Mastodon has seen a renewed interest these last few days, but when you look at the statistics mastodon.social siphons the biggest part of the pie, it sees a few thousands new sign-ups a day, while medium sized instance and smaller ones only get a few, sometimes just single digits increase.
This has been exacerbated since mastodon changed its UI both on web and mobile apps, to make the flagship instance the default one for sign-up in an effort to lower the entry barrier, which on the same time is leading to unhealthy concentration, on a platform that advocates for decentralization through federation.
Do you think this is the way forward on the fediverse ?
#mastodon #pixelfed #lemmy #fediverse
When I first considered signing up (I think it was on Mastodon), I was told how very easy it would be to move from one instance to another so it wouldn’t matter where I sign up - so I chose the first server that caught my eye. It was also implied that I’d need exactly one login for the entire Fediverse.
In hindsight, I’m okay with this not being true but it was a disappointment. At least moving servers (while taking your history with you) should be a lot easier if we’re trying to avoid big instances becoming bigger.
there is a protocol used by HubZilla called zot, it allows for true nomadic identities. where you can even login to your account from any instance.
I don’t think ActivityPub (Protocol that links all mastodon, Pixelfed, lemmy, peertube instances) developpers have any interests in implementing that, or it isn’t so high in their priorities, also to note that ActivityPub developpment has stagnated since its early releases.
One universal login via fediverse sounds like a dream. I would love that.
“moving servers” means what exactly? Changing your “home” instance? I assume you can still see content from other instances you’re federated with, right? Otherwise what’s the point
You know how people often assume someone is trolling, simply because their account is new?
Another reason would be to not have a billion dead accounts on servers.
Imagine that the main instance starts to blocklist words and censor content. Or ads. Having a way to move all your history, follower and follow list would be great so deter such issues since users can abandon your server quickly and you would just lose the userbase you were trying to monetise.
Imagine I decide to invest in a private server and want to create my own instances and move my Lemmy and Mastodon accounts there to have better control of what happens.
Having to resubscribe to everything would suck and specially in mastodon, having to generate a new userbase from zero would just deter users from such things.
Another example, suddenly the Mali govt decides to close lemmy.ml, that would suck. Having a way to changing the instance would be just great.
I really dislike it, the better way would have been randomly choosing one of the mid sized ones.
Same here. One reason why I build my own instances for my friends :)
Great. Are you participating in Lemmy Federate?
any idea how much disk space it costs to join this? like if you have an empty instance, does it add more than 1GB per month?
I created this tool and have been using it in my instance since the very beginning. My instance is almost 2 years old and it’s total database size is 60.2GB.
What people don’t understand about this tool is:
- If a community is generating enough activity, it’s likely that someone from your instance is already following that community.
- If a community isn’t generating enough activity, it won’t create much of a network/storage burden anyway.
Sure, it will make a small difference, but it’s nothing compared to the benefits it provides.
Thank you for the tool and the information!
this is the way.
small instances that can have niche content, owned and operated by those users (think beehaw) but with the ability to consume/interact with content from the rest of the fediverse (onramping).
At least the Lemmy site randomizes the instance list for you.
Way to go
deleted by creator
The problem isn’t centralization, but the concept of a “generalist” instance. Instances should be more focused in concept and scope, and usable locally without feeling the need to scroll all.
I kind of disagree. In the sense that people have multiple interests and identities.
If you are a french person who likes anime and technology. Where so you sign up, to the French instance, the anime one, the one focused on technology? You have to make and maintain one account for every interest you have?
I think instances should be bland an irrelevant. Like email addresses. They should say nothing about the users of that instance. Imho, the goal should be that people just sign in in the most convenient instance and should not have to think again in which instance they are.
If the protocol doesn’t give incentives for an even distribution of users, it’s not going to be solved by blaming individual instances or individual users.
We have to be diligent, and work hard, to keep the fediverse balanced. If it tends to concentrate in a few areas, we might see a tendency to centralize and control.
I personally think it’s not a big deal as long as you could easily move your accounts settings from one account to another.
If anything bad happens to the main instance people will just move elsewhere IMO.
I’d say that federation is the core principle of the network, so centralisation by piling all the users and content onto one server is very undesirable.
(also looking at you, lemmy.world)For threadiverse (lemmy/mbin et al) there’s not much in it. It’s fairly easy for an operator to curate their instance by pre subscribing to a whole bunch of communities. I run my own instance, barely any users and I’m constantly banning and deleting them for advertising. But I have plenty of content.
I made my own mastodon instance and connected to a bunch of groups. Only two or three are active. There’s not really an easy way to get content without following a lot of people. So anyone visiting my instance will see virtually nothing. If they go to social they will see plenty.
So it’s a bit of a no brainer for most I think.
