Social networking is exciting. Great apps make it easy for you to be heard and meet like-minded people Worldwide, in secure and privacy-respecting ways. Unfortunately, , but I do believe the . Since Twitter was recently acquired by the wealthiest person on Earth, a 'decentralized' social network called Mastodon became especially popular amongst those willing to replace Twitter by a more sustainable app. social apps today are way far from that reach paradigm is about to change why I strongly believe that This article aims to describe Mastodon (as it is today) wont ever be a sustainable and popular (100 M+ daily active users) alternative to social media. Apps based on the groundbreaking Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol (e.g, Bluesky) might be the solution we need. Bluesky and the AT protocol The (ATP) is an (publicly available) software for large-scale distributed social applications, created by the company Bluesky, , a fully independent company founded in late 2021. However, the started in 2019 following Twitter co-founder and ex-CEO’s announcement that Twitter would be funding a small team to develop an open for . Authenticated Transfer Protocol open-source PBLLC bluesky project protocol decentralized social media The founders and owners of Bluesky, PBLLC are: Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter ( in late 2021). resigned from Twitter Jeremie Miller, inventor of . XMPP , its first CEO. Jay Graber The Bluesky community/team started by researching the of decentralized social protocols, and concluded that none of them fully met the goals they had for a network that enables long-term public conversations at scale. state of art The ATP is based on a hybrid federated architecture, because it borrows features from peer-to-peer networks. Some of its most important features are ( ): ref - when people can switch app providers without losing their identity and social graph (posts, followers, following, account settings) Portability With email, if you change your provider then your email address has to change too. This is a common problem for federated social protocols, including ActivityPub (the one that ). powers Mastodon We want users to have an easy path to switching servers. - Algorithms dictate what we see and who we can reach. We must have control over our algorithms if we're going to trust in our online spaces. The ATP includes an open algorithms mode so users are able to adjust their experience. Trust Our premise is to work towards a transparent and verifiable system from the bottom up by giving users ways to audit the performance of services and the ability to switch if they are dissatisfied. - Great social networking platforms seamlessly bring 100s of millions of people together in a global conversation, and that requires engineering for scale. Scale Bluesky, PBLLC will soon launch its social app powered by the ATP. It will be called and if you wish you can register for a waitlist to test the app in its private beta stage, i.e. before being launched to the public. Bluesky Social (as it is) won't ever succeed Mastodon Not user-friendly If it wasn't true you wouldn't find so many online tutorials on "how to use Mastodon" - see down the page, and note they range from 2017 to 2022 (Mastodon programmers had about 5 years to solve a simple problem and they couldn't). References B Lack of privacy Direct messages are not private (i.e. end-to-end encrypted) - server admins are watching you! Scalability Server downtime on Mastodon network isn’t a new issue. Raman’s research looked at downtime on Mastodon in 2019 and found servers had been inaccessible about 10% of the time. Even in Twitter’s early days, Raman says, it went offline only about 1.25% of the time. The nature of a volunteer-driven network means Mastodon can’t respond to crises like Big Tech companies do ( ). ref Mastodon has recently reached and its servers are already buckling under the weight. That user base is a fraction of Twitter’s ( ). 2.6 M monthly active users 200 M+ daily active users ref Account portability If a user moves to a new instance, they can redirect or migrate their old account. sets up a redirect notice on the old profile which tells users to follow the new account. forces all followers to unfollow the old account and follow the new, if the software on their instance supports this functionality. , due to technical limitations ( ). Redirection Migration Your posts will not be moved ref Mastodon’s model comes with its own risks. If the server you join disappears, you could lose everything, just like if your email provider shuts down ( ). ref Hard to build up a network Isnt it meant to be a social app?! 🙄 Uncatchy and unoriginal name Mastodon is also an animal that was extinct thousands of years ago ( ). image source Mastodon also happens to be the name of a . popular heavy metal band Imposed long usernames Mastodon usernames are made up of the account name you choose followed by the domain name of the server your account is on. This means there could be a user who is not the same one as . @laceleste@mastodon.party @laceleste@mastodon.club Censorship The owner/administrator of the Mastodon your account is hosted on, has ultimate control over everything you do: if for some reason the admin of doesn’t like that you boosted a toot (how posts are called on Mastodon) from , she/he could remove it, delete your account, or even “defederate” that server (i.e block all dolphin.town posts on kpop.social) ( ). server kpop.social dolphin.town ref Sources of all images can be found in the original article - link below. References A A Self-Authenticating Social Protocol Decentralized Social Networks — comparing federated and peer-to-peer protocols Sorry, Elon haters: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter Six reasons Mastodon won't survive Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator References B Looking for Twitter alternatives? Here’s how to use Mastodon How to use Mastodon, the Twitter alternative that’s becoming super popular A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the hot new open-source Twitter clone How to Find Your Twitter Friends on Mastodon Also published . here

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