“Why did you choose Mastodon and not Bluesky?” This is my answer to that question. It begins with a law from the turn of the millennium that was initially described as a failure, takes a path through domain names I've owned for nearly three decades, a need to test the winds, and ultimately lands on the fact that right now, I prioritize “decentralized” over “decentralizable” as a matter of principle.
Photo: Alina Grubnyak, “Algo-r-(h)-i-(y)-thms, 2018. Installation view at ON AIR, Tomás Saraceno's solo exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2018”.
"Failure of the Number Reform," read a headline in Dagens Industri in November 2001. The article was about the new number portability law that had come into effect earlier that year — finally allowing Swedish mobile subscribers to switch operators while keeping their existing phone numbers.
In the government bill 1997/98:126, simply titled Number Issues, there’s a more detailed argument for why number portability is important. Among other things:
The need to change phone numbers when switching operators acts as a barrier to competition in the telecom market, favoring the former monopolists. Allowing subscribers to keep their number when changing operators is crucial to creating a functioning market with fair competition and real choices for consumers.
Back then, the law might have been considered a failure, but today it feels like a given. It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to go back to the locked-in world we had before it.
Personal Domains and Open Standards #
On the internet, we have similar opportunities. I registered my first domain, thoresson.net, back in 1998. Thanks to that, I’ve had the same email address for almost 30 years, and my blog has stayed at the same URL just as long — even though both my email and blog have moved between different servers over time. Owning your own domain is the internet equivalent of phone number portability.
But domains aren't enough. Open standards are critical too. Email isn’t a service — it’s a standard. Websites aren't services either — they're standards. Based on these standards, you can build email servers, email clients, web servers, and browsers. If I don't like Outlook, I can switch to MailMate; if Firefox isn't working for me, I can use Vivaldi. And so on.
Lock-In Effects in Social Networks #
One area where things haven’t worked this way is with social networks. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter — they’re closed platforms developed and controlled by private companies. You can't connect your own domain name or pick your server or software. You either use Facebook, or you don't.
It’s the same kind of lock-in we escaped with number portability — but now on the internet.
New legislation, like the EU's Digital Markets Act, is trying to address this. But compared to mobile networks, the internet offers something extra: user-driven choice.
Phone numbers are tied to physical infrastructure, which required regulation to open up. Internet services, on the other hand, are built on top of the infrastructure. To allow portability, we don't need to regulate the pipes — we just need to develop software that respects open standards.
Decentralized Social Networks #
On November 27, 2022, I registered a new domain, thoresson.social. The next day, @anders@thoresson.social became my new home on Mastodon.
When I started growing tired of Twitter, Mastodon caught my interest — because of its core principle: building a decentralized social network where you can move between servers, or even run your own server on your own domain.
There are currently two other major Twitter alternatives: Meta’s Threads and Bluesky. Both claim to support decentralization. Threads is partially built on ActivityPub, and Bluesky is developing a protocol called ATproto.
But there are important differences. Threads’ support for ActivityPub is limited: Mastodon users can follow Threads accounts, but not the other way around. With Bluesky and Mastodon, following goes both ways. However, even though ATproto theoretically allows anyone to run a server, the costs are enormous — I've seen figures mentioning millions per month. By comparison, my Mastodon server costs me about 50 SEK a month. So while Bluesky is decentralizable, Mastodon is decentralized — and that's a big deal to me.
That said, Threads and Bluesky are easier to get started with. Unlike Mastodon, you don't have to pick a server first — there's just one option. That simplicity makes it easier to find accounts to follow too.
Where Would I Stick My Finger in the Air? #
During the decade I was active, Twitter served several purposes for me: keeping in touch with friends, colleagues, and tracking current events.
By fall 2022, friends had at least to some extent moved into private Signal chats. Work contacts were on LinkedIn. RSS and newsletters had seen a renaissance for news. What remained was "the finger in the air" — jumping in and out of a stream of conversations on topics I cared about.
When I explored Mastodon, I found enough discussions about the things I’m care about (climate change, internet development, AI from technical and societal angles) combined with the principles I believe in: open and decentralized networks that let you move servers without losing your contacts — just like we now take for granted with phone numbers, email, and websites.
Ongoing Development and New Explanations #
Ben Werdmuller recently shared an idea about how Mastodon should be described and developed: Not as one decentralized network, but as many interconnected communities:
Every Mastodon server is its own community, with its own norms, settings, standards, and ideals. We should stop calling them instances or servers, and treating them as homogenous nodes in a wider network. Instead, we should describe each Mastodon site as being a community in itself.
Mastodon should be the WordPress of decentralized communities.
Each Mastodon-powered community should have its own look and feel — and its own distinct features. Mastodon’s greatest strength isn’t in being a single network — it’s in being an ecosystem of communities, each with its own identity, design, tooling, and norms.
One of the challenges of the current signup process is that every Mastodon community looks and acts more or less the same. Right now, choosing a server often means parsing descriptions and guessing which admin seems trustworthy. Instead, every community should feel alive with its own personality: not just a hostname and a set of rules, but a clear sense of what it's for and who it's for, and an experience and set of features that match this purpose.
This type of technical development combined with better ways to explain things is exactly what we need.
Keeping Fingers Crossed #
I'm not crossing my fingers for Mastodon or Bluesky specifically. I'm crossing my fingers that one — or both — become simple enough and truly decentralized enough to be understandable and attractive to a lot of people.
And one final thing: The title for this post – “Decentralized is more important than being decentralizable” – is a paraphrase of something I heard/read recently. But can’t remember who said/wrote it. If you know, let me know so I can credit the right person!
Reading and Listening About Social Media #
In recent months, I've read and listened to a lot about social media. If you want to dive deeper, I recommend:
- Ben Werdmuller's thoughts on what he'd do if he ran Mastodon or Bluesky.
- Flipboard’s podcast Dot Social — especially episodes with Cory Doctorow, Paul Frazee, Chris Messina, Chris Trotter, and Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi.
- L. Rhodes’ blog series on federated social media, Mastodon, Bluesky, and more, starting with Federated and mediated networks.
- Laurens Hof's Bluesky, censorship and country-based moderation — a deep dive into moderation challenges.
- Mike Masnick’s classic Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve from 2022.
- ASML Fellow Launches CLR:SKY — an interesting example of designing better online conversation spaces.
- And finally, slightly tangential, my own pieces on three apps that let you combine feeds from different services into one place and algorithms and user control.