Technically they also use a federated protocol called Authenticated Transfer (AT). Though overall from what I can tell they're not doing well, Threads has over 100 million users and Mastadon has over 10 million, while Bluesky only has a bit over 300,000.

[–] dingus@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While it's true Bluesky has only a small number of sign-ups, it's still invite-only, which limits how many people can sign up. There has been lots of interest in Bluesky, and many people simply haven't been able to get an invite.

I however, don't disagree otherwise. I think their choice to be invite only is going to put them in a harder position long-term, especially with ActivityPub taking off and being a lot more open.

Also Jack Dorsey is a fucking asshat and I don't trust him being the controlling factor for a fucking internet protocol, but that's just, like, my opinion man.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't underestimate the power of building up slowly and making sure you get things right. It's what the fediverse and mastodon have been doing.

Right now, no one is happy with the state of social media and no alternative looks particularly great to everyone, so during a state of flux, writing off anything is probably a mistake.

Apparently, there's some reason to think that Dorsey isn't that involved in BS, and more interested in Nostr (as it's a crypto thing). He's not the CEO of BS, Jay Graber is, and many have expressed respect for her and dismay at how Dorsey is the face of the project.

Reasons to be positive about BS that I've heard from others:^1^

It's protocol allows for user selected moderation policies, that are kinda in place at the moment and some have enjoyed
Despite it's recent problems, its culture is more BIPOC friendly than mastodon
User independence/mobility is baked in to the protocol (apparently?) but not a thing at all on the fediverse

For me, reasons 1 & 3 are structural issues the fediverse is likely to struggle with and which, when solved, can generally improve the health and attractiveness of the platform in question, including, I'd guess, issues around point 2.

[1]: I'm not on there or particularly interested in it FWIW. My interest more comes from a concern that an open protocol is trickier than ActivityPub/fediverse think and may require much more than what ActivityPub has done to really work long term.