Mastodawn

Tim Chambers May 25, 2023

This seems very important and worth ongoing study:

“Once again, results suggest a rise in diversity as the 10 biggest server contribution to the Fediverse is reduced by more than 10%. So, even if the biggest servers are accumulating more users, it seems that the Fediverse is becoming more decentralized.”

@fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediversenews

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/analysis-of-fediverse-diversity-in-terms-of-decentralization/3252

Analysis of Fediverse Diversity in terms of Decentralization

Hello! Following a previous analysis (!it’s in catalan language!) and recovering the interest on the Fediverse, I’ve extended my analysis focusing in software diversity in that case. The two time points analyzed are from September 2022 and May 2023. In the initial analysis above there is a mistake. The dataset used is obtained using script based on this code written by @spla. Before getting into the analysis itself, I want to state that the active users measure is somehow confusing. Some ser...

SocialHub

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)May 25, 2023

@tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediversenews Interesting! Although there are some quirks in the data, with joindiaspora and diasp.org (neither of which are Mastodon) in last March's accounts and not the current list, and with mastodon.cloud and gc2.jp going from over 10% of MAU to not appearing at all in the latest statistics.

maegul May 25, 2023

@jdp23 @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @[email protected]

Also, it'd be nice to know something about what comprises all the "others", how many accounts do those instances have, how many of them are there?

Otherwise, it'll be interesting to track this going forward because mastodon.social right now is growing faster than it did between March and 17 May ... the picture could very well look different when comparing May to August.

marcelcosta May 25, 2023

@maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

>Also, it’d be nice to know something about what comprises all the “others”, how many accounts do those instances have, how many of them are there?

Others means all the rest! Which means 21089 in May (as shown in the first table).

>Otherwise, it’ll be interesting to track this going forward because mastodon.social right now is growing faster than it did between March and 17 May … the picture could very well look different when comparing May to August.

Totally true! I would like to take monthly pictures (with the help of @spla, which is the author of the API query script).

maegul May 26, 2023

@[email protected] @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @[email protected] @spreadmastodon @spla

Thanks for the reply!

Any chance others can get their hands on the data set?

maegul May 26, 2023

@[email protected] @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @[email protected] @spreadmastodon @spla also, another question … any insights on your your data set and its creation would differ from any of the others out there like fedidb or instances.social?

spla May 26, 2023

@maegul I get the dataset from all peers of my server and then from all peers of my server's peers. After collecting all those peers, my code get the nodeinfo URL of all of them and ask it for users and MAU data, so only *alive* servers data is saved to the dataset.
Here is the code https://git.mastodont.cat/spla/stats
The bot @fediverse is publishing global registered users and MAU.

@marcelcosta @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

stats

Get and publish all fediverse's servers stats: total alive servers, total registered users and total Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Forgejo: Beyond coding. We forge.

maegul May 26, 2023

@spla @fediverse @[email protected] @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @[email protected] @spreadmastodon

Awesome! I've already been following that bot. Thanks!!

spla May 26, 2023

@maegul you are welcome! by the way, you can ask any server or soft data to it, check its profile to see how you can do that.

@fediverse @marcelcosta @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

marcelcosta May 26, 2023

@spla @maegul @fediverse @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @fediversenews @spreadmastodon Wow, I found a huge mistake in my analysis!

The first time point it's not from March but from September! I am a bit embarrassed, but this is what happens when you rush because of time (and also, chaos in date format).

In fact, this makes more sense and is also interesting because it seems that some months after big October wave, it seems that Fediverse is more decentralized.

maegul May 26, 2023

@[email protected] @spla @fediverse @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @[email protected] @spreadmastodon

I've got the impression that it was somewhat necessary that mastodon be more decentralised in order to take on all the new users as the larger instances, or some of them, struggled. mastodon.social, for example, didn't really gain more users from Jan to March, IIRC.

marcelcosta May 26, 2023

@maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @spla @fediverse @fediversenews @spreadmastodon Sure, these waves have overloaded even not-that-big instances, causing them to close registration for a time. From September, the number of servers has increased by 3.

If we had a historical of the server picture, would be really interesting to trace the movements and evolution of the Fediverse…

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)May 26, 2023

@marcelcosta @maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @spla @fediversenews It turns out there's some interesting fedidb snapshots available via the Wayback machine.

9/20/22: https://web.archive.org/web/20220920163257/https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon

12/7/2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20221207200249/https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon

3/5/2023: https://web.archive.org/web/20230325171158/https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon

5/1/2023: https://web.archive.org/web/20230501121833/https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon

FediDB - Developer Tools for ActivityPub

Developer Tools for ActivityPub

marcelcosta May 27, 2023

@jdp23 @maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @spla @fediversenews That is interesting! There are snapshots from prior to Octobers wave and also from October, November, December, etc… So we can monitor what happened with that wave, what was the dynamics of users.

