Here's the problem.
Recent growth on mastodon.social is greater than the growth rate of November 2022.
But growth on other servers, like mstdn.social, has flatlined.
This has been confirmed to me by numerous Mastodon server admins.
Very concerning!
@atomicpoet @fediversenews is that worrying from a scientific perspective, should we expect in a system/network like Mastodon that all nodes grow at the same pace ? Will a large Mastodon.social not also lead to growth of other nodes in the end ?
@ErikJonker We now know, based on 50 years of Internet use, that unless you put designs in place, the natural evolution is centralization.
Centralization is "easy" at first. But then it becomes oppressive -- as we've already experienced with Meta, Twitter, and others.
@atomicpoet @ErikJonker switching node should be made easy then as well
@hermannus @ErikJonker It should be! Here's hoping that nomadic identity will become more of a concern soon.
@ErikJonker, I don’t think it should be viewed as a binary problem, e.g. the growth of gmail and outlook also correlates with the growth of other email providers, but it’s hardly what we want for obvious reasons. I think we should come up with a size threshold for an instance to healthy and sustainable, socially.
Unlike emails, most messages are public, so we’d want members, even though/if originally being total strangers, to develop a sense of community and self-regulation for common benefit. This can only be done if they know each other (in the sense of seeing others’ posts regularly) and I’d draw the line at around a few hundred (to be generous) active posters.
Cc: @atomicpoet and @fediversenews
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social @atomicpoet@mastodon.social @fediversenews@venera.social
Well, that’s exactly happened. So server admins started installing mastodon, and the network grew. Perhaps at the expense of others (oh well) #Fediverse
@ErikJonker @atomicpoet @fediversenews Trickle down growth? It never worked for economics, I’m not confident in this case either. The big ones just have more mass and influence and create a snowball effect, attracting more. See Gmail/Outlook.
There will be some churn, people starting at mastodon.social and then moving on to a quieter or more appropriate home. I don’t think that will be common, but I’d like to see someone studying that.