Jeff MossAt DEFCON.social we are seeing steady signups around 100 a day but interactions are way down from the last surge about a month ago. Anyone else swing this pattern? Speculation is people creating backup accounts / bots / “just in case” accounts, etc. #mastoadmin
theiridium@thedarktangent i think it has more to do with impulsiveness. they create the account after reading something about the bird site and think "yeah you know what, forget that place", but then eventually they return. it takes a bit for people to completely uncouple from things they've been using for years
Dominic White@thedarktangent That seems to be the trend. A spike then it settles down to a new baseline higher than the last but lower than the spike. I’ve noticed an uptick in interactions on my personal stuff but the toots have needed to be “higher quality” to garner it and it’s mostly driven by a boost from a bigger account. Leads me to conclude we’re still in early social graph building stage.
Sherri Davidoff@thedarktangent Personally I’ve been on social media less and out in the real world more… maybe others as well? Not always a bad things… remember this? https://youtu.be/tESH1Yxxdj0
Itchy and Scratchy and Marge
Hacker Factor@thedarktangent On my other Mastodon account, I'm seeing an increase in followers who have zero postings, zero activity, and zero followers -- but who are following dozens or more security people and journalists.
@hackerfactor Yeah something is going on. Even people trying it out would post some and say hi to friends, but with the interaction ratio dropping maybe automation and scrapers have entered the scene.
@thedarktangent I noticed that Google is now indexing Mastodon. I did a Google search this morning (on a tech topic, not ego search) and found one of my own Mastodon postings.
Josh@thedarktangent @hackerfactor maybe they are sitting on handles or maybe its feds trying to get at followers only posts from hackers
@thedarktangent dont worry Im out here shitposting enough for all of us
Juan Zapata@thedarktangent Most likely people setting their username apart. Also in my case I have noticed that since I joined Mastodon, my overall interaction with both Mastodon and Twitter is way down, compared with when I was only on Twitter. Also I interact mostly with people I follow, and most are still posting in both, so very little reason to interact the same way in both. I have also noticed people that went full stop with Twitter already getting second thoughts and I bet will be back in 6months.
DMussington-PhD (he/him)@thedarktangent Have been on Reddit of late, more than here. Also, still learning the dynamics of multiple instances. Signed up on defcon.social, but most of those I follow are elsewhere. That’s probably part of it.
NotMyBub 
@thedarktangent I only have a small instance of about 200. And for sure we had a large spike of signups over the past few weeks, but I'd say about 50% of those accounts are now inactive. Many of the active ones are just reading and searching, not posting content.
Dave Aitel@thedarktangent my speculation is that microblogging itself is way down . For a lot of people kicking the Twitter habit meant doing less social media in general. When people leave Instagram they don't all move to TikTok I think.
0xZer01@thedarktangent a new wave has arrived because of 3rd party apps being blocked on twit
@thedarktangent There was a lot of anxiety flushed over here, now people might be settling in and finding sustainable social media use patterns.
I have notifications disabled to avoid the pavlovian programing, and open the app once a week.