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Why do people go to Bluesky? Because it's complicated to pick a server? Because it's hard to search? Because it's not VC-backed and sustainability is a concern? 
Why did the Elk people give up on building Elk and all go to Bluesky? I'd like to ask them why they left the fediverse. 
When I was talking to my wife (@tokolovesme), who still primarily uses X, about this topic, she said that she feels isolated whenever she uses Mastodon. In particular, when you're on a low-population server, you can't easily search for other people's posts, you can't see all the replies to the posts that flow in, and you actually see far fewer favorites and reposts. All of this makes the fediverse feel less lively.
The loss of replies, favorites, etc. when crossing server boundaries, as well as the search issues, seems like something that should be fixed as soon as possible…
@hongminhee from what I've read there: https://mastodon.social/@cheeaun/113422852106097458
Zocca @hongminhee I would love that too.
@hongminhee There is a pull request for reply synchronization pending review for Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615
This is one of the things I was thinking of under the umbrella of "being worked on". I hope it can bear fruit in a timely fashion. 
And for search, if I were in charge I might have suggested real P2P search (KaZaA did it in 2000, why can't we?), but the Mastodon project is taking a different approach: https://www.fediscovery.org
@hongminhee IMO, that's still a very specific use-case tho'.
Social media is tough because it caters for many different use-cases on a single UI — everyone uses it differently, thus it's a hard UX problem.
@hongminhee I spent some time making diagrams of how ActivityPub and AT Protocol work so I could explain them to a friend the other day and it got me thinking about how to solve this problem. The conclusion I came to made me realize how AP client-to-server would work because that’s basically what I came up with. I think client-to-server could solve this issue, to some extent.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/activitypub-client-to-server-faq/1941
conversation containers by @mikedev solve that problem. With this mechanism in place not only replies are synchronized, but also reactions and edits - everything that happens in a conversation.
It also enables reply controls, private groups and (better) followers-only posts.
@hongminhee I’m super happy you brought up the subject, it was super interesting to see the reasons that where brought up
Related to the feeling of being isolated, I think a downside for a lot of people is actually the lack of algorithm; having to curate your feed yourself to get relevant posts is kinda hard especially if your interests are niche (or even on a less popular timezone since everything is chronological), and the limited search doesn’t help on top of that, like you rightfully pointed out
I would love to see more fediverse project experiment with recommendation and algorithm, maybe optional like Bluesky does
There is lot of hate for algorithms on Fedi (a lot of them justified), but without them making the fediverse compete with VC funded social media for a broad demographic is like making a natural bodybuilder compete with a steroid user
Thank you once again for starting this thread!
@NIGHTEN @hongminhee I also am interested in that and feel like that just being able to chose the time frame and way of sorting the posts in your timeline would already help a lot, while still being transparent and respecting the users choice.
I love the catch up feature of Phanpy for example, or the following tab that cohost had that worked in a similar way. I wish those were more common place, and that's fixable at the client level
@NIGHTEN @hongminhee
"Chronological order" *is* an algorithm. One that's impartial, easy to understand and obvious that it works.
But it's not the only one that would be similarly good. Let's say one that is basically chronological, but moves up posts from posters according to how often you've interacted with their posts before.
Having an individual choice of sorting methods would be nice.
@hongminhee Have you seen this by @kissane? https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt The post collects and categorizes reasons people have given for leaving Mastodon in the 2022-2023 timeframe.
A lot of it is actionable and I think some has already improved, or if not, is being worked on. But it is (and will continue to be) a marathon and not a sprint.
@hongminhee I can only speak to my own experience and what I’ve heard from others, but I think it’s a lot of different factors:
• People like the features AT enabled over AP, like global search of the network and algorithmic timelines
• The people developing the app and the network are very active and excited to answer everyone’s questions
• The default apps are pretty good and extremely hackable for web devs
@hongminhee
• There are lots of good JavaScript libraries available for hacking on any part of the AT stack (making it so easy to create a client that I got one up and running in a single weekend)
• The JavaScript development community (who never really made it over from Twitter) is finally posting somewhere other than Twitter and they’ve chosen Bluesky (I think for a lot of the reasons mentioned above)
@hongminhee
• The Apple development community already largely migrated to Mastodon very soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter, so the Apple devs are more likely to stay here because their community is here
@hongminhee there are some good replies in this thread over there too https://bsky.app/profile/humanwhocodes.com/post/3la7i2qjanz2j
@hongminhee My personal take is that AP is not suitable for a true global scale network. The costs per-instance are already very high and the fediverse is a drop in the bucket compared to the size of established networks. I think the fediverse will exist as a niche network, while bsky has a chance of replacing X. As such, I choose to spend time on both. Some threads from bsky that helped me understand this:
@hongminhee here I have the explanation
@hashraydamon @hongminhee Hmm, gonna note respectfully that this smells a bit like anecdata. A few artists I know have posted about experiencing the same thing, but in reverse: they post in both places, but say they prefer Mastodon because people here actually interact with their posts. I think it depends a lot on how they themselves engage with each community.
Meanwhile here's an actual empirical analysis of how people engage with posts on Bluesky: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/113366251723015524
@hashraydamon @hongminhee All that said, you're correct that interacting with and sharing posts we like is very important here. I sometimes have to remind myself not to become too passive while scrolling and I like seeing the occasional "you are the algorithm here" reminder post.