mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse. I've tried to make the answer as simple and easy to understand as possible:

🦋 BlueSky is designed to give corporations and wealthy people full control of the network. All of its traffic has to flow through expensive-to-run corporate relays.

:Fediverse: The Fediverse is designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.

@FediTips people flocking to bsky thinking it's going to be different has me shaking my head. Just look at their investors. Blockchain, lovely.

@effariwhy
I had my doubts about Bluesky and kept procrastinating ... And now I am not going to join.
It's too similar to Twitter and I think it will have the same sad ending.

@palin @effariwhy it is a good source for journalist at the moment but I fear you are right.

@lillyfinch I was disappointed to see that the Associated Press created a bsky account and actually posts to it, but the only way we see them here is via flipboard (@AssociatedPress). Same with a lot of other news orgs.

@effariwhy @AssociatedPress what is a flipboard? Elder here and always learning.

@lillyfinch @AssociatedPress <--- notice that AP doesn't have a mastodon account. They post at Flipboard.com (a commercial site that isn't really part of the fediverse). Mastodon servers show Flipboard user posts so we can see them, but none of our posts show on Flipboard.

@lillyfinch @AssociatedPress

If bsky goes the way of twitter, it would be better to follow them here via Flipboard and not have a bsky account.

I would rather see the AP and other news orgs actually support the #fediverse by having a mastodon account. Instead, they use commercial platforms, and this mastodon server displays their posts from them.

AP is not supporting #decentralized architecture, which is our only hope to break free of the endless cycle of corporate takeovers.

@effariwhy @AssociatedPress ah got it…I wish that as well. It is our only hope. Quite a few journalists are now on Substack.

@effariwhy @lillyfinch @AssociatedPress I mean technically a fediverse server owned and operated by AP would be a corporate service

@theothersimo @lillyfinch @AssociatedPress yes, but the conversation would be 2 way. Right now, no one on flipboard.com sees our engagement, but we see theirs.