Replies: 23 comments 22 replies
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As someone who does a lot (and has done a lot) on these platforms and depends on them fairly heavily so has already considered this question in that context; this makes sense to me. |
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As an open source maintainer who actively uses both Mastodon and BlueSky, I definitely agree about decommissioning at least Twitter. Regarding Mastodon, I think you might underestimate the reach and engagement you’re really getting from Mastodon? My experience since moving to BlueSky more seriously has been positive, but I have had a very frustrating time when it comes to engagement on open source and other technical topics. Mastodon is, heavily, an open source community and has a lot of conversations very much centered around these things. i find technical conversations, discussions about open source libraries and tooling, and other such interests to be largely missing from my BlueSky feed EVEN THOUGH I follow many of the same people there. It’s as if no one wants to talk about it there. Meanwhile, Mastodon, while missing things like BlueSky’s Feeds feature, has communities like hachyderm, fosstodon, and various game dev instances, which are very active and most certainly discuss topics like Bevy. I don’t really know what it is about BlueSky that seems to make it so averse to crunchier foss stuff, but until more folks are willing to and interested in talking about this stuff on there, I personally can’t see myself relying solely on BSky, and I don’t think it would be beneficial for Bevy to do so either. like seriously, the amount of engagement I get with any open source post on Mastodon is significant. I will post literally the same thing on BlueSky and it’s just crickets EDIT: I want to add that, perhaps, going “where everyone is” may not be as useful as being where the people who actually use your thing are. EDIT 2: Just to be clear that I’m not some rando, this does include my experiences with engagement when it comes to things like https://crates.io/crates/big-brain, which I maintain. I would simply not expect folks on BSky to give me the time of day about it at this point. It’s been very frustrating. |
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This is a worthwhile point.
As someone who sifts through every post with the #bevy and #bevyengine hashtag on Mastodon, I think I have a pretty accurate understanding of the reach. A couple of days ago I did a numbers breakdown of "Bevy content deemed worthy of reposting by official Bevy accounts" over a 10 day period: Bluesky: 18 posts Bluesky has the most activity by a wide margin, at least within the context of the existing Bevy community. Of course what probably matters the most to Bevy app developers is "which platform has the most potential reach". That is a harder question to answer, but I suspect Bluesky is still probably the better bet (both for fundamental technical reasons mentioned above and for "population reasons"). |
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But I will definitely concede that there is a strong and healthy technical community on Mastodon (that I have enjoyed being a part of). I just think it is worth drawing a hard line here (for the reasons stated above). If I have to choose one platform, Bluesky is the easy pick. |
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Yeah tbh. At this point if you forced me to pick one I would just go with bsky at this point. I probably would have if I were able to have more technical conversations there, but at the very least, most game devs and artists seem to have chosen it as their next thing, not Fedi |
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Part of the reason Bluesky might lack technical discussions could well be the 300 character limit. I recently switched Mastodon instances mainly because i wanted a longer limit: 2000 instead of 1000 characters. I feel like any technical discussion will need enough characters to actually elaborate on things, and 300 is barely enough for a short summary as can be seen in the (recent, first) merge train on bluesky. I know for a fact that i would rather not respond with technical details at all if i'm limited to 300 characters or have to constantly split up my posts... IMO this very low limit is a pretty big argument against bluesky |
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If you migrate to Bluesky, you could create lists and custom feeds for bevy engine contributors, and another for game developers to post to with hash tags and such. Could help not just bevy itself have reach, but games made on bevy have reach as well. |
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Its worth calling out that we are already on Bluesky and there are already things in this category! |
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Strongly agree on moving off of X. It's no longer a place I'm comfortable, nor is it one I am willing to support. I've enjoyed my time on Mastodon, and will likely continue casually engaging there! It feels... cozy? But it's also cantankerous and confusing, and fundamentally doesn't seem like it's ever going to be the right place for building an audience. That's okay: not every site needs to be everything to everyone, and many of the Mastodon users view that as a feature. But for what Bevy is trying to do (grow an audience, communicate with active users, show that we're a positive force in the ecosystem as a whole), Bluesky feels like the right move if we're going to consolidate. And the arguments for (mostly) consolidating are strong. I'm likely to keep hanging out on Mastodon in a personal capacity and chatting there, but I'll move my merge train (and other Bevy-centric posts) over there. |
