The distinction is that Mastodon doesn't have to grow, and Bluesky does. There's an extent to which Bluesky is viable because its venture-funded owner pays for the infrastructure it operates on (Mastodon communities generally have to stand on their own two feet). If there's no path for Bluesky to grow into a viable business on its current financial runway, the funding for the infrastructure will end.

Mastodon isn't trying to compete anyway, it's not a Product(tm) driven by desire for profits, so the people who use it don't care if it "wins" or becomes more popular than whatever other platform. We're all just hanging out socializing and stuff, sharing neat things and discussing things like communities do. It's not easy to accurately estimate active Mastodon/Fediverse users, but then again, I'm not sure anyone really cares either way? lol

Bluesky could have been a Reddit rival, with the ability to follow topics rather than users, but they screwed it up.

Wait, Mastodon has 10 million users and 8000 servers? That's way more than I would of guessed. So Mastodon is a real thing in the world now.

Twitter has something like a half a billion users. So it wins I guess...

Just look at the total post stat. It's declining. I don't know if it means total daily or total in past x days, or actual cumulative total, but I don't think it's supposed to be that flat.

I'd love to see similar plots after you remove the primary servers in each! To give you a rough idea: 78% of the people I follow on Mastodon are not on the primary instance, and over 80% of my followers are not either.

> Anecdotally, Bluesky feels more lively for me because that seem to be the default destination for Twitter refugees.

It likely is the default of Twitter refugees, but as a Mastodon user none of this is relevant to me! I don't care how many more users a network has, as long as the one I'm on has a healthy number. Very few of the people I follow are likely to leave Mastodon.

Disagree heavily.

I find Mastodon/the fediverse has far better engagement and longevity due to being open source and decentralized.

Bluesky is an island on its own, just trying to be a Twitter copy and nothing more.

That seems like comparing apples to oranges. I switched to Mastodon in order to avoid the inevitable enshittification of every service that has anything to do with a corporate entity. I learned my lesson and I am not about to repeat it. And having spent considerable time on Mastodon now, I'm quite happy with the value I'm getting from it and the people I follow. I do not need everybody in the world to be on it. In fact, I actually prefer that many people not be on it.

I am on several socials, personally I like the crowd on Mastodon the best but they all have their charms. I mean friends, furs, family, people I take street photos of, local radio personalities and people who look up to my character can be found in many places.

Blue Sky has 'enough' for me. I don't care if it's the biggest platform. It's got local elected officials, it's got bike racing content and people, it's got software people, and by using it I'm not supporting the white nationalist owner of Twitter, so I'm happy with it. I occasionally post a bit to Threads when I need some more 'reach'.

I don't know what you're seeing in those stats. Bluesky has been shedding users since the inauguration. Mastodon is virtually a hobby project consisting of private servers that could run indefinitely as long as somebody finds it useful for communication in their community.

Neither have any shot of being a twitter replacement. Bluesky has a culture problem and a dishonesty about being p2p problem, and mastodon is too slow/heavy and has a mod problem that is intolerable without a better story about user mobility between servers.

Twitter may just die by itself if somehow a better way for people to publicize their work comes into existence, but all traditional means have been rolled up into big opinionated gatekeeping conglomerates who simply ignore things that compete with any of their interests or threaten any of their advertisers or owners. But even if twitter dies, people aren't moving to bluesky or mastodon.