Social media in 2025 part 1, Mastodon and Bluesky

Last updated on the 30.01.25 at 15:37 EET

During the last weeks I spent some time trying to understand the differences between Mastodon and Bluesky, to make a better decision about Meta’s alternatives, and inform friends on Facebook. The text might be imprecise, please contact me if you find something inaccurate or wrong. This post was originally published on my Facebook account.

Money

Mastodon is a non-profit organisation¹, while Bluesky is a for-profit company, whose principal funders are Blockchain Capital² and before that Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter, former Bluesky board member, and someone who is at the same time against corporations, while calling X “freedom technology” (I admit I’m confused)… Technically it is a benefit corproration, whose goals include making a positive impact on society. However, ‘there are no legal standards that define what constitutes a benefit corporation. A benefit corporation need not be certified or audited by the third-party standard.’³

Bluesky’s current CEO, Jay Graber, has made a career in the cryptocurrency business, which is of course ok. Only, I find it hard to see them as a ‘digital right activist’.

Concerning their financing, both Bluesky and Mastodon need and will need more money as they grow. Bluesky I guess might add ads, or sell extras (HD videos, other options). Mastodon will probably go through a crowdfunding campaign. Maybe this is a good occasion to remember that technology is not free: even a little text, such as this one, goes through machines, hard-drives, CPUs, data centres, wires, and then professionals, technicians, and so on⁴.

Technology

Both platforms technically allow a ‘federation’ (networking) of different servers and a ‘decentralized’ system (as a side note, I predict those will become buzz words in 2025). However, decentralising Bluesky (creating an alternative server) requires a huge financial investment which is outside the possibilities of individuals, associations, small companies. The financial bottleneck is the relay server you can see in the diagram at this link⁵. In Mastodon, the technological and financial efforts can be seamlessly divided among different servers. Hence, the system is both technically and practically decentralised⁶⁷⁸.

Concerning privacy, Bluesky’s direct messages can only go through Bluesky’s distribution system, no matter what, meaning, they are fully centralised. They are also fully visible by Bluesky.⁹

People

More and more people are coming to Mastodon, but the big wave seems to be going towards Bluesky, which is fully understandable. While Mastodon is definitely less active (in my bubble) than Bluesky, there I found activists, artists, researchers, colleagues, friends. On both platforms there’s no trace of the advertisement-corporate culture that inevitably has influenced social media. It’s relaxing, it’s honest. I’m also on both for testing and practical reasons (and to inform about the experimental calendar project to as many people as possible). However, I surely prefer Mastodon, because :

• It’s a non-profit organisation
• It is and it will be based in EU
• It is part of a truly federated system
• It is a way to effectively act against the techno-political monopoly displayed at Trump’s inauguration. Bluesky, unfortunately, it is not, at least for now.

Concerning the last point, I believe that techbros’ vision is purely economical and transactional, and ideology is just a tool to gather people and consensus (and/or maybe related to these powerful people’s megalomania, in some cases). Choosing Mastodon is definitely something that creates financial problems to that system, and I think that’s the only individual action that matters. At the institutional level, luckily, we have in EU the GDPR, the AI Act, and a Crypto-Assets regulation, something that doesn’t make those companies very happy.
I’ll write next a short text about Pixelfed (the federated alternative to Instagram) that is in my opinion amazing! It has quickly implemented stories, and the programmer has developed Loops (a TikTok alternative) and is developing Groups (to give an alternative to FB groups).

Footnotes