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I generally just follow your merge train posts when I see the shotuout from @ChristopherBiscardi weekly youtube videos. I am generally in favour of decentralization, especially technology that is supporting it. But I must say that I noticed that the usually amazing posts you do felt a little artifical this time? If I have to guess it could very well be because of the 300 word limit and you actually having to compress your wordings and musing to make it work on the platform? I understand why bluesky is nice, but the 300 word limit just feels off. I read somewhere that there were more "repostable" posts on bluesky than the other platforms combined, but it kinda feels like im just scrolling headlines... just my 2 cents as a pretty passive observer :) |
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Yeah, not keen on the 300 character limit. If I keep doing this on Bluesky I think I'm going to do two posts for every item: there's a lot more context that I'd like to cover. |
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Bluesky seems to not really be decentralized, if that is a concern: |
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This is a nuanced discussion. It is worth reading this response from the Bluesky folks and this response from Dusty. |
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Not really nuanced on the topic of decentralization itself. It is straight forward. |
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But almost every open source project is on mastodon Godot, blender, even Rust https://social.rust-lang.org/@rust I understand if you are a journalist or something that you need a platform where a lot of normal people is But Bevy is an open source for programmers and game developers. I think it makes a thousand times sense that it is in Mastodon. I mean, mastodon is mainly for programmers (its for everyone but its full of programmers), its for open source projects ("), and its for game developers (this is not exactly true) Anyways, as someone who left all other social platforms (for personal reasons) and still uses Mastodon because its libre, knowing that Bevy leaves is like it leaves the only libre platform. And it doesn't need to be Mastodon, you can have an account on pixelfed or other fediverse app And it doesn't need to be exclusive, i thinl its not that much work being in Mastodon and Blusky, its almost the same thing and you can just publish the same things in both But that's it, in summary, i think mastodon is a good place that deserves good open source projects |
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Godot is also on Bluesky, and it notably has ~32,000 followers there (12,000 more than on mastodon). Blender is on Bluesky. It has 4,800 followers compared to 15,000 on mastodon. However Blender has only been on Bluesky for 3 months, whereas it has been on Mastodon since 2018! There is no denying that there is a strong open source presence on mastodon, but it is also hard to deny the rising tide of people on Bluesky. |
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I think followers count might not be a good metric for mastodon. I don’t have any statistics but my guess is that a significant number of users rely mostly on hashtags to get their content, instead of following. And the way this feature works does not require any more engagement like re-tooting, which I deeply appreciate but also means invisible engagement from me. |
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Is it too much work to post on both platforms? (please don't read this in a rude tone, I really ask the question) Because it seems to me that it is not too hard and you could have interaction between the two worlds, mastodon users who are not on blusky, and blusky users who are not on mastodon, and since both are open source, you can make (I imagine it already exists) a script to publish on both at the same time. |
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I say use an app like OpenVibe to post on mastodon and bluesky at the same time. |
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"Bluesky supports quotes in reposts. This is likely coming soon on Mastodon, but the fact that it has been missing for so long is another indicator that Mastodon isn't prioritizing what a lot of people want from their social network." Not true, the lead dev has stated that implementing it just isn't simple: More importantly, for as long as BlueSky isn't actually decentralized and federated, I would strongly recommend also supporting Mastodon as the only real such alternative. I don't expect this to change any time soon either. Dropping X is a no-brainer. |
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That post also calls out the history of them explicitly not supporting quote tweets initially for ideological reasons (I like their motivation, but I don't agree with that choice). Only recently has the tide changed (in 2023, which that post calls out).
