Bluesky’s main feed is totally algorithm free, it’s just the people you follow’s posts in chronological order, same as mastodon.

Starter kits are optional, but they allow you to get started in hours rather than months. For me, they made the difference between a vibrant and interesting feed well tailored towards my interests, and a very sparse feed that I didn’t use on Mastodon. For me they were the difference between a useful social network and a non-useful one.

As far as I can tell, the advantages of Mastodon over Bluesky are:

• Well implemented federation

I’m on both and Mastodon is missing (at least in any easy to use way) most of the features that make Bluesky such a good destination:

• instant add subscribe lists
• subscribable block lists
• custom feeds/subscribable algorithms
• keyword/topic blocks
• nuclear block where you never see the blocked person again
• optional discover feed
• DM preferences

All these things (and more I’m sure I’m forgetting), make Bluesky very quick to get started with and very powerful for honing your feeds to be exactly how you want and free of harassment and trolling.

I am still trying with Mastodon, but it’s really slow going and I can fully understand why people wouldn’t bother. After a year I am way behind where I was in a week with Bluesky.