As another service very similar to the fediverse launches a lot of conversations have been had on the fediverse about it. Bluesky, built on a protocol that they claim will be decentralized, was spawned out of Twitter by Dorsey in 2019. They’ve taken different decisions and, true to their Twitter roots, seem to be prioritizing different things than many of the people developing software for the fediverse prioritize. One thing that has been different between the two services, however, is the seemingly greater uptake of Bluesky by the Twitter holdouts, especially compared to the widespread derision that was prevalent on that service for the fediverse, and Mastodon particularly, in the early days of the Musk takeover of Twitter.

I think there are a few reasons for this, but that none of them really have to do with software decisions, and only partially have to do with moderation. To begin with though, I want to say something that is little acknowledged but seems clear: anyone on the fediverse, Bluesky, even Twitter is an anomaly. The vast majority of people worldwide are not using these platforms, and if they are using social media, are using things like Telegram, Whatsapp groups, Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, and Wechat. When we talk about the software decisions or moderation decisions of the fediverse vs Twitter vs Bluesky, we are arguing at the margins. According to this Wikipedia page, Twitter is at 17 on monthly users. It’s behind Pinterest. Yet, in discussions of what features would bring more users to the fediverse, or whether correct usability decisions are being made, nobody is talking about adding curating collections of photos to fediverse software (though maybe they should).

People who use social software in the way we are using them are less common than we’d think. Even most people who use Twitter, the service whose long shadow lays over the fediverse and Bluesky, probably didn’t use it in the way many of us use the fediverse. The point I want to make from this is that the utility of a service – the good it does – is not related as much as we’d think to the absolute numbers of people using it. Facebook has over a billion users and yet the absolute good it has brought to the world is almost certainly in the negative, considering it’s part in the genocide committed against the Rohingya among other horrors.

The discussion over the future of the fediverse, potential users going to Bluesky, and direction of the software is asking the wrong question. It’s using the wrong metrics. The goal should not be to have more users than a competing service, it should be whether the service is good for the users and the world as a whole. I don’t presume to say definitively if the fediverse is good for the world as a whole, but that should be the goal we head towards. Moderation is a part of this, and while the messiness of fediverse moderation can be frustrating, I think it’s also productive, in clearly defining conflicts and providing stakes to them that mirror the hard problems we face offline.

The fediverse should be good for us and the world at any scale – users, instance admins, and developers might be better served focusing on that instead of buzz and numbers.