I do agree that a true multi-instance world would be healthier, but Bluesky's architecture already lends itself to protecting against bad actors. In the event of a rug pull, people's messages and identities are already portable through the AT protocol (especially if you are using a DNS identity). |
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@cart but with the way atprotocol is currently it would require millions of funding to run the backend that would let you move. There's not a single other server running the atprotocol backend currently while mastodon has thousands. I really hope bevy continues posting on both using OpenVibe or the bridge |
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Please don’t drop Mastodon. I believe some people who are working with Bevy are on Mastodon exclusively for various reasons. |
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Glad to see you’re dropping Twitter. Sad that you don’t want to keep doing Mastodon. Fairly sure you’ll be backing off BlueSky for the same reason as Twitter within a year or two; it’s not meaningfully federated, which means the US government and other bad actors can apply pressure, and it is controlled by venture capital, which means it’ll be expected to monetize (and thereby enshittify). For me, Mastodon (on your own domain) remains the clear moral & future proof choice. I understand why you want BlueSky now, I just weight the current size of the audience lower than the “doing the right thing”. |
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To be brutally honest, if you're concerned about Bevy using BlueSky over Mastodon, you should be far more concerned about using Discord for development instead of something like Matrix. The goal of the Bevy social media accounts is marketing and PR, not socialisation. The platform with the most users (that isn't otherwise objectionable) just makes more sense to put effort into. I'm sure the plan isn't to delete the Bevy Mastodon account, just to stop wasting time cross-posting and maintaining presence on so many platforms. If one day BlueSky pulls the rug and we're having this discussion again, the very robustness of Mastodon mean it should still be available in the future to fall back on. I can all but guarantee that if that was to happen Mastodon would take off. But I doubt that will happen, and for the near term, the reach on BlueSky is just much better. |
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I love the Matrix project, but it is not (yet) a viable replacement for Discord from my perspective, in terms of either user experience or critical mass. I also consider Discord to be considerably less "existentially risky" because people (generally) don't build their livelihoods around their Discord identity. Discord is just the place where we show up every day. If the rug is pulled, we can just show up somewhere else.
There is no denying that Mastodon is currently practically more robust to instance-rug-pulls than Bluesky (a robust federated infrastructure with countless instances and a non-profit structure). However the AT Protocol is explicitly designed to protect against rug pulling behavior. In many ways, it is more resilient (identities can be decoupled from instances with DNS, messages are cryptographically tied to identities rather than to instance provenance). Combine that with an open source frontend and backend and an open protocol, and I think there are very good reasons to consider it a safe bet. |
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As long as there is no working alternative with all bells and whistles that is no more than wishful thinking IMO. It has been years and nothing of that sort has ever materialized. Where can I join Bluesky besides Bluesky? |
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Matrix will never be a viable replacement for Discord, that's just isn't something Matrix wants to be. You gotta look at something like Zulip for that. Which has an extra benifit of being publicly readable and searchable from the outside internet, unlike Discord. |
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I've tried on 3 separate occasions to ask something on Matrix about |
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I am only on Mastodon, so I am obviously biased. But when I hear people from minorities talking, they overwhelmingly prefer to be on Mastodon, because they feel much safer there. The general sentiment is that Bsky is just the same thing as Twitter and it will go downhill the same way, because it is funded by nearly the same people and governed by the same laws. If you value reach more than safety, because you want to reach more potential donors, that is understandable, but longterm it might not be the safest option. I think dropping X is a must, but keeping Fedi would be prudent. If only in an automated unmonitored capacity. |
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Just as another data point, I definitely see queer and lefty peers feeling more comfortable on Mastodon, but I've heard that the opposite is true for people of color. This thread by Mekka Okereke does a good job of the problems faced there, especially for new users. I've personally found BlueSky's moderation much more consistent and much more customizable, but everyone will have their own opinions and preferences. P.S. I don't expect we'll be fully closing down either the Mastodon or even the X account. Part of that is to hedge bets, but much of it is to avoid impersonation. |
