loading . . . People Are Still Very Angry the Fediverse Exists Nevermind the title of this post. I couldnât think of anything catchy, or witty, mostly because Iâm running on the five hours of sleep my brain allowed me to have, and Iâm jittery with the excitement of finally getting some real time off from work ⦠after tomorrow night, when I work my one shift for the next week and a half. That aside, every so often I log onto my PDS, and I search up âmastodonâ in order to see what people are saying about the Fediverse (because people on other social sites use âmastodonâ as short-hand for the _entire_ Fediverse), and while I do believe many have begun moving over, there are some people out there who donât quite understand that things have changed since 2016.
Meanwhile, on Bluesky, weâve had continued enshitification, its CEO having a meltdown for days at a time, and now with thirty or more US government accounts moving to the platform in order to ⦠troll people? And couple this with the fact that, in order to _actually become_ independent on Bluesky, and enact _real_ decentralization, you not only need to host a PDS, and you not only need to host a relay, but you _also_ need to host an appview, among other things Iâm probably still unaware of, that are all exceedingly more expensive (when bundled together) than launching a Fediverse app for 10 bucks.
Itâs becoming pretty apparent that Jay Bsky doesnât want you on her platform, and yet, whenever I search up âmastodonâ _on_ Bluesky, these are the kinds of things I see from the very people its CEO doesnât want around anymore:
with more greatest hits, like,
or the continued lateral gaslighting, where people convince themselves that things that were problems, or not implemented, five years ago, are still things that arenât working:
So, anyway, I wanted to write this post in order to dispell some misconceptions about the Fediverse, because people shouldnât be operating on assumptions they made in 2016 when the only name you knew was âMastodon.â
First and foremost, in regard to the final screenshot: Yes, Mastodon, and other software on the Fediverse, _do_ have indexed search. This started being implemented around 2023, and it works pretty well. Other apps donât yet have it, such as GoToSocial, where this is a feature, rather than a bug. Because GTS is more about privacy and sustainability (as in, you can run a GTS instance on a very cheap server and use almost no resources to publish to the Fediverse).
But, I believe the aforementioned belief is also a symptom of simply not knowing that Mastodon is only _one_ piece of software across a protocol that has existed since at least 2008 (StatusNet).
Or that people take what they believe from others in their social circles, and then that continues until that circle becomes bigger, and suddenly you have swaths of people saying things like, âMastodon? I thought there were only 5 people there!â Kind of like how a studio releases a new game, and two influencers say that it sucks nards without ever having played it, and then their fans and followers take them at their word and suddenly half the internet is going, âYeah, I think Bobblefarts 10 sucks, I mean, @jinglenuts said so, and I trust him!â
But, okay, okay, here are some things Iâve seen people complain about, that actually arenât issues anymore:
* 1: Thereâs no indexed search!
As mentioned above, this was implemented on Mastodon in 2023, and other software, such as Misskey, and even Pleroma (I think?)
* 2: The Fediverse is all tech nerds and nobody else!
I would beg to differ, especially with all the LGBTQ+ and queer instances out there, the art instances, the cyberpunk instances, the instances where people are all doing their best dril impressions, the single-user instances where one person is just posting whatever comes into their brains, and so and so forth!
There are far too many to name off the top of my head, but you can try out my Discover Fedi app for yourself (still in a pre-release stage) at discoverfedi.app.
Also, I thought we, as a society, had moved past being antagonistic about ânerds?â
* 3: Thereâs nobody on âMastodonâ (the Fediverse)
Right, so â¦
(sourced from the Friendica instance itâs hosted on, here)
Meanwhile:
(sourced from bluefacts.app)
So, by and large, Bluesky still has more daily active users than the Fediverse, but that number is decreasing. On the flipside, the Fediverse is inching closer to its milestone of twenty million registered users, and nearly a million daily active users.
Suffice to say, there are people on âMastodon,â and at this rate, itâll eventually eclipse Bluesky.
* 4: âMastodonâ is as complicated as installing Linux!
It really isnât. Iâve said it before, but, if you can install Discord, create a username, and search for servers, read their rules, _agree to those rules_ , and get through their onboarding processes, that are _different on every server_ , you can join a âMastodonâ instance just fine. The important thing being, that you _really do_ need to make sure the server youâre looking at _has_ rules, and that theyâre _good rules_. Take five minutes out of your day. I promise it wonât hurt.
Also, installing Linux isnât hard. Try Debian.
* 5: Mastodon is the only app!
This isnât really something Iâve seen people say, but more something I feel people outside of the Fedi believe.
To side-step having to list everything a second time, hereâs a page I wrote a while back listing different ways that you can access the Fediverse.
* 6: Itâs too hard to follow people!
This one is kind of true, but also kind of not true. _Finding_ people you already know _from other platforms_ may be difficult, if you donât have any way to contact them in order to ask for their handles, but if you _know_ someoneâs handle, you can follow them easy-peasy. So, letâs say your friendâs Fediverse handle is @[email protected], all youâd have to do is copy/paste that into the search bar of, say, Mastodon, and blamo, their account shows up, you click it, hit follow, and youâre done.
Now, obviously, this can be _slightly_ harder if an instance is defederating ânukearasaka.fuckyouâ but this is also something people are working on. Currently, Mastodon gives notifications that an instance is being blocked, and how you might be affected by that.
If you donât like that the server youâre on is blocking another server youâre interested in following people on â¦
* 7: Itâs too hard to move accounts!
You can move, and itâs actually not as complicated as you might think. In account settings on the server youâre moving away from, and the one youâre moving to, you just have to input the handles of the opposite accounts as an alias, and then click âmoveâ on the instance youâre moving away from. While your posts wonât follow you, your followers will. You can also export follows, blocks, mutes, lists, and your entire archive (your posts, even if thereâs no current way to import them).
This may be different than Bluesky, where you simply supply an invite code, and click the move button in order to migrate to another PDS, but _there are hardly any Bluesky PDSâs to move to_ , and tools for migration arenât that easy to find, because they _arenât built-in to the appview_.
So, Iâd say that moving on the Fediverse _can_ be a little complicated, but itâs actually _much more complicated_ on Bluesky.
* 8: I just want to logon and post and not think about anything
And thatâs fine! You do you! I just think itâs currently _very_ important to consider _where_ youâre posting. _Who_ youâre giving your data and even identity information to. Sure, maybe this is something regular average people donât think about, **but they should**. Jay Graber has gone so far as to take money from crypto-bros, to inviting fascists to her platform _while_ actively trolling marginalized people, and some think itâs still relevant to say things like this?
I mean, I donât think it was _ever_ relevant, but I also donât take my ideas about things from other people who took their ideas from other people who took their ideas from other people who took the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is n https://mkultra.monster/social-media/2025/10/21/mastodon-and-the-fedi/
