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@atomicpoet @fediversenews OTOH if I'm reading the plots correctly this trend seems to have preceded the “mastodon.social by default” change in the app, so it's probably unrelated, although the change would do nothing to improve things there.

@oblomov It will probably accelerate the trend.

@atomicpoet @oblomov One simple solution to this that maybe @Gargron could consider: have the #Mastodon app cycle through numerous different instances (say 100) as the default sign up instead of just @Mastodon.

This would make on boarding easy for the user as well as promo decentralization at the same time. Of course, the other admins would have to agree to receiving a lot of traffic.

Plus it would be helpful if those instances had “mastodon” in their name to avoid confusing new users.

@darnell @atomicpoet @Gargron @Mastodon
one thing I think would be useful would be to at least include one or two generalist “local” instances in the loop, although that does present the issue of knowing where the user is (and giving them the option to change selection if the guess was wrong), but that might complicate things a bit, UX-wise.

@oblomov @darnell @atomicpoet @Gargron @Mastodon

Yea, it's a nice idea, except #gargron has little influence over other generic instances.

My general read on #mastodon's movements lately is that it's taking it's brand and product a tad more seriously now, which involves stretching out and flexing it's muscles a bit more. It's so big though that a little push from mastodon is huge for the fediverse.

mastodon's reality: App + mastodon.social + software stack = a brand, full product & UX.

@oblomov @darnell @atomicpoet @Gargron @Mastodon

Thought experiment:

If all of the #fediverse were to fade away and we were left with just #mastodon as a non-profit and it's app and mastodon.social as a big centralised twitter clone ... it wouldn't be the absolute worst thing in the world. In fact it'd be kinda nice, especially given that the software is OSS and people could be putting up small community focused servers for whatever reasons.

It isn't insane for masto to think this way.

@atomicpoet @oblomov @darnell @Gargron @Mastodon

> Diaspora* ... they really don't like interoperation with other platforms.

Which only helps mastodon.social ... best of both worlds: All-in-one centralised town square with no worries about being fediblocked or picking "the right instance" but still connected to the rest of the fediverse which is mostly bending over backwards to maintain compatibility with your server because it's the only game in town.

@atomicpoet @oblomov @darnell @Gargron @Mastodon

I emphasise this general point because I recently saw people caught in the middle of a fediblock drama literally thinking the above argument through. They didn't want drama and figured mastodon.social was the only place they could go to avoid it.

@atomicpoet @oblomov @darnell @Gargron @Mastodon

Feels a little like, maybe, the lesson to soon be learnt is that federation *without more* is just another path to a different kind of centralisation not unlike that of major cities or cultural hubs, where the connectivity feeds the centralisation as much as any other factor.