I just want to follow hashtags. Super easy to do on Mastodon, but I couldn’t figure it out on Bluesky.
BSky is just a little different, and I would argue superior, in the way discovery works. Instead of searching for hashtags for a subject (which can easily be abused) you search for feeds of the subject, which are far more useful. Then if you want, you can combine multiple feeds.
Another commenter shared a link with a guide to create a custom feed, and I definitely see how that can be better. As a new user, I was having too much trouble finding an easy way to create my own custom feed, and wasn’t happy with any of the existing feeds that I looked at… they all seemed to include more “junk” than the equivalent hashtags on Mastodon. I agree that simply following hashtags has downsides, but the logic as to why a specific post shows up in my feed is much more obvious in that case, allowing me to more easily troubleshoot and adjust my follow/block settings.
BSky is just a little different, and I would argue superior, in the way discovery works. Instead of searching for hashtags for a subject (which can easily be abused) you search for feeds of the subject, which are far more useful. Then if you want, you can combine multiple feeds.
Another commenter shared a link with a guide to create a custom feed, and I definitely see how that can be better. As a new user, I was having too much trouble finding an easy way to create my own custom feed, and wasn’t happy with any of the existing feeds that I looked at… they all seemed to include more “junk” than the equivalent hashtags on Mastodon. I agree that simply following hashtags has downsides, but the logic as to why a specific post shows up in my feed is much more obvious in that case, allowing me to more easily troubleshoot and adjust my follow/block settings.