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)May 27, 2023

Yes! Even though the data's noisy and incomplete there are clear differences in dynamics in different time periods. For example (I think, if I did the math right)

9/20/2022 to 12/7/2022: mastodon.social + 71K
mastdn.social +80K

12/7/2022 to 3/25/2023:
mastodon.social +115K
mstdn.social +41K

3/25/2023 - 5/1/2023:
mastodon.social +91K
mastn.social +3.6K.

[EDIT: correcting some of the data]

@marcelcosta @maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @spla @fediversenews

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)Jun 5, 2023

@marcelcosta
An update on this: @spla's been archiving statistics for the last week at https://git.mastodont.cat/spla/stats/src/branch/main/dataset and the trend continues:

mastodon.social: +13K
mstdn.social: +400

It'll be interesting to see what effect the reddit influx has has on overall fediverse software and instance size diversity.

@maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @fediversenews

stats

Get and publish all fediverse's servers stats: total alive servers, total registered users and total Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Forgejo: Beyond coding. We forge.

maegul Jun 6, 2023

@jdp23 @[email protected] @spla @tchambers @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @[email protected]

So that's ~5.5x quicker growth per existing user (~30x quicker in absolute terms) between mastodon.social and the next largest english speaking mastodon instance, where mastodon.social is already ~5.5x larger.

Anyone want to nominate a numerical threshold beyond which it's unquestionably a problem of some sort?

Tim Chambers Jun 7, 2023

@maegul @jdp23 @marcelcosta @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @fediversenews

I think the point of @spla work was: big servers are growing dramatically, but the whole Fedi is getting more decentralized FASTER… if that is still true, then I don’t see a centralizing problem at this point.

marcelcosta Jun 7, 2023

@tchambers @maegul @jdp23 @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @fediversenews @spla That were my conclusions, yes!

Talking about instances, because at the software level there has been a big centralization.

maegul Jun 7, 2023

@[email protected] @tchambers @jdp23 @fediversereport @spreadmastodon @fediverse @[email protected] @spla

Wasn't the cutoff date for your analysis early enough such that the recent growth of mastodon.social due to being the default instance may have been missed?

marcelcosta Jun 7, 2023

@maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @spla @fediverse @fediversenews @spreadmastodon Sure, but I would like to wait a bit more to understand the trend.

I thought that mastodon.social visibility in media would have centralized the fediverse in October wave and after some months the result was the opposite! So, I would advice for some perspective.

maegul Jun 7, 2023

@[email protected] @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @spla @fediverse @[email protected] @spreadmastodon

I don't know, but I was under the impression that during early or middle parts of the migration wave mastodon.social wasn't ready to scale up so much and so the load had to be spread out.

Now they've built an ability to scale as needed: AFAIU, mastodon.social runs on kubernetes now. I'd imagine the only limitation on their ability to scale relatively quickly is their finances, and I don't know if anyone knows anything about that. Though, I would imagine being in even greater demand would only provide more opportunities to get more funding.

marcelcosta Jun 7, 2023

@maegul @tchambers @fediversereport @jdp23 @spla @fediverse @fediversenews @spreadmastodon That makes sense! I recently analyzed last splaDS entries and that would be the trend, although macro variation was minimal.

I'll publish the analysis as soon as I have time.

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)Jun 7, 2023

@marcelcosta looking forward to it!

@tchambers Marcel's original numbers from showed significant decentralization since last September but from the info in the archive.org snapshots it seems to me like there was a big decentralization was last fall (when as @maegul says .social closed regs for a while) and at least the US/Western European Mastodon world has been re-centralizing since late March

@fediversereport @spla @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)Jun 7, 2023

Looking at @spla's data for the week between 5/28 and 6/4, the changes in users are

Total Mastodon users: +93K
pravda.me: +57K
.social: +13K
pawoo: +3K
everything else: +20K

which has .social capturing at least 40% of the non-Russian/non-Japanese new users. That's a lot!

@marcelcosta @tchambers @maegul @fediversereport @spla @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

marcelcosta Jun 18, 2023

@jdp23 @tchambers @maegul @fediversereport @spla @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

Hi! I’ve found the time to analyze a bit more data from spla’s dataset.

First, the absolute number of accounts by software (with mastodon, left, or without mastodon, right).

And then the distribution as a % of the known fediverse (again with and without mastodon).

It is very clear the entry of kbin and growth of lemmy, also. Particularly in the MAU measure.

@marcelcosta @jdp23 @maegul @fediversereport @spla @fediversenews @spreadmastodon

Thank you!