Mastodawn

Chris Trottier Apr 18, 2023

The Guardian wrote about Mastodon yet again today. I find @wilf’s reporting on Mastodon stats to be dodgy.

While MAUs are half of peak—to be expected when comparing to November 2022—HYAUs are at their current all time high of 4.5 million. That’s important because, as it turns out, a month isn’t enough to assess whether people use a service.

That said, kudos to him for actually interviewing real Mastodon users.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/18/mastodon-users-twitter-elon-musk-social-media

@fediversenews

Thousands fled to Mastodon after Musk bought Twitter. Are they still ‘tooting’?

The decentralized social network has seen user numbers drop in recent months, but tech-savvy users remain passionate

The Guardian

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Jeff Moe Apr 18, 2023

@atomicpoet @wilf @fediversenews

This post has updated numbers:

11,126,426 accounts
+1,601 in the last hour
+33,131 in the last day
+222,241 in the last week

https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110221356197921435

Where is The Guardian getting the 1.2 million number from? [CITATION NEEDED]

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Adam Apr 18, 2023

@jebba
Monthly active users:
https://fediverse.observer/stats

@atomicpoet @wilf @fediversenews

Fediverse Observer checks all sites in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home from a map or list or automatically.

Fediverse Sites Status. Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!

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Jeff Moe Apr 18, 2023

@breakfastmtn @atomicpoet @wilf @fediversenews

That says Average Mastodon Network Total Users Per Month is up, Servers Online Per Month is up, Comments Per Month is WAAAAAY up (hockey stick), Posts Per Month is up, but active users monthly has tanked. I'm skeptical of these numbers.

Of course, The Guardian chose the "active users monthly" as their metric, the only one that has (dubiously) gone down.

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Adam

@jebba
I agree the story is much more complicated than MAU, although "active users" is a pretty common metric. Really, those numbers were always skewed though since many were only active in creating an account in case Twitter disappeared. So the narrative of users leaving is false since many weren't ever really here. Lots of them could return as Twitter continues to degrade.

The fact that user activity has continued to increase at an insane pace definitely deserves more coverage!
@atomicpoet