Mastodon's Failure: The Fatal Flaws of Decentralized Social Media

The author details their negative experiences with Mastodon, concluding that its decentralized "federated" architecture is fundamentally flawed. Federation leads to poor information delivery, making it difficult for users to see the content they want; account migration is broken, resulting in data loss; direct messaging is poorly designed and prone to privacy leaks; content moderation is chaotic and opaque; and live feeds are unusable due to information overload. The author contrasts this with BlueSky, arguing that while BlueSky has its issues, it's more streamlined and better meets the core needs of a social media platform. Ultimately, the author argues Mastodon's failure stems not from a single technical problem, but from a combination of architectural flaws and community culture that has left the platform lifeless and unappealing.