@Kristoffer Lawson No. It's not bots. There is no such wave. Just read scripts. It has some limitations and all what you see on graph can be easily explained.

@martin how do you explain it?

@Kristoffer Lawson
Script take one time "http", second time "https", third time "http", etc. Teeth on graph.
There is limit on new users. If script find new server, it will grow slowly, per partes, like a wave. Not at once. And there is no wave in these days. I know it. I have data for about 14 000 servers.
Script shows 4500 servers. It's nonsense...
On these 14 000 active servers there are 6.6M users. Not 10M. But 10M(including on old servers which are down for long time) is nice anyway. Just this script has its limitations. As its numbers. 🤷‍♂️

year,month,day,period,time,usercount,statuses,instances
2023,03,19,04,20230319.04,6591883,776225498,13828
2023,03,19,06,20230319.06,6592130,776259926,13828
2023,03,19,08,20230319.08,6592349,776283472,13828
2023,03,19,10,20230319.10,6592616,776311590,13828
2023,03,19,12,20230319.12,6593507,776682375,13841
2023,03,19,14,20230319.14,6593830,776745602,13841
2023,03,19,16,20230319.16,6594114,776815283,13841
2023,03,19,18,20230319.18,6594479,776883528,13841
2023,03,19,20,20230319.20,6594797,776949493,13841
2023,03,19,22,20230319.22,6595168,777009788,13848

No wave...

@martin why not build your own bot or service that shows user numbers? The @mastodonusercount figures have always been a little suspect. Due to federation it’s impossible to get 100% accurate figures but by piecing what is known, you can get decent, comparable and rough numbers.

@Kristoffer Lawson I did. I showed you numbers from my script. 😂
But I haven't time to make graphs yet. Wait few days...

@martin I mean a regular service, like a Mastodon bot or similar.