I don’t think it’s a big concern, if a big instance does something stupid people will just move to a different one, and people will also naturally move to instances with communities and moderation policies they prefer over time which will help spread things out
I hope people spread out, but I also hope that tools for viewing the fediverse keep being developed so people don’t feel so fragmented and feel pressured to join big instances.
Like say each instance had a similarly named community, and you could browse the community locally and across all other instance communities with the same name. Much like there is a local and all button at the top.
you could browse the community locally and across all other instance communities with the same name.
Lemmy.ml and lemmy.world political communities wouldn’t probably mix well together. There’s a reason different versions of communities exist. If they are two similar, they should consolidate on one community.
It’s not an issue. As long as .social is able to maintain the load.
The good thing about decentralization is that at any moment anyone could open a new instance and it would work perfectly fine. It does not matter if one instance have more or less users.
If it lowers the entry barrier it is welcome. It should not matter at all.
It is an issue if .social ever decides to “Be evil”, and utilized their outsized influence over the rest of the 'verse.
Edit: The concept is known as “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”.
The thing about the fediverse is that it’s incredibly easy to make an instance and they are all compatible. So if any instance becomes evil people just have to seamlessly move away.
It’s not like twitter where if the owner become evil there’s nothing to do. Here you just move instance and be done with it, still the same platform, still the same users.
and they are all compatible.
This is not a given. Anyone can fork the protocol. If they are a large enough instance, they can include evil features in their fork, and block any instance that doesn’t use that fork. The users of competing forks then don’t have access, and their users move to a cooperating instance.
It has happened before; It will happen again.
Or even change protocols. Mastodon used to use OStatus before it changed to ActivityPub. And some platforms are multi-protocol, like Hubzilla and Friendica. Whether they are compatible depends on which protocols they have turned on.
When have that happened? Within the fediverse?
Threads tried and failed to do that with mastodon. I think the fediverse is well thought to prevent that even by big actors.
!remindme 10 years
I mean do smaller instances want to be larger? That means more resources. I mean as long as they are accepting signups presumably but they might not be ready for 1000 in a day. For myself I sorta avoided the largest options and then looked at what the next few options put in their about and faq. Until there is a pretty good migration tool though Im not going to get to attached to my user.
If an instance doesn’t want to grow they turn off new sign-ups, some growth might help instances stay afloat, as not only it might help with more donations, but also signal to the maintainers that there is appreciation for their work.
yeah im more thinking some may be willing to do like a hundred and then sign up but getting like 1000 in an hour or something might be to much. but I mean if my instance said hey they need to reduce or something I would be fine to switch.
It’s inevitable.
It also serves to give new users a stable instance that they can learn on. Then they’ll either switch instances, stay with the biggest, start their own, or abandon federated social media entirely.
But that initial stability gives the best chances of people staying. I started on the big, obvious ones for lemmy and Mastodon. On lemmy, I abandoned my .world account pretty quick for this one because it offered what I need. It ended up being one of the bigger ones, but I don’t plan on switching. But when someone in my life wants to try lemmy, I tend to recommend one of the less annoying instances lol.
Mastodon, it was similar; .social didn’t fill my needs, so I migrated. Twice so far.
There’s always going to be a “biggest” instance. It’s going to be the one that’s easiest to find. You could plug in the smallest instance for Mastodon, and it would decentralize more. But it might also overwhelm that instance. Mastodon in particular has an organization that can maintain a solid instance with massive numbers. Letting it serve as a gateway just makes sense.
I think that it is inevitable since there are different types of users. Ideally, everyone has their own fediverse server (“instance”) on their own domain name that they control. Or, families and small groups share a fediverse server. But most people are not that technical and just want something simple and something that works. That is where larger fediverse servers come in. They are an easy entry point for most people. Once people join, then they can migrate to a small instance, or preferably, start their own.
@anticurrent It took me multiple tries and multiple weeks to find a fediverse home. Compared to the 5 second single silo commercial options that’s like geologic onboarding time.
I think we gradually got accustomed to a “benevolent dictators” model of internet use, and decentralization of social is more like 90s internet where you had to learn what websites or services to go to by reputation, referral, and by trial and error.
Even well intentioned flagships will hit the “uh oh this is expensive to operate AND expensive to curate” problem. When you get above a few thousand concurrent users, screening malicious activity (e.g. bots, fraud, trolling, sock puppeting, extremism) requires increasing effort. At some tipping point of concurrent users, you max out your capacity to deal with it effectively, and then quality significantly degrades for everyone involved (including society apparently lol).
It’s easy to see the problems, but hard to think of alternatives.
My only current theory is: services have to stop being designed around the idea that everybody will get along, that everyone having public exposure is always 100% beneficial to them, and that all speech is harmless (even in democratic societies that taut rights to speech, most also have exclusions for harmful speech, such as “fighting words”, “genocidal incitement”, “injurious denial of established fact”, etc)
