5 ms·

Why isn't ActivityPub more peer-to-peer? Like, it's all in a few dominant nodes (eg: mastodon). Shouldn't it be 1000s of little nodes (community) or individual

Why isn't ActivityPub more peer-to-peer? Like, it's all in a few dominant nodes (eg: mastodon). Shouldn't it be 1000s of little nodes (community) or individual publishers?

MiguelX413 3y ago
That's what I do, at least @MiguelX413@pleroma.miguelcr.me
panic 3y ago
According to this page, there are 20k+ active nodes on the fediverse: https://fediverse.observer/stats https://fediverse.observer/stats
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  Thanks for this link! I wonder why France and Germany have 6 and 8 times as many servers as the UK. Mind you, per capita France and Germany also have way more servers than the USA. Interesting.
  - dumpsterlid 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ipsum2 3y ago
    Hetzner is in Germany, not sure about France.
    - byhemechi 3y ago
      my guess is OVH
  - input_sh 3y ago
    For one, Mastodon's author is from Germany, but I don't think that has a lot of impact. What definitely does is that the major European server providers tend to be located in one of those two countries (like OVH or Hetzner). Note that server location != user location, users could be anywhere in Europe without a noticeable latency. Doesn't make any sense for me to pay for a server located in my country when I can find one in Germany with an order of magnitude better performance for the price.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Also, I think a couple of the major white-label Mastodon hosting services live on Hetzner and/or OVH.
  - Jakob 3y ago
    I assume it’s a mix of cheap Hetzner/OVH, a bigger inclination for decentralisation and privacy, and an early adopter mindset. They lead many tech stats per capita. Another example is the amount of French and German wikipedia pages, patents, research, internet penetration, renewable energy … A shame that the focus on car manufacturing for so long cannibalised the software business. I think it could have been a software powerhouse, but was/is not focussing at all on it outside of some shining outliers.
  - midasz 3y ago
    I don't have the data to support it but I think Germans in general care a whole lot more about privacy than any other country
  - realfeel78 3y ago
    Maybe French and German users have lower standards for good UX.
    - mal-2 3y ago
      So tired of this take. There are so many frontends, besides just the built-in interfaces for Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma there's also web-based frontends like Elk and Enafore, and tons of different native apps on mobile.
anonymous_sorry 3y ago
Mastodon isn't a single node, it's a service that runs on many independently operated nodes.
- realfeel78 3y ago
  And it sucks.
halcy 3y ago
Activitypub does have many very small nodes, very few very large nodes, and few medium sized ones. A lot of this is people wanting to be on the same server that their friends are on (even if there aren't that many advantages to it), and just that structurally, running a largeish server is more cost- and time-effective per user. It'll be interesting to (if that ever happens) see whether bluesky, once it actually becomes a decentralized system instead of a closed one, shakes out differently due to protocol differences, or broadly follows the same patterns.
- realfeel78 3y ago
  > It'll be interesting to (if that ever happens) see whether bluesky, once it actually becomes a decentralized system instead of a closed one, If*
pjc50 3y ago
Running a node is a cost.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gwd 3y ago
From my perspective, the biggest barrier to entry for federated services right now is the fact that right up front, before you've ever even used the network, you have to make this massive decision with no real information to base the decision off of: namely which server to use. That's the main reason I'm not on it personally: It feels lame to just join the biggest instance, but none of the smaller instances really seem to "click", and I'm not really so keen that I want to run my own instance. Having One Obvious Choice to join to begin with is the best thing federated services can do to encourage wider adoption.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > you have to make this massive decision with no real information to base the decision off of: namely which server to use. I think people exaggerate how massive a decision this is. When the news that Twitter might be bought by a naughty melon broke, I revived an old mastodon.online account that I'd created back during a _previous_ Twitter scandal, used that for a bit, then moved to mastodon.ie. Moving is, generally, reasonably easy. Now there are edge-cases; your instance might just _go away_, say. But generally you can't go too far wrong by initially selecting one of the big ones and then moving as and when.
  - realfeel78 3y ago
    > Now there are edge-cases; your instance might just _go away_, say. That's only an "edge case" if you don't actually gaf about maintaining your account URI/content/social graph/etc. over time. "The Fediverse" is a bad joke.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      If it's of huge concern to you, then go for either one of the big reliable instances, or your own instance, yeah.
- numpad0 3y ago
  The Fediverse died when the largest instance in the world blocked the second && third largest mostly occupied by Japanese users, as well as the one created for American alt-right(the last of which being demanded by Apple/Google). The top 3 still holds 15% each of total Mastodon traffic. Last I checked, the Western or European parts of Fediverse had since been trying hard to distance, obscure, dilute and fight Japanese anime content, without much success. I suspect that's where your felt barrier comes from.
chrisnight 3y ago
What I’ve found from running my own mastodon server is that while self-hosting is a very nice idea to control your own account and manage your own timeline (specifically, choosing who to defederate with), there is a fundamental flaw with it. Everything must be copied over to your server first. Let me say that again: You only see data that is stored on your local instance. So likes, profiles, replies, etc are all very limited, since your server only stores them from people you follow (since you’re the only user). Not only this, but this works in reverse aswell. Only servers that know of your existence will see your posts. If no one is following you, only people (and people on their server) you directly reply to will see your posts. As such, being in a self-hosted instance or small community can be extremely isolating and make it hard to really network with other people outside of the circle that is already around you.

