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?

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.

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.

@paulgolder Threads already has enough corporate content without adding advertisements! I soured on Threads within a week.

Bluesky does definitely feel like early Twitter. I think it has a fighting chance at replacing Twitter to some degree. It also might be a long-term strength for federated social media for there to exist competing standards, as annoying is it is.

@Alex True about Threads. Too many companies trying to be funny!

@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.

@Alex I see a lot of people on Bluesky dunking on Mastodon for being "too confusing and gatekeepy" but I don't think they realize AT functions a lot in the same way, its just not "confusing" yet because they haven't enabled federation. Once they do then the same issues they complained about will appear. Its very interesting

@kizaing It will be interesting to see how that plays out. I suspect it will cause a lot of problems not acclimating users to federated social media and opening the floodgates on the current user base. It really doesn't seem like they're ready for it. I also don't know how well the flashship Bluesky server is going to handle moderation once they open the doors.