4 ms·

A few generalist instances dominating the fediverse and dictating its policy doesn't sound likely? It's slowly happening right now and will only make Mastodon a

A few generalist instances dominating the fediverse and dictating its policy doesn't sound likely? It's slowly happening right now and will only make Mastodon a slightly less centralized Facebook. Most people don't want to link their online persona to instances with stupid names and very strange rules. So they all flock to the more generalist ones which are few and far between and have an established user base and reputation. Since generalist instances are not "cool" to administer, only a few dedicated people maintain them and they will keep being few and grow larger and larger

allenbrunson 4y ago
that sounds to me like growing pains. i happened to find a “generalist” mastodon instance without really trying. i just read a few twitter ex-pats for awhile, to get the lay of the land, and picked one. i sent an email to the administrator, offering to donate some money, because i couldn’t find a donation link. if this one doesn’t work out, i’ll pick a different one. or run one myself! again: your criticism sounds to me like “social media has never worked, therefore mastodon also can’t work.” i choose to believe that there is something beyond the status quo.
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  I didn't say generalist instances are difficult to find, on the contrary they are the most popular. What I'm saying is that there's too few of them. > your criticism sounds to me like “social media has never worked" There is an entire paragraph where I explain exactly what functionality could be added to Mastodon to at least make it possible to be better. In its current state I believe it's bound to develop this behavior with no way to fix it
  - allenbrunson 4y ago
    i guess we will have to agree to disagree. i think it’s way to early to assume that. also, you titled your post “mastodon is not a good social network.” that is the very definition of pessimism, versus optimism.
    - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
      I could have titled it "Mastodon is a terrible social network" but I didn't because it's not a lost cause. I provided an argument and a modest suggestion. I don't think I can do much more in my positiom.
fleddr 4y ago
I saw a guy on Twitter expressing how he created an instance a while ago and didn't notice anything during the recent Mastodon influx. Not a single user joined his instance. He figured this is due to not being listed properly on some of the onboarding pages. He had tried to get on it, but failed. He then continued to collect some stats on all instances (which is difficult) and came to the conclusion that 90% of Mastodon instances have < 10 users, and most are closed/private. If true, then yes...users will flock to a small group of large instances. Which makes sense, you want to go to where the most people are, it's the entire point of a social network. If exponential growth continues (which I doubt), it will lead to existential problems. In costs, moderation, compliance, etc.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Looks like compliance might actually solve this ? We already have laws that kick in over a certain amount of users. Seems to be a pretty big incentive for instances to limit the number of users to accept, which would result in a lot of mid-sized instances, rather than your usual power law distribution ?
  - fleddr 4y ago
    Interesting. What is the cap size?
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Seems to be in 3 steps : - older than 3 years or more than 10M€/year of revenue - 5 million unique visitors per month

allenbrunson 4y ago

that sounds to me like growing pains. i happened to find a “generalist” mastodon instance without really trying. i just read a few twitter ex-pats for awhile, to get the lay of the land, and picked one. i sent an email to the administrator, offering to donate some money, because i couldn’t find a donation link. if this one doesn’t work out, i’ll pick a different one. or run one myself! again: your criticism sounds to me like “social media has never worked, therefore mastodon also can’t work.” i choose to believe that there is something beyond the status quo.

AstixAndBelix 4y ago
I didn't say generalist instances are difficult to find, on the contrary they are the most popular. What I'm saying is that there's too few of them. > your criticism sounds to me like “social media has never worked" There is an entire paragraph where I explain exactly what functionality could be added to Mastodon to at least make it possible to be better. In its current state I believe it's bound to develop this behavior with no way to fix it
- allenbrunson 4y ago
  i guess we will have to agree to disagree. i think it’s way to early to assume that. also, you titled your post “mastodon is not a good social network.” that is the very definition of pessimism, versus optimism.
  - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
    I could have titled it "Mastodon is a terrible social network" but I didn't because it's not a lost cause. I provided an argument and a modest suggestion. I don't think I can do much more in my positiom.

fleddr 4y ago

I saw a guy on Twitter expressing how he created an instance a while ago and didn't notice anything during the recent Mastodon influx. Not a single user joined his instance. He figured this is due to not being listed properly on some of the onboarding pages. He had tried to get on it, but failed. He then continued to collect some stats on all instances (which is difficult) and came to the conclusion that 90% of Mastodon instances have < 10 users, and most are closed/private. If true, then yes...users will flock to a small group of large instances. Which makes sense, you want to go to where the most people are, it's the entire point of a social network. If exponential growth continues (which I doubt), it will lead to existential problems. In costs, moderation, compliance, etc.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
Looks like compliance might actually solve this ? We already have laws that kick in over a certain amount of users. Seems to be a pretty big incentive for instances to limit the number of users to accept, which would result in a lot of mid-sized instances, rather than your usual power law distribution ?
- fleddr 4y ago
  Interesting. What is the cap size?
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Seems to be in 3 steps : - older than 3 years or more than 10M€/year of revenue - 5 million unique visitors per month