It is a zero-sum game in some sense, because you go where your friends or "influencers" are.

Mastodon ended up losing its user base to Bluesky during the early Twitter exodus because many influencers and journalists wanted to have an "elite" status and a special relationship with the platform, so they preferred a platform owned by Dorsey to some hippie open-source thing. Bluesky, in turn, ended up losing back to Twitter/X when it turned out to be a place where you mostly talk about how awful Twitter/X is.

I want to say that we don't need social networks where we constantly interact with hundreds of thousands of strangers, but I'm writing this on HN, so...

Just an anecdote - I never used Twitter/X, and never used BlueSky. Recently (about a year ago), joined Mastodon. I enjoy it, find a lot of value there, and have interesting conversations (recently about Mint Debian Linux & sound-systems, and also maker-space CNC design tools). There seems to be active investment in good features & quality on the platform, including making it easier to host your own organization server.

I believe, due to the format of engagement, its easy to spend a lot of time there scrolling - so consider

(1) only using the platform on your desktop computer, instead of phone,

(2) limiting time - 25 minutes a day is enough!

(3) Mute spammers, complainers, people with negative attiudes - you can't catch them all, but you can intentionally shape your experience over time.

(4) Subscribe to tags of your passions (example: #piano, #makerspace, #drawing, #cats, #jujitsu, #cncrouter, #3dprinting), and try to lean into that instead of getting caught up in endless political reactions - which never ends. You can be intentional, and subscribe to people who have a positive vision for the version of the future you prefer.

Curious, how many people do you need on a social network before you can find someone to talk to or before it is engaging enough for you?

I certainly don't need a billion users. I think I'd be happy with 100,000 users -- what is your number?

I think this is related to the question of how big of a city do you need to live in before you can find something to do and are not bored living there. I'm fine with a city of, say, 50,000-100,000. That is more than sufficient for me to find an appropriate number of likeminded friends and neighbors as well as interesting pursuits.

> It is a zero-sum game in some sense, because you go where your friends or "influencers" are.

Bluesky and Mastodon users can interact with each other (provided both parties opt in). I'm on Mastodon, but I see my friend's messages (he's on BlueSky) and vice versa. My replies show on up on BlueSky and vice versa.

Sometimes I think more the toxic people who wrote about politics and identity on Mastodon moved on to Bluesky when Trump got elected.

I don’t see why it is “zero” sum, nothing stops you from posting to more than one social. I mean, I have relatives on Facebook and no prospect for getting them to change so I cut-n-paste what I posted on Mastodon to Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and all sorts of places.

Bluesky won over Mastodon because the fedi model is fundamentally flawed in its UX. For a flood of people wamting "Twitter without Nazis", Bluesky was a good match. I don't think Dorsey had anything to do with it, because the influx happened after he'd already severed all ties.