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If you are planning on posting only on Bluesky / Mastodon, why not using something like https://fed.brid.gy/ to not remove the burden of cross-posting while staying on both platforms ? |
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(mastodon user here, that loved the bevy train posts) About your points
On mastodon, you can follow hashtag, which help reach (and, of course you can search them, for discoverability)
You can verify the ownership of an account to tie it to a domain or a specific URL: https://joinmastodon.org/verification And you can also self-host a mastodon instance (but I don't think it worth if for such a small organization)
https://joinmastodon.org/ now promote "mastodon.social" to facilitate the onboarding process, so it is now similar to Bluesky AlternativesLong posts (such as bevy trains) could be poster on the blog (or a subpart of it, or a "small news feed", on https://bevyengine.org/), and that could be shared on both social media. It could even use RSS and an Activity pub aware publishing platform to improve integration with other tools. |
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As a Mastodon user, I actually didn't know about hashtags like 1 year after using it, and rely a lot on what people retoot. I think retooting gives a lot of visibility. |
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While this is completely true, the demographic that is deterred from joining Mastodon by its overt "techyness" is also the demographic that is least likely to be interested in Bevy. |
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I don’t agree: there are a lot of people that are more than fine with authoring little games (even more with the incoming editor) with little-but-good-enough-Rust knowledge, but are not at ease with the work of understanding all the consequences of choosing a Mastodon instance rather than another one (especially when some instances are doing blanket bans / are limiting visibility of other instances, not showing replies coming from some instances, etc.). |
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I have to say I don't agree with this either. As a tech person I am somewhat put off by the techyness of getting on the platform. It is cognitive load I do not wish use. I think there are great opportunities to engage with non-tech people in the bsky sphere. |
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I understand that supporting multiple platforms is challenging for the Bevy team. However, I'm afraid that this will cut out most of the current Mastodon audience because they won't migrate to Bluesky (me included). Is there any chance Bevy could support both Bluesky and Mastodon? |
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I don't think you can tell community where to exist (and by extension where not to exist), it doesn't work like that. What you can do is pick where the official Bevy activity happens, and if people find it valuable and want to engage with it they will join in. Lead by example :) tbh this whole discussion could have been a succinct post on the 3 current platforms along the lines of "Bevy will be focusing future social media effort on Bluesky due to team, platform, and engagement reasons. If you'd like to interact with the official accounts including retweeting you're encouraged to join us there." That would be 100% acceptable, and expected for a small team, especially if it's where you're seeing the most activity. |
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This line in particular has rubbed me the wrong way about all this. Will this mean also abandoning r/bevy and not posting about releases on r/rust anymore? @cart is the de facto BDFL of the project, and they're effectively telling the community not to post about bevy anywhere else and to go out of their way to sign up on a new platform just for them and only engage socially there? That's just ... not okay. I absolutely get not wanting to spend the maintainers time and effort on multiple platforms which would be better spent on coding, or reviewing, or other outreach activities. If putting the Mastodon account into hibernation solves that problem for them then 👍. |
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100% behind this choice, essentially everyone who made Twitter what it was to me has already moved to BlueSky. Mastodon is fine, but nobody in my life adopted it, so I just ended up not using it. The content I'm subjected to on X makes me feel very uncomfortable (I'm being generous with my wording here - it's bad, real bad), so I've simply not been on there. Very happy to see this development. |
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I'm not sure how i should understand what this all means? The only concrete step so far seems to be stopping official posts/reposts from the X and Mastodon Bevy accounts. Are you going to stop all activity on X and Mastodon or just some? Will you purposefully avoid setting up a bridge from Bluesky to Mastodon? Will X/Mastodon links be removed from the bevyengine site, for example https://bevyengine.org/community/people/ ? Will you force people who are paid by the Bevy Foundation to use no other platform than Bluesky for any "official" posts? (To be clear: i'm using "you" for the bevy leadership, not cart individually) In which ways, if at all, are you planning to encourage people in the community to move to Bluesky? I'll admit, i'm worried that this kind of "we should all switch" mentality could have a negative impact on the community as a whole, leading to some community members nagging those who don't want to switch. I almost wish there never was a post this public/big, and X and Mastodon presence were just reduced over time, but that might just be paranoia talking. |
