loading . . . Look, just fucking use Mastodon already Oh, Bluesky is getting a little shitty, you say? Oh no! Who could have predicted Bluesky could ever have run that risk? I mean, apart from everyone warning us that it was launched by weirdo alt-right blockchain-shilling AI-loving shitbird Jack Dorsey, and that their current CEO came from a weirdo alt-right blockchain-shilling AI-loving shitbird background. You know. Besides them.
Now _quelle surprise,_ Bluesky CEO Jay Graberâs out there mocking people asking why they didnât ban Jesse Singal, everyoneâs favorite Just Asking Questions⢠Transphobe, for violating their terms of service. They say he _didnât_ violate the terms of service. Theyâre right, because they keep _changing_ the fucking terms of service. Youâre probably in violation right now, fucko. No? Surprise! Permaban! And weâre not even getting into them desperately suppressing people saying bad things about Charlie Kirkâyou know, awful, horrid things like quoting Kirkâs actual wordsâand cooperating with increasingly censorious governments.
And now, inevitably, half of my Bluesky timeline is like: _oh, we need a service thatâs resistant to this sort of shit, something thatâs not beholden to capitalist pressure, something thatâs queer-friendly and furry-friendly,_ quickly followed by _but donât say Mastodon!_
Sorry, Iâm saying it. **Mastodon.** We want fucking Mastodon. Itâs run by an actual non-profit foundation, none of this âpublic benefit corporationâ bullshit. Itâs not subject to corporate enshittification. Itâs not subject to creeping network-wide puritanism. Mastodon. Goddammit. Mastodon Mastodon Mastodon.
âNo. Choosing an instance is too hard!â Have you chosen an email provider, fuckers? Yes? Congratulations! You can pick an instance.
âBut how do I know that instance wonât implode in a giant cloud of drama?â You donât. It happens, and it sucks when it happens, but it doesnât happen all that often. Go find another instance.
âBut what if the instance Iâm on doesnât federate with the ones my friends are on, or they change their policies to be more puritanical, orââ _Go find another fucking instance._ This is not rocket surgery.
âBut if I move instances, Iâll lose my posts!â Yeah, youâll lose your posts. You know what you wonât lose? _Your entire group of followers._ You know, the way you lost them when you moved from fucking Twitter to fucking Bluesky. With fucking Mastodon, you donât have that problem.
âHaving to use content warnings is annoying.â I used to feel that way, too, but you know what? I fucking got over it. Yeah, if you get it wrong, people are going to yell at you. And you learn. Thatâs the way life fucking works. But listen: it turns out that content warnings are fucking _great._ I see a bunch of posts that say âus polâ or âtransphobiaâ or whatever, I get to decide if I have enough spoons for that right then, and take a pass if I donât. I fucking _wish_ Bluesky had that. You know what else I fucking wish Bluesky had that Mastodon did? Polls. And longer posts. And the ability to edit your posts. And awesome third-party mobile clients like Tusky and Ivory.
âBut Mastodon doesnât have quote posts.â It fucking does now. Next.
Is Mastodon perfect? Fuck, no! Mastodon has a history of blindness to anti-black harassment, and you can find instancesâwhoops, pun not fucking intendedâof every other kind of harassment on it. Mastodon is made of humans, and some humans are assholes. Sometimes the assholes are running Mastodon instances. Sometimes theyâre running _your_ instance and you donât know theyâre assholes, or they started out fine then became assholes. Sometimes theyâre running blocklists and trying to convince you that people who arenât assholes are the _real_ assholes. Mastodon will piss you off.
But breaking news: Bluesky will _also_ piss you off. Itâs pissing you off right now! Thereâs a key difference, though, and get ready for fucking buzzwords like âfederatedâ and âdecentralizedâ because, like it or not, they fucking matter.
See, what makes Mastodon less worse than something like Twitter or Bluesky or, god forbid, fucking Threads, is that it has escape hatches. You may not _like_ being told âgo find another instance,â but you _can_ go find another instance, _and that is fucking spectacular._ Twitter started going into the shitter even before Elon Seig Heil Musk painted a big âXâ on it with his dick, but did you all just say âsucks, man,â and fuck off to another Twitter instance? No! Why not? Because there _were_ no other fucking Twitter instances!
Yes, smartypants: technically, Blueskyâs âATProtoâ supports federation, too. But it supports federation the way a rope supports a hanged man. Iâm hoping the few attempts Iâve seen to pull it off work, I really amâBlacksky is promising, Iâm watching Northsky closely. But getting rid of all reliance on servers run by Bluesky, the company, is brutally difficult. While defenders say thatâs not by design, itâs a consequence of the way ATProto works, which means it is, definitionally, by fucking design.
So, look. Iâm not saying leave Bluesky right now, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. What Iâm saying is, start _playing_ with Mastodon, whether itâs for the first time or again. Find an instance you can tolerate. (If youâre reading this, youâre probably a furry, and we have our own fucking directory.) Find a client that doesnât suck. Figure out which of your friends are on Mastodon and follow them.
Because letâs be fucking honest: we need to stop pretending weâre not seeing fucking big red flashing warning signs on Bluesky. We can tell ourselves that itâs not going to enshittify, but we can also tell ourselves that weâre going to shit rainbows. There is only one single solitary social network whose design, in all its fucking fiddly, nerdy-ass glory, offers any protection from corporate enshittification. Sorry. One. Itâs fucking Mastodon. Just fucking join fucking Mastodon. Jesus.
Join Mastodon.
Fuck. https://giants-club.net/articles/just-use-mastodon/
