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As Mastadon increases in popularity, how do they plan to make the choice of server easier? If 5000 remains a rough optimal size, how will then how will the next

As Mastadon increases in popularity, how do they plan to make the choice of server easier? If 5000 remains a rough optimal size, how will then how will the next 10M users choose from 2000 servers?

lokedhs 6y ago
Probably my having a few (or one?) very large servers where most people join. As much as I wished that wasn't the case, most people just want to join an established network and don't care about federation as a concept. A long as a single server doesn't take over altogether, however, I don't think there is a problem with large servers.
- Jabbles 6y ago
  Surely the problem with large servers is that they're difficult to moderate, difficult to grow a sense of community, and all the other problems that lead the OP to suggest that 5000 is a vague upper limit. If you are going to go with bigger servers, what is Mastadon doing to support them (socially, not technically)?
  - lokedhs 6y ago
    I think really huge servers will need a different moderation system. It wouldn't be the responsibility of the Mastodon team to manage or even design that. Also, mastodon.social has about half a million users, and they are having performance problems. I'm guessing if you want to scale that up by a factor of 10 or 100 you're going to need new infrastructure.
    - Jabbles 6y ago
      Surely the Mastodon team are very concerned with moderation? Given that everyone agrees it is vital for the success of the project (or any social network), why would they consider it outside their purview?
      - lokedhs 6y ago
        I meant that they wouldn't consider the difficulties of moderating a multi-million user instance. I believe they have enough to deal with when it comes to moderating their half-million user instance. Also I think a large number of those users have either stopped using it, or moved to different instances.
- curryst 6y ago
  They will need a way to migrate users between servers then. If your local feed is important, it's not a great plan to have users start on a suboptimal server and then have to make a new account on the one they want. If that's the case, I would generally expect to be able to migrate to a new server and have all my old posts, etc come with me, and that my user page on the old server would redirect to my new one.
  - lokedhs 6y ago
    There is a way to migrate servers. People have mentioned it in other comments. In short, it marks your old account as migrated, and messages is sent to your followers instances, asking them to subscribe to your new feeds instead. For the most part it's pretty seamless.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

As Mastadon increases in popularity, how do they plan to make the choice of server easier? If 5000 remains a rough optimal size, how will then how will the next 10M users choose from 2000 servers?

lokedhs 6y ago

Probably my having a few (or one?) very large servers where most people join. As much as I wished that wasn't the case, most people just want to join an established network and don't care about federation as a concept. A long as a single server doesn't take over altogether, however, I don't think there is a problem with large servers.

Jabbles 6y ago
Surely the problem with large servers is that they're difficult to moderate, difficult to grow a sense of community, and all the other problems that lead the OP to suggest that 5000 is a vague upper limit. If you are going to go with bigger servers, what is Mastadon doing to support them (socially, not technically)?
- lokedhs 6y ago
  I think really huge servers will need a different moderation system. It wouldn't be the responsibility of the Mastodon team to manage or even design that. Also, mastodon.social has about half a million users, and they are having performance problems. I'm guessing if you want to scale that up by a factor of 10 or 100 you're going to need new infrastructure.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    Surely the Mastodon team are very concerned with moderation? Given that everyone agrees it is vital for the success of the project (or any social network), why would they consider it outside their purview?
    - lokedhs 6y ago
      I meant that they wouldn't consider the difficulties of moderating a multi-million user instance. I believe they have enough to deal with when it comes to moderating their half-million user instance. Also I think a large number of those users have either stopped using it, or moved to different instances.
curryst 6y ago
They will need a way to migrate users between servers then. If your local feed is important, it's not a great plan to have users start on a suboptimal server and then have to make a new account on the one they want. If that's the case, I would generally expect to be able to migrate to a new server and have all my old posts, etc come with me, and that my user page on the old server would redirect to my new one.
- lokedhs 6y ago
  There is a way to migrate servers. People have mentioned it in other comments. In short, it marks your old account as migrated, and messages is sent to your followers instances, asking them to subscribe to your new feeds instead. For the most part it's pretty seamless.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]