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I'm sad to see you leave mastodon! I'll definitely be staying over there since nature is healing on mastodon 🌱 On the other hand I also don't want to argue against the move to bsky. "Never hold up travelers" as they say. Good luck with your new social media strategy! /gen |
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If your goal was merely reach and engagement, which it would be if you were truly nonpartisan, then it would obviously be worth the extra 5 seconds is takes to re-post the same exact content on all three platforms. The time budget you spent on this could have funded reposting for the next 10 years or more. In any case, I volunteer to do the reposting on X and Mastadon for you if it's truly such a waste of your time. And - reposting content for greater reach is not a "liability" to anyone, it is pure benefit to your potential users. |
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I think @tbillington has a decent point here, the community will be the community where ever that is. But from an offical point of view it's fair to say that being present and activity on N platforms is not ideal. Cross posting announcements can be easily done with software (when excluding X/twitter) so there is reason enough to ditch the platform. My personal take is choosing to be active on bsky is a good idea, I feel the platform is growing, mastodon feels like a forum often more than a feed. |
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The maintainers and I have been discussing consolidating our "microblogging social media presence". The current state of affairs is that we have an X account (previously known as Twitter), a Mastodon account, and a Bluesky account.
On these accounts we post official project announcements and repost curated community content.
We have largely agreed that it is in our best interest and the community's best interest if we consolidate under one account on one platform:
From my perspective, a federated and open platform is table stakes. The way the Twitter/X situation has played out over the years (under both owners) should be enough to convince anyone of that, regardless of their political alignment. A social platform that can change hands at any time that is subject to the whims (investor pressure, profit motive, political agendas) of whoever happens to own it at the time is a liability for everyone on that platform. In the modern world your online audience is often directly tied to your livelihood. Online communities are how we share information, discover what is happening, and mobilize. No individual or company should be able to take that from us. This is a fundamental human rights issue that everyone on the planet should be able to agree on.
X is neither federated nor open, which means we can take it out of the running. That leaves Bluesky and Mastodon. Both are federated and open (Mastodon via ActivityPub and Bluesky via the AT Protocol). However I strongly believe that Bluesky is the better choice:
Mastodon is a wonderful community of people and a wonderful platform. I have enjoyed my time there immensely. It has provided a welcome respite from some of the darker aspects of the social media landscape. For awhile it was our best and only hope for a federated internet. Sadly, for very good, predictable reasons that many of us have been calling out for years, it has tangibly lost to Bluesky at a pivotal moment where the world needs a federated social platform.
We need to make sure that the current wave of social media migrants stays on a federated platform and doesn't go back to a proprietary centralized big-tech hellscape (or one that could easily become one at any moment). The world needs a common, fair, decentralized place to communicate. To do that, we need to be where everyone else is. By splitting up, we are competing against ourselves in what is already an uphill battle. The people are on Bluesky. And for the reasons above I think they should be on Bluesky. Therefore we should be there too, en masse. And I will assert that we should encourage our friends to do the same.
For this reason, I am (strongly) proposing that we decomission Bevy's official X and Mastodon accounts and embrace Bluesky as our one official "microblogging platform". I am also proposing that the Bevy community as a whole moves its social presence to Bluesky. There is significant value in the Bevy community having a single unified place to share our creations and discuss them with each other. The current "three platforms" state of affairs puts arbitrary walls between us and increases the overhead for creators that just want a community to create with.
I'm doing this post first to hear counterarguments from the community. While it is our job to make these types of calls on the community's behalf, it is also our job to be representative of its wants and needs. Feel free to leave your thoughts below.
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