My love/hate relationship with Twitter began over a decade ago. I learned, I made friends and I had a good time. I was also angry. Daily. And it’s not just me. Application guides you along certain paths as you register, assuming you follow politicians, famous journalists and sportsmen who obviously attract debate and controversy that you end up resolving with more or less success. The result is always the same: outrage and usage time (or loss) within the application.

The company itself has helped all its users to experience their own experience with their constant and unsuccessful decisions. From restricting third-party clients to using algorithms that sort tweets based on how controversial they are, to your new boss’s controversial address to your new weekly nonsense.

I tried Mastodon, which doesn’t depend on the whims of one person and makes it easy for developers to write fantastic clients like Ivory or Mastodeck. However, his work is not as similar to Twitter as it seems. From its confusing and overwhelming registration that asks the user to select an instance without knowing what the instance is before it works. I don’t want to be subject to the whims of an instance moderator who also has access to my private messages. Also, search, which is one of the most used features on Twitter, doesn’t work globally and the results I get every time I search for something always leave a lot to be desired.

What I like about Bluesky

Even before Musk bought Twitter, founder Jack Dorsey had already developed plan to turn Twitter into an open protocol, not controlled by one personao to release his original idea, stifled by the board of directors previously, and now by Musk. It’s called Bluesky, and to my surprise, since I didn’t have high hopes, I like it, I’m convinced, and it could be what Twitter was always meant to be.

Key features of Bluesky

1. Interface. It’s a simple copy of Twitter, and that’s good. From the first moment you feel at home and understand how everything works. In addition, it has only the basic options and no add-ons that worsen rather than improve the experience. This is one of the main selling points for third-party Twitter clients: following the application’s mission. In addition, the application is very light, although the initial load time is too long and it always feels like a test application.
2. Registration and commissioning. It works like twitter. You write your username, password, and optionally your web domain to identify yourself. Unlike Mastodon, you don’t have to choose an instance without knowing how each one works or what value they carry. In addition, in the future, accounts will be able to migrate to another network without any restrictions within the protocol. It doesn’t prompt people to follow unless you go to the suggestion tabs, but you can see tweets you might like in the What’s New section, which is an algorithm-driven global feed.
3. Atmosphere to breathe. There are only 20,000 users at the moment, so a predictive estimate would be unfair, but the atmosphere is much closer to the early days of Twitter than I could see in Mastodon. Almost all the comments are about the platform itself and what the users themselves are doing. The conversation doesn’t focus on how bad Elon Musk is, like Mastodon is in my experience.
4. Developers use the app. One of Twitter’s big problems was that their board of directors never used Twitter, and now the problem is that their new boss continues to use them and changes the entire social network to fit his needs. In Bluesky, the entire development team is inside the platform, active and regularly responding to requests, doubts and problems that its users have.
5. What is not visible. The protocol that Bluesky is working on seems to me the best possible approach to building a decentralized Twitter that will work for the general public, as opposed to the Mastodon alternative.

Why do I think Bluesky is better than Mastodon?

The Bluesky protocol has three very important features that we can’t find in Mastodon: real account portability, globally accessible content, and customization of user moderation and post ordering.

In Mastodon, the instance owner controls the entire instance. Decide what you can and can’t say, have read access to your private messages, and if you want to migrate, you’ll only keep your followers and followers, not your content. The “if you get mistreated, you can leave” approach has always struck me as unsettling. Alleviates possible evil, but does not eradicate it. With Bluesky, you stick to the company’s rules within its domain, but you can decide to leave and work from your own domain without losing anything, as your messages can still be read.

Except, This pretty much solves the problem of impersonation. For example, developers use the “bsky.team” domain instead of “bsky.social” and Jay Graber, the company’s CEO, uses his own web domain. It is suitable both for users who want to choose their name and forget about everything else, and for those who want more control.

Content is available globally and can be read from any domain, unlike Mastodon which can only be searched within an instance or if you are specifically following a different user in another instance. This is noticeable in the search, which, although it only shows 30 results at the moment, works like Twitter.

Beneficial decentralization for everyone

The protocol allows the user to choose what to watch and what not to watch, as well as how to organize and select the posts they see on their page. feed unlike Twitter, which is what Elon Musk wants, or Mastodon, which depends on what third-party clients do at best. At the moment, the feed is only chronological and global algorithmic., but in the future it will be possible to program plugins that select tweets to mute and the priority you want them to be displayed. There will be a store for them and they will be transparent so the user can prioritize browsing things that make them happy rather than constantly being exposed to controversial or outrageous content.

The same will happen with moderation, which, in addition to being controlled by the company in serious cases, will be controlled by the user. You can now choose whether to watch content that is sexual, violent, promotional, or spam, or content that may come from political groups involved in incitement to hatred and unrest. In the future, using algorithms, maybe i can silence myself feed all football tweets or about politics without having to constantly add mute keywords, like on Twitter, or just sort them by priority, choosing a list of users or important topics.

The Best of Twitter and Mastodon

I feel that Bluesky is easier to understand and use than Mastodon because it works like Twitter, but with the necessary decentralization to avoid its problems and give the user more options.

The only problem is that this is a third competing network, and if it was already difficult for Twitter users to switch to Mastodon, it will be even more difficult for them to switch to Bluesky, even if the experience is more similar. for now the app does not reach beta versionand i miss all the users i follow daily on twitter but from the first moment i liked it better than mastodon and thats all i ever wanted twitter to be.