I've been lurking on #bluesky for the past month and here's my review:
1. Looks exactly like Twitter, but without ads.
2. All the drama-heads came over from Twitter
3. Federation has already been compromised by custom domains on the main server.
4. Moderation isn't that great.
5. Programmatic lists are pretty neat, but also seem privacy-diminishing.
I'm happy that I've slowed down on my social media consumption, but Mastodon is really my go-to place to scroll these days when I do get online.
One thing I have noticed is that dogpiling and gatekeeping are major issues. People getting mad at how people share their invite codes, lots of leftist infighting since that's most common kind of user right now. Really petty semantic arguments being made in the absence of a right-wing enemy. Not a great place for rational discourse.
Still, better than X. The only reason I don't delete my accounts there is because I don't want anyone claiming my usernames later.
If you want to follow me (full disclosure: I have never posted), you can find me at "vran.as", which is kinda neat that I can use my own domain as a username, but I wonder if this functionality might impede the multi-sever federated network that #bluesky hopes to become. I can only do this here because I run my own private Mastodon server, but what would happen now if I pivoted to AT Protocol over ActivityPub on my own domain? Would that represent a conflict to the Bluesky flagship server?
Random observation since I started this thread:
The people that are here on Mastodon are a mix of the early adopters starting in 2016, and every Twitter exodus since. Mostly people that got tired of the drama a long time ago
The people that exist on Bluesky are mostly recent Twitter expats who haven't fully left Twitter yet. Mostly people who either tolerate or thrive in an environment with drama.
So my money is still on Mastodon being a more pleasant place than most other alternatives.
@Alex Re: vanity handles vs federation, I don't think there will be any interplay, as:
1) apparently handles are a property of the account, not its identity (you can change handles as you like).
2) the day you run an AT protocol instance under your own domain, you will control that instance, so there won't be any risk of "handle clash" with your existing vanity handle.
One thing I will say is that a lot of the same issues Mastodon had during it's first major growth spurts reminds me of what's happening on #bluesky right now. I have also seen Mastodon and the larger fediverse mellow out over the past year and become and really pleasant place to exist.
I hope, for the sake of the Internet keeping a multitude of pleasant non-corporate social spaces, that Bluesky sees the same mellowing out effect over the next year or so.