Why isn't ActivityPub more peer-to-peer? Like, it's all in a few dominant nodes (eg: mastodon). Shouldn't it be 1000s of little nodes (community) or individual publishers?

MiguelX413 3y ago

That's what I do, at least @MiguelX413@pleroma.miguelcr.me

panic 3y ago

According to this page, there are 20k+ active nodes on the fediverse: https://fediverse.observer/stats https://fediverse.observer/stats

anonymous_sorry 3y ago
Thanks for this link! I wonder why France and Germany have 6 and 8 times as many servers as the UK. Mind you, per capita France and Germany also have way more servers than the USA. Interesting.
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
- ipsum2 3y ago
  Hetzner is in Germany, not sure about France.
  - byhemechi 3y ago
    my guess is OVH
- input_sh 3y ago
  For one, Mastodon's author is from Germany, but I don't think that has a lot of impact. What definitely does is that the major European server providers tend to be located in one of those two countries (like OVH or Hetzner). Note that server location != user location, users could be anywhere in Europe without a noticeable latency. Doesn't make any sense for me to pay for a server located in my country when I can find one in Germany with an order of magnitude better performance for the price.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Also, I think a couple of the major white-label Mastodon hosting services live on Hetzner and/or OVH.
- Jakob 3y ago
  I assume it’s a mix of cheap Hetzner/OVH, a bigger inclination for decentralisation and privacy, and an early adopter mindset. They lead many tech stats per capita. Another example is the amount of French and German wikipedia pages, patents, research, internet penetration, renewable energy … A shame that the focus on car manufacturing for so long cannibalised the software business. I think it could have been a software powerhouse, but was/is not focussing at all on it outside of some shining outliers.
- midasz 3y ago
  I don't have the data to support it but I think Germans in general care a whole lot more about privacy than any other country
- realfeel78 3y ago
  Maybe French and German users have lower standards for good UX.
  - mal-2 3y ago
    So tired of this take. There are so many frontends, besides just the built-in interfaces for Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma there's also web-based frontends like Elk and Enafore, and tons of different native apps on mobile.

anonymous_sorry 3y ago

Mastodon isn't a single node, it's a service that runs on many independently operated nodes.

realfeel78 3y ago
And it sucks.

halcy 3y ago

Activitypub does have many very small nodes, very few very large nodes, and few medium sized ones. A lot of this is people wanting to be on the same server that their friends are on (even if there aren't that many advantages to it), and just that structurally, running a largeish server is more cost- and time-effective per user. It'll be interesting to (if that ever happens) see whether bluesky, once it actually becomes a decentralized system instead of a closed one, shakes out differently due to protocol differences, or broadly follows the same patterns.

realfeel78 3y ago
> It'll be interesting to (if that ever happens) see whether bluesky, once it actually becomes a decentralized system instead of a closed one, If*

pjc50 3y ago

Running a node is a cost.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gwd 3y ago

From my perspective, the biggest barrier to entry for federated services right now is the fact that right up front, before you've ever even used the network, you have to make this massive decision with no real information to base the decision off of: namely which server to use. That's the main reason I'm not on it personally: It feels lame to just join the biggest instance, but none of the smaller instances really seem to "click", and I'm not really so keen that I want to run my own instance. Having One Obvious Choice to join to begin with is the best thing federated services can do to encourage wider adoption.

rsynnott 3y ago
> you have to make this massive decision with no real information to base the decision off of: namely which server to use. I think people exaggerate how massive a decision this is. When the news that Twitter might be bought by a naughty melon broke, I revived an old mastodon.online account that I'd created back during a _previous_ Twitter scandal, used that for a bit, then moved to mastodon.ie. Moving is, generally, reasonably easy. Now there are edge-cases; your instance might just _go away_, say. But generally you can't go too far wrong by initially selecting one of the big ones and then moving as and when.
- realfeel78 3y ago
  > Now there are edge-cases; your instance might just _go away_, say. That's only an "edge case" if you don't actually gaf about maintaining your account URI/content/social graph/etc. over time. "The Fediverse" is a bad joke.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    If it's of huge concern to you, then go for either one of the big reliable instances, or your own instance, yeah.
numpad0 3y ago
The Fediverse died when the largest instance in the world blocked the second && third largest mostly occupied by Japanese users, as well as the one created for American alt-right(the last of which being demanded by Apple/Google). The top 3 still holds 15% each of total Mastodon traffic. Last I checked, the Western or European parts of Fediverse had since been trying hard to distance, obscure, dilute and fight Japanese anime content, without much success. I suspect that's where your felt barrier comes from.

chrisnight 3y ago

What I’ve found from running my own mastodon server is that while self-hosting is a very nice idea to control your own account and manage your own timeline (specifically, choosing who to defederate with), there is a fundamental flaw with it. Everything must be copied over to your server first. Let me say that again: You only see data that is stored on your local instance. So likes, profiles, replies, etc are all very limited, since your server only stores them from people you follow (since you’re the only user). Not only this, but this works in reverse aswell. Only servers that know of your existence will see your posts. If no one is following you, only people (and people on their server) you directly reply to will see your posts. As such, being in a self-hosted instance or small community can be extremely isolating and make it hard to really network with other people outside of the circle that is already around you.