I would say I'm primarily a Bluesky user. Recently I made an account on the Fediverse, via Mastodon. Here's my thoughts on it so far...
A lot more text
Compared to Bluesky, people seem to talk to each other more. Art is still present, but it's a lottt more text posts and interacting.
There's also a decent amount of messing with the platform. Like a post that shows your instance, or a post with special Markdown.
I wasn't on Cohost long, but it kinda reminds me of Cohost...
It's neat. I wouldn't say this is worse or better than Bluesky, it's mostly just different. And I like having that different.
Instances are chaotic
No single format
On Bluesky, everything is normalized down into Bluesky's microblogging format. Surface-level, there isn't really anything novel about it.
On the Fediverse, seemingly anything goes. Custom emoji, emoji reactions, different Markdown flavors, profile decorations, 100,000 character posts. And it all seems to depend on the instance you're on if it's supported.
No single web client
I use social media on my phone in a browser. I've done this for a few years at this point, and having to live without my Firefox extensions is a no-go.
So, on the Fediverse, I use whatever web client comes with my instance. And when I go to view a post on another instance, I may opt to use that instance's web client.
This unfortunately means that nothing is consistent. When I go to another instance, all of my preferences are gone, and I'm not logged in anymore. But, at least I can ensure that what I see is how it's supposed to be seen!!
It also gives a somewhat similar feeling to browsing the indie web. Take booping.synth.download for example.
Its loading icon is a synth. It has some random loading messages, seemingly custom to that instance. It even has fake ads:
It's cool!
Following is so very different
Follow-only posts
There's such a thing as follower-only posts, and you can only see them if you follow someone. Because of this, when you do follow someone, you may end up getting entirely different posts than what you expected. Kinda weird!
Following is a more conscious decision
A lot of people have their follow button requests only. They gotta approve you to follow.
Others are picky about who follows them. They'll kick off people who don't interact or whatever. Which is entirely valid!
This was a tad of a culture shock for me when coming from Bluesky, which doesn't even have the ability to force someone to unfollow you.
This also seemingly adds a bit of friction to "getting into" the fedi, if that makes sense. At times I feel I'm progressing up a friend group rather than just following accounts. (Again, not necessarily bad! If anything I feel more of a connection... kinda discourages lurking)
Getting rejected to follow seemingly has no indicator. Which is kinda worrying... what if I forget and end up sending another damn follow request after I was denied?
No private accounts, but there kinda are...?
Some people only let friends follow them. And with that, just use follow-only posts, and now you essentially have a private account.
But it's a weird feeling to come across them, especially accounts that post publicly. Like your data is public... but i can't follow you... this violates what i usually think about public data on the web. Something to get used to
Boosts and favorites
Favorites are seemingly a lot more useless to the author, so boosting is more common-place. It's pretty common for a post to have more boosts than favorites, which would usually be considered bad on The Other Platforms.
I'm still figuring this one out. I don't know when to favorite. Is a favorite just a lesser "I like this" then, considering that people boost without favoriting? Can I just adapt my current method of liking on Bluesky to favoriting, and just know to boost more...?
Metrics
The instance I am on, wetdry.world, has them more muted. You have to click the post to see the amount of boosts and favorites, and the reply count seemingly caps itself at 2.
However, there's also reactions. Which do show the exact count. And people also tend to use it similarly to favoriting. I don't really get that.
Engagement
I got no complaints here... it's just like any other functional social media. Interact with people. They interact back. Yay!!
Hashtags
If you add hastags at the very end of your post, Mastodon seems to style them kinda like Tumblr, so they're out of the way and not cluttered.
But oh my god am I terrible at using them. I always second-guess what hashtags I should put on, and I feel kinda weird siloing myself...
Also, on Bluesky, I would get kinda irrelevant engagement from putting something under a popular hashtag like #art, so I stopped doing that. Does this happen on the Fediverse? I'm not sure.
Overall...
It's a pretty nice place. I see myself consistently using it in the future, as I do now. Running it alongside my Bluesky account...!