The key to getting more 𝕏 users to join the Fediverse is to give them a super-faithful Twitter clone in the Fediverse of which they don't even notice that it isn't another silo

There's a whole lot of whining going on on Mastodon that millions of people are leaving 𝕏 for Bluesky. And not for the Fediverse Mastodon. They should all come to the Fediverse Mastodon instead. Or, yes, the Fediverse. For way too many people, it's exactly the same.

Everyone's wondering why all these people prefer Bluesky over Mastodon. Some say that Mastodon's on-boarding is still too clunky. 𝕏-to-Bluesky converts state that getting into Mastodon is too complicated, what with having to choose an instance, something that Mastodon users can't understand. At least not those who were able to join without being railroaded to mastodon.social.

People want another Twitter

Wanna know why people prefer Bluesky over Mastodon?

They. Want. Twitter.

Without Musk. But otherwise Twitter. Not something entirely different. Something that they already know. Something that they don't have to get used to.

Bluesky gives them pretty much exactly that. A clone of early-2010s Twitter. Including the Web UI, including the mobile app. And including allegedly not having to choose an instance. Apparently, the official Bluesky app has an instance selector now, but otherwise, Bluesky hides the fact that it is actually decentralised now so well that next to nobody even in the Fediverse knows.

For that's the other point: Bluesky doesn't seem to force people to choose an instance because it appears to be the same kind of monolithic, centralist, walled-garden silo as 𝕏. And it's exactly that what people want.

So, bad news: Mastodon will never be as popular as Bluesky. It's too complicated. It doesn't look like Twitter, it doesn't feel like Twitter, and the having-to-choose-an-instance cat is out of the bag.

How to get more 𝕏 users into the Fediverse

If we want people to escape from 𝕏 to the Fediverse, we need a new Fediverse project for them to join. This time, it has to be an exact copy of early 2020s Twitter, right before Musk bought it out. Only the branding and branding-related terms ("tweet") must be replaced, everything else must be absolutely identical. It must be closer to Twitter than Bluesky. It actually must not have any features that pre-Musk Twitter didn't have.

For simplicity reasons, let's give it the working title "Chirper".

Of course, being in the Fediverse, Chirper should be decentralised itself, and it must be federated with everything else in the Fediverse.

However: The users must not notice any of this. At least not on the lighthouse instance chirper.social which has to be the project website at the same time, and which needs a capacity of at least 3 billion users.

A new level of mollycoddling and fooling users

The users on chirper.social must be mollycoddled much, much more than even on Mastodon. The fact that Chirper itself is decentralised must be hidden from them. If a post comes from Mastodon, it must appear to be from chirper.social. If a post comes from Hubzilla, it must appear to be from chirper.social. If it can't be made to look like from chirper.social, it must be rejected.

Chirper's Fediverse connection must be hidden from the users on chirper.social by all means, including content censorship. Nothing that hints at Chirper being part of the Fediverse must appear on their timelines. Posts about the Fediverse are allowed, but posts about Chirper being connected to the Fediverse must be automatically rejected server-side. Everything that can possibly be done must be done to hide users moving from one Fediverse instance to another while keeping their name from the users on chirper.social.

If need be, Chirper, its developers and the admins and mods on chirper.social must lie to the general public as well as the users on this instance. It's for the latter's own good. Mass media, tech media and bloggers outside of Chirper must be told that Chirper is a centralised, walled-up silo.

Enlightening users who are ready

Now, if someone is deemed "ready", especially if they really wish Chirper was decentralised itself, they will secretly be offered the opportunity to "go down the rabbit hole". If they do so, they'll be given the chance to move to another Chirper instance, a full move based on nomadic identity which their connections on chirper.social won't notice. From then on, their posts will be monitored and censored just the same as everything else from outside chirper.social. If they choose to move to another instance, their mobile app will unlock decentrality features. Mind you, at this point, they'll still be made believe that Chirper is a walled garden. A decentralised walled garden, but a walled garden.

The next step, again, when they're "ready", will be to "go deeper down the rabbit hole". Not before this point will they learn about Chirper being connected to the Fediverse. They'll learn that some of their connections have never been on Chirper in the first place, that they've always communicated with the Fediverse outside of Chirper, even when they were still on chirper.social. If, at this point, nomadic identity via ActivityPub has spread in the Fediverse, and a significant number of projects has implemented it, and these Chirper users desire to get to know other places in the Fediverse, they will be presented an easy UI to clone their Chirper ID to someplace else.

Of course, this will upset Mastodon users. Why didn't all these people join Mastodon instead? Why don't they even know about Mastodon? Why are they intentionally kept unaware that they're connected to Mastodon?

Guess what: This is exactly how many people in the non-Mastodon Fediverse feel like right now already.