I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse.
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@Oregon_Pacifist I remember at one point they actually closed social to new sign ups to force people to join other instances.
I feel like they need to do this again or switch the default signup server to something else for at least a time.
@Judeau Yeah that's not a bad idea. Too many people that migrate over from X and other sites think that mastodon.social IS the Mastodon platform. The concept of decentralization is completely foreign to them.
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@Judeau Yeah that's not a bad idea. Too many people that migrate over from X and other sites think that mastodon.social IS the Mastodon platform. The concept of decentralization is completely foreign to them.
@Oregon_Pacifist It's not terribly difficult to understand but It definitely takes a bit of education. It's part of what makes the Fediverse potentially so resilient and different from other services. I would argue that's more important now than ever.
In the past I actually convinced a couple of people to sign up for Mastodon & attempted to explain the importance of choosing a different server but in the end they opted to just go with .social because it was the biggest. Education is hard. LOL
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@Oregon_Pacifist It's not terribly difficult to understand but It definitely takes a bit of education. It's part of what makes the Fediverse potentially so resilient and different from other services. I would argue that's more important now than ever.
In the past I actually convinced a couple of people to sign up for Mastodon & attempted to explain the importance of choosing a different server but in the end they opted to just go with .social because it was the biggest. Education is hard. LOL
@Judeau @Oregon_Pacifist yeah its like trying to educate people who have used windows all their lives to use Linux and how its better but good luck trying to teach them that who can't grasp the idea
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It also causes issues when at an instance level, they decide to not federate with another instance, because basically 30% of the Fediverse decides to block you. On some level I get it, theres a lot of stuff on the Fediverse that really shouldn't see the light of day, but it does kind of work against the whole decentralized thing.
@e6a4fe53bdb13e67802a77ce878f6c4deff0d58df9d3142a333b92041aa9eba8 @Oregon_Pacifist your damn right on that man
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
I barely know how this works. Please use your channel to inform people. Then get your fellow creators to spread the word. Maybe we can talk to leaders in .social to get them start spreading users?
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I barely know how this works. Please use your channel to inform people. Then get your fellow creators to spread the word. Maybe we can talk to leaders in .social to get them start spreading users?
@slowlygoingsane there are plenty of people with much larger channels than mine that explain things better than I could
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist Damn, they have 3,098,853 users (per https://instances.social/list/advanced) That's wild. I'm happy on my little 1300 users instance.
I would imagine the best option, to re-iterate what others have said, would be - if they cared about decentralizing - would be shutting down the registrations over there and requiring new registrations to be elsewhere.
I wonder what amount of those users are actually active vs. "I registered because Twitter sucks .. and then stopped logging in"
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist it should go down -
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist
And its one of the most censoring instances.. -
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist hopefully it dies someday
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist True... but another way to look at it, is that 70% will remain.
Yet another way to look at it, is from the point of view of the fediblock list. How federated are things really when x percent are blocked at the instance level?
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@Oregon_Pacifist I think the real issue is that folks come over to mastodon from places like X/Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms and don't understand how a federated system works so those folks just move over to mastodon.social because they don't know any better. I never joined that instance not just because a good chunk of the mastodon community would be lost if mastodon.social ever went down, but also because I felt it could be a potential cesspool since anyone could join it
@captainarcee @Oregon_Pacifist its a cesspool because a certain mindset has its roots very deep on Mastodon. all the big servers do.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist The "centralization" of the Fediverse is not a new problem, but the tendency toward concentration is a physiological phenomenon; a few years ago, I reported that the data on the distribution of users of Fediverse instances closely resembled those on the distribution of wealth (cfr attached image)! Today, in fact, after "reddit migration" has swelled the "forumverse" and after some instances have consolidated a safe space for their dozens of loyal users, the situation is certainly less problematic.
Today, mastodon.social is attracting the majority of new Mastodon members, and I'm sure it's in their best interest to continue doing so, because having more users gives their server great visibility, giving their server visibility gives importance to the Mastodon software, and giving importance to the Mastodon software means they can continue to exercise leadership and establish the "de facto standard." But let's not forget that the problem is that mastodon.social is also attracting many non-English and non-German profiles of extremely low quality, which Mastodon moderators can't always manage with careful moderation.
But let's try to trust the Mastodon team for a moment and understand why Mastodon can't do otherwise, especially with its app:
- Downloading the Mastodon app is what most users who want to try the Fediverse do, because for most users, the equation
social = appapplies. - The Mastodon app is the only professionally designed app in the Fediverse, because it minimizes user abandonment. Mandatory instance selection or disallowing open registration on mastodon.social would increase the number of logins and increase the abandonment rate.
- While the "Mastodon Server Covenant" is an ethical commitment, it is not binding, and sending a user to any instance would remove a vulnerable and inexperienced user from its area of reputational control.
Therefore, Mastodon's goal is to eliminate the barrier to entry. This is an advantage not only for Mastodon but for the entire Fediverse.
Erecting barriers, creating doubt and uncertainty right at the initial login stage, means sacrificing diversity and risking extinction through inbreeding.
- Downloading the Mastodon app is what most users who want to try the Fediverse do, because for most users, the equation
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist You know I really think that's because "most people" don't know how computers work, don't know how the internet works, and don't know how to function without society telling them what to think.
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@Oregon_Pacifist True... but another way to look at it, is that 70% will remain.
Yet another way to look at it, is from the point of view of the fediblock list. How federated are things really when x percent are blocked at the instance level?
I have a one of the longest mute list on AP, it turns out I do not really want to read what "most" people have to write. -
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
@Oregon_Pacifist To be honest I was surprised it's 'only' 30%.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the instance mastodon.social is 30% of the entire #Fediverse. If it ever goes down for any reason, a huge chunk of the Fediverse will go down.
It defeats the purpose of having a fully decentralized network if most people pile into a single instance.
30% of the Fediverse disappearing sounds more "survivable" from a network resiliency POV than say, if Bluesky PDS (controlling maybe 99%+?) went down.
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@Oregon_Pacifist I remember at one point they actually closed social to new sign ups to force people to join other instances.
I feel like they need to do this again or switch the default signup server to something else for at least a time.
@judeau@mas.to that's cool, I didn't know m.s did that.
That gives off some edgy "private torrent tracker" vibes. Nobody else I know ever closes registrations!
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@julian It's possible that I am misremembering, but I'm almost certain that they closed it off to new accounts for a brief period of time 4 or 5 years ago.
