Bluesky has a higher total user count. I think the number of active users might be higher too, but I am not sure what's mastodon's definition of an active user for the second link above. Anecdotally, Bluesky feels more lively for me because that seem to be the default destination for Twitter refugees.
The distinction is that Mastodon doesn't have to grow, and Bluesky does. There's an extent to which Bluesky is viable because its venture-funded owner pays for the infrastructure it operates on (Mastodon communities generally have to stand on their own two feet). If there's no path for Bluesky to grow into a viable business on its current financial runway, the funding for the infrastructure will end.
I imagine the ATProto infrastructure would survive. Declining activity would be bad for BlueSky, but running a firehose is not that expensive. Many people could fund it themselves. Also, it would get cheaper to run as traffic declines.
Also, the firehose is not strictly necessary either if you’re willing to give up seeing replies from anyone, anywhere and just see the feeds you subscribe to, like an RSS reader.
The hard part is moderation and keeping up with changes in regulations, not the infrastructure itself. Also, continued funding for new development is good. I’m interested in seeing what the permissioned data proposal [1] turns into.
ATProto infrastructure is mostly open and there are folks operating pieces of it independently even if the landscape is dominated by the Bluesky PBC. It's true that Mastodon grew bottom-up without centralized funding so the shuttering of the PBC will be a big deal for the AT ecosystem but it's all independently doable.
It also feels like people running ActivityPub instances are in it for "the culture", it's grass roots, moxie, free, hacker, whatever. ATProto doesn't have the same vibe.
Mastodon isn't trying to compete anyway, it's not a Product(tm) driven by desire for profits, so the people who use it don't care if it "wins" or becomes more popular than whatever other platform. We're all just hanging out socializing and stuff, sharing neat things and discussing things like communities do. It's not easy to accurately estimate active Mastodon/Fediverse users, but then again, I'm not sure anyone really cares either way? lol
I've never been a fan of the "Product driven by desire for profits" line because it simplifies too much into too little imo. The reason people like scale is that it brings a diverse set of interests. For better or for worse, most Mastodon servers I've seen have a pretty similar set of interests. They're really the same constellation of interests I've seen heavily represented on internet forums since the late '90s. There's nothing wrong with that, but between IRC, web blogs, web forums, Reddit, HN, Discords, and conventional social media, I don't think you'll find a shortage of folks interested in those topics.
Meanwhile there's a lot of topics where a critical mass of fans only really exists on Big Tech Social Media and maybe the occasional subject subreddit. The hope of an open platform at scale is to expose those niche interests to open infrastructure.
That also is intentional. You join a server that suits your interests and follow people from other servers to broaden your feed. The goal is to form interlinked communities
Notably, Mastodon servers are genuinely independent servers. The federated experience is third-class. The same-server experience is first-class. It's not trying and hasn't succeeded to build one giant interlinked network the way BGP has for IP addresses.
I'd love to see similar plots after you remove the primary servers in each! To give you a rough idea: 78% of the people I follow on Mastodon are not on the primary instance, and over 80% of my followers are not either.
> Anecdotally, Bluesky feels more lively for me because that seem to be the default destination for Twitter refugees.
It likely is the default of Twitter refugees, but as a Mastodon user none of this is relevant to me! I don't care how many more users a network has, as long as the one I'm on has a healthy number. Very few of the people I follow are likely to leave Mastodon.
I have an account, but nothing draws me back. Classic Twitter had value from really being the "town square." Notable figures (politicians, celebrities, business leaders) were on Twitter and shared their thoughts directly, no PR team.
Of course we were naïve--verified accounts had their own system so they didn't need to interact with us plebs. But in the pre-LLM, pre-bot farm, pre-social media team era, Twitter still represented a genuine public commons. Obama got elected in 2008 due to grassroots activism via social media. Trump got elected through concerted social media manipulation informed by Cambridge Analytica. No matter your political persuasion and opinion on the outcome, the differing methods demonstrate how fundamentally Twitter changed in the interim.
I feel like Bluesky is closest to that original Twitter, except stripped of the notable and influential public sphere. Like if all I wanted to do was interact with my knitting and basket weaving peeps, it's perfect. But Twitter is where the Osama bin Ladin assassination was unwittingly live-tweeted by some guy in Abbottabad. "I get my news from social media" is a negative thing today, implying you are fully captured by the algorithm and manipulated by the people that run bot farm. "I get my news from Twitter" used to mean that you were very well informed and knew what was going on before even the 24/7 news networks. That's not going to happen on Bluesky.
Bluesky is built on the open ATProto federation protocol just like Mastodon is built on ActivityPub, why do you think one is not open source or decentralized?
I am on several socials, personally I like the crowd on Mastodon the best but they all have their charms. I mean friends, furs, family, people I take street photos of, local radio personalities and people who look up to my character can be found in many places.
Blue Sky has 'enough' for me. I don't care if it's the biggest platform. It's got local elected officials, it's got bike racing content and people, it's got software people, and by using it I'm not supporting the white nationalist owner of Twitter, so I'm happy with it. I occasionally post a bit to Threads when I need some more 'reach'.
On Mastodon, I following hashtags instead of people, which is great because I quickly found lots of interesting things to see and instead of seeing everything those people post, I only see things they post that is a topic I care about.
Just look at the total post stat. It's declining. I don't know if it means total daily or total in past x days, or actual cumulative total, but I don't think it's supposed to be that flat.
That seems like comparing apples to oranges. I switched to Mastodon in order to avoid the inevitable enshittification of every service that has anything to do with a corporate entity. I learned my lesson and I am not about to repeat it. And having spent considerable time on Mastodon now, I'm quite happy with the value I'm getting from it and the people I follow. I do not need everybody in the world to be on it. In fact, I actually prefer that many people not be on it.
I don't know what you're seeing in those stats. Bluesky has been shedding users since the inauguration. Mastodon is virtually a hobby project consisting of private servers that could run indefinitely as long as somebody finds it useful for communication in their community.
Neither have any shot of being a twitter replacement. Bluesky has a culture problem and a dishonesty about being p2p problem, and mastodon is too slow/heavy and has a mod problem that is intolerable without a better story about user mobility between servers.
Twitter may just die by itself if somehow a better way for people to publicize their work comes into existence, but all traditional means have been rolled up into big opinionated gatekeeping conglomerates who simply ignore things that compete with any of their interests or threaten any of their advertisers or owners. But even if twitter dies, people aren't moving to bluesky or mastodon.
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
https://mastodon-analytics.com/
Bluesky has a higher total user count. I think the number of active users might be higher too, but I am not sure what's mastodon's definition of an active user for the second link above. Anecdotally, Bluesky feels more lively for me because that seem to be the default destination for Twitter refugees.