Why I switched to Mastodon

Yesterday, I decided to make the switch: I fully moved from Bluesky to Mastodon. Here are my reasons for making the move.

The first reason is country of origin. Bluesky is made and registered in the USA, which, depending on your views, might already be a good reason to switch; for me, I'm simply trying to rely less on US-based tech and pick EU alternatives. Mastodon is officially registered in Germany but can be hosted anywhere.

That leads to my second point: decentralization. Bluesky can only be partially self-hosted with a PDS; on Mastodon, each "instance" is a full server that handles community membership, UI, hosting and feeds. On Bluesky, a PDS mostly just holds your personal account data while feeds and UI are aggregated elsewhere.

Third point: customization. Bluesky has third-party frontends, but they're less common than on Mastodon. When you pick a Mastodon server, you can choose one whose moderation rules fit you.

Fourth: interoperability. Because Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, it can talk to many other social networks, so I can see content from Threads, Loops and Pixelfed.