After about twelve hours, the same post had received more than 300 shares and likes on Mastodon, while it had only been shared three times and liked four times on BlueSky.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@CarineMissiaen welcome Carine!

Quick question: what are you using to browse Mastodon? Which OS are you on?

For desktop computers I would recommend https://Phanpy.social (its Catch Up feature is the best of any web client across all social media IMHO).

On iOS I use @ivory - who used the make the excellent Tweetbot and the experience is similar.

Feel free to reach out if you need any help!

@everton137

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@ticho fair but the lack of engagement on Bluesky is truly shocking. Casey Newton has 250k followers there and when he shares one of his articles he may get something like 15 boosts (like, the latest article he shared). Yes 15, not 150.

I got 400 boosts on Mastodon the last time I shared a link.

I had a Bluesky account with 1.1k followers and zero interactions. Ditto for Fedi friends who have 6k followers there.

It's a thing.

@everton137

[ticho@mas.to]

@_elena @everton137 Maybe Bluesky has a completely different "usage culture"

More passive consumption and less interaction.

More uni-directional broadcasting from "content creators" to "consumers", and less conversation?

But hm, that would explain fewer replies, but probably not fewer reposts and likes.

Being no expert, it really seems very strange. Maybe Bluesky is just dead and full of bot squads which only allow certain kinds of messaging to go viral? I hope not!

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@ticho I think it replicates a lot of the toxic ways of Twitter, so popular posts are typically those that induce rage. Accounts that post about US politics have A LOT of interactions

@everton137

[bobvanos@mastodon.nl]

@everton137
I'm no expert. But could it be a difference between a platform that uses an algorithm and one that doesn't?

[theowashere@mastodon.social]

@everton137
I get no shares or likes on either lol

[gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de]

@_elena This! Bluesky in it's history was exactly designed as Dorsey's Twitter was. It it wasn't for Musk then Twitter would have been what Bluesky (the app) is today.

CC: @ticho @everton137

[klappspatack@troet.cafe]

@CarineMissiaen @everton137 Howdy . Here is "Mastodon in 180 seconds". A very good explanation on what is different here. And it gives a good guide on how to start

Mastodon in 180 Seconds 🐘

Lately, everyone seems to be trying to jump ship from Twitter to this new thing called "Mastodon". But when they do it, the first thing many of them say is "I don't get Mastodon. How does it work?"...

TILvids (tilvids.com)

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@thomas_klopf @everton137

i'ts not possible for me to disagree with you more

essentially what you are doing is surrendering the mass of society to plutocrat manipulation and control

of course we don't want bigots here. and moderation will nuke them

but otherwise we want as many people as possible on mastodon

and frankly, if you disagree, you are foolish

are you really happy with the great mass of your society under the algorithmic control of musk and zuckerberg?

[gabboman@gabboman.xyz]

The post is good for mastodon but sucks for bluesky.

I have posts that explode on bsky and bomb on the mastodon side. And I say same post literaly

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@engel @everton137

yes

because you are also saying then that you are happy with the great mass of your society under the algorithmic control of musk and zuckerberg

are you really happy with that idea?

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@gelbphoenix @ticho @everton137

[everton137@social.vivaldi.net]

@gabboman may you share an example to have an idea what bomb on BlueSky?

[eminrahmanov@mastodon.social]

@everton137

[knowprose@mastodon.social]

@everton137 the metrics are part of the problem.

The web 2.0 era metrics are ubiquitous, and quantitative. And, on centralized platforms, are gamed at first by people run bots, now by ai bots.

And algorithms.

I don't know how bluesky curates content.
On mastodon, I do my own curation and dip in the fediverse often.

Because I am interested in quality, not quantity.

That is a human thing. Because something is popular does not mean it is right or good.

[gf493d@theforkiverse.com]

@everton137 The fun police make #mastodon pretty much #unusable for most plp. Commenting on anything can soon become a micro #aggregation or insert (offence taken). Nothing gains mass adoption under those circumstances. #commenting become pointless. #ironic #HurtyMcFeelz

[carinemissiaen@mastodon-belgium.be]

@_elena @ivory @everton137

I'm still using Google. I am used to it. Ant my laptop has Windows. Seldom using a celphone. Only when I don't have a pc in reach.

[sibshops@mastodon.online]

@everton137 There are some topics which seem to do super well on Mastodon and not so much on BlueSky.

AI is another topic that does well on mastodon, but not so much on other social media.

[rentalassistance434654@mstdn.party]

@everton137 https://findyourhouse.godaddysites.com/

[vosje62@mastodon.nl]

@everton137 @McWabbit and on my timeline Mastodon is growing pretty steady.
For years I use the global number of notifications/day as indicator.
Where early 2025 it was around 100 on a good day, later it was 100 on average and begin 2026 many days 130-150.

(Numbers only say much about the posts itself. It is the interaction on the post that count and have a wide range per post.)