I thought this was an interesting read, but I don't necessarily like or agree with it.<p>I browse fediverse stuff occasionally, and mess around with single user instances for the technical fun, but I've never really had a mature mastodon account anywhere.<p>The reason why I occasionally browse mastodon is because the vast majority of content I consume online (alright, often from nerds) also list or have a mastodon profile. Sometimes it's not always up to date. But I see and use the mastodon profile links more reliably than I see and use Twitter ones now.<p>It clearly works. It's obviously not perfect. But I feel like the author is constantly judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree here. E.g.<p>> The most immediate problem is that you only have access to posts that are present on your local instance, and posts are only propagated to your local instance if it has expressed interest in them (to the instance where they originate). It’s a chicken-and-egg issue: how do you know whether you’re interested in something if you can’t see it?<p>Maybe I've misunderstood, but I thought this was the entire sales point and draw of many to mastodon, that it's not just one big messy free-for-all like Twitter. It's partially separated by design, and you get to choose.<p>But then they go on to speak positively of Bluesky with:<p>> It offers much of the best of Twitter: with a well-curated set of follows (and a chronological, not algorithmic timeline), I get to hear directly from a lot of true experts commenting in real time on current events.<p>So Bluesky is good with a curated set of follows, but mastodon is bad because you have to curate who to follow?<p>IMO, most of the authors problems here are with parts of social networks that are put in place to deal with the products of the worst part of human nature (spam, greed, aggression etc.) I can't help but feel the only sort of social network this author will be happy with is one that doesn't have an humans on it.