested with AI slop and sponsored posts.
More IRL time with other people hopefully.
[dead]
We may have different interests and networks. Pretty much everyone I know has moved on. I don't even look at it any longer.
>You're right, but people don't actually care about privacy
The entire point of a platform like Twitter / Bluesky is reach, not privacy.
Posts and discussions there are meant to be public, and highly visible.
It's not that people don't care. It's that this is not what the platform is for.
What's important for a platform like that is not even anonymity, but functional pseudonymity.
And that thing is on its way to the effectively outlawed with the push for "age verification".
People do notice it and leave [1], but at some point, there might be no place to go to.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1rmlzhy/welp_goodb...
I 100% agree, I always thought that even Private Messages were a bad idea.
But no, we're way past "if you don't want it public don't post it." and then wiping our hands and being done. We need to think in a policy kind of way on this.
And again, things are already dangerous -- but ATProto makes them more dangerous. It's something like a chain-of-custody thing. I think the world is collectively safer where the gathering of data like this is less reliable and less verifiable.
ATProto's model makes the building of the proverbial evil Big Brother panopticon thing a LOT easier.
If a social network stays comparatively small but still active, I see that as a huge win. Half the people I follow are happily on Mastodon. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I am on a bunch of socials but as time goes by I like my cohort on Mastodon better and better.
Many a Discord server would agree