This seems like incredibly lazy reporting. Yes, there was a flood of new signups, and not all of them became regular users. But look at the growth of actual usage and posts of the Fediverse, and it continues to go up.
I've seen a few articles with this framing lately, and it's just so lazily misleading.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-mastodon-bump-is-now-a-slump/
@mmasnick I mean, that chart shows average users plateauing at about 3x what it was before November which seems pretty good to me. Lots of apps have this kind of growth curve at different points - surge of interest followed by stability.
@thealexknapp @mmasnick the active users tripled and this is a…problem?
@no1lion99 @thealexknapp @mmasnick
reading through these comments reminds me of how Bitcoin Twitter responds when the price crashes from 70K to 20K
@mmasnick I'd be keen to see any of the Verge writers that are here, get stuck into a good story about Mastodon.
@mmasnick@mastodon.social By 2005 2025 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's Fediverse's impact on the economy social media has been no greater than the fax machine's Google+.
@mmasnick I sense a new TechDirt article coming...
@mmasnick I mean if crashed all the way back to pre-November levels that'd be one thing. But it's still shown impressive growth and more and better third party apps and more general instances are on the way. It's a very strange take on Mastodon.
@mmasnick The implication of the headline that a 50% retention rate over 30 days is somehow bad news is absolutely amazing.
@fediversereport @mmasnick
What's the percentage of inactive users on the birdsite?
@TCatInReality @fediversereport @mmasnick count me among them since they reinstated a certain monstrosity's account against better judgment
@imissthejoe @fediversereport @mmasnick
Just deactivate your account
Even leaving it unused gives Musk legitimacy and another user to pitch to advertisers.
@TCatInReality @fediversereport @mmasnick you're right. I just didn't even want to see the place again after logging out quickly, but I've been happy long enough without it to say goodbye forever to it.
@imissthejoe @fediversereport @mmasnick
Great. Please go back and deactivate.
@TCatInReality @fediversereport @mmasnick also what’s the percentage of spam and troll users? There was a mild implication that there was more moderation to do after the bump but that’s also receded. So there are fewer people than at the peak, but also fewer bad actors. Of the ones that left, what was the proportion of people nobody wants to hear from anyway? Twitter can keep its fascists and racists, thanks.
@mmasnick [four billion people have used this thing. eight billion people are alive]
"this suggests that billions of people don't like this thing."
@mmasnick a lot of my feed is Twitter reposts. I think it’s too early to judge how far Mastodon engagement has come. I have seen only one person say “I’m returning to Twitter”
I think it will take some time for people to fully transition. Maybe the upcoming API changes will see another surge in activity.
At the moment Mastodon is only 10m users, so very early days.
@mmasnick Probably written by AI
@mmasnick Had the same thought. I saw someone make mention of the Gartner hype cycle, which I had not heard of, but I have now misplaced the user to properly cite them:
@mmasnick I don't know how much of a bump it'd be, but I wonder how people changing servers work into these numbers.
A bunch of us bailed when the Mstdn.plus server went haywire and signed up on new servers. We obviously can't post in both places but we're still active.
And I'm sure some people on the defective server left, thinking Mastodon itself was dead. People there were asking where everyone was for days.
@mmasnick
Maybe they should've posted that article somewhere on the Fediverse, where people can actually read it.
@mmasnick
It's lazy clickbait headlining not even supported by the article. There's a desperate tone to some of this, many journalists are hating having their Twitter audiences dwindle.
@mmasnick is it lazy reporting, or is it pushing a narrative? The end effect is the same either way.
@eniko said it well:
> So mastodon gained 2.1 million users in two months and and retained 1 million of them, which is damn near 50% retention. Any product manager in the universe would commit cold blooded murder to have that kind of growth with that kind of retention
Knowing that not all Mastodon servers are federated and some are linked to some but not all other servers, I wonder how the API calculates true active users.
We do know that total accounts continue to grow.
Open-source and decentralization are democratic in nature. It's not really a surprise that authoritarians like neolibs can't wrap their heads around it.
The laziness is because it's of a piece with so many other stories that disparage social and economic cooperation that they don't have to build an argument. It's the natural effortless propaganda of the courtier to power. And it works because people are absolutely flooded with "capitalist realism", over and over.
@mmasnick it matches my experience
@voron what does?
@mmasnick I’m relatively new here, but, the premise that there was a lot of activity & now it’s faded fits my experience.
I built 6 lists have a huge follow list
It’s pretty dead these days compared to a month ago
Of course it’s just anecdotal but that’s what I’m experiencing
@anderspuck @voron @mmasnick following hashtags has really helped me. I even had to stay off all weekend so I would spoil the rugby games on CNBC.
@anderspuck @voron @mmasnick I have been in the fediverse since 2015(ish) and the pattern is always the same. Something happens that pushes a lot of people to sign up to the fediverse, then slowly, many of those slowly abandon their account and active users decrease. Despite that, there's always people who decides to stay and the fediverse has been steadily growing from one wave to the next.
If you find that things are getting less active, it is probably because most people you follow made their account during the last wave (i guess). I have not noticed that decrease in activity because most people I follow was already here before.
Believe me, when I came here, there was sooo much less people!
Cheers!
@anderspuck @voron @mmasnick Yeah, many people create multiple profiles (using some as a backup, or for different purposes) and only use one, I myself have more than one.
@voron interesting. i haven't seen that at all. but i've tried to follow a pretty big list of active accounts
@mmasnick Anecdotal experience varies. I tend not to follow “tech focused accounts” which seem to be a dominant demographic of long term users here, so that might be part of it. Computer talk/coding tends to make my eyes glass over
@mmasnick Almost all online uptake has bumps, then a cooldown, but the drop never goes below pre-bump levels. This happened in the early days of the web, when big events drove users to news sites. Traffic soared, dropped a bit, then hit a new sustained plateau with the next event.
That's exactly what's happening with Mastodon.
@mmasnick on the personal side, I find that I may not use twitter much or at all these days as I have this account. Even if I’m not active here, I stopped being active there. Mastodon helps me feel like I can be as active as I want to be. Twitter was good at creating that belief I needed to be up on everything in real time
@mmasnick @jeffjarvis If one is used to covering these things by rewriting press releases into something that sounds like a horse race, that’s mostly likely what it’ll sound like.
@mmasnick Agree. Three steps forward and two back is still progress. Mastodon and the Fediverse will continue to improve. As for journos who have gone back to the dead bird site, as well as others who haven't left or made the switch, some of that may be about reach (scaling is different here) as well as user-friendliness. Need more "how to's" / FAQs geared specifically to journalists—a start-up guide that also explains what Mastodon is (and is not).
Nothing changes overnight. The migration from the birdsite is, and will be for a while, like a messy divorce, with a lot of regret and back and forth. But eventually, since trust has been broken, the split is inevitable.
having in mind of what "we are used to" it's actually not to bad reporting in my opinion.
the overall reality is true:
* it scaled well
* server to their knees, even having in mind the upgrade of mastodon software wasn't really an issue
* people that left again is normal, not even a real issue, in any case "better for everyone"
* journalism reconed it's value
(not even mentioned)
* we are fine and if people want or need to, a true alternative exists
.. the rest is BS
@mmasnick too difficult to use not simplied and in layman's terms not computerization ones...
@mmasnick I had the same reaction when I read it this morning.
@mmasnick It's like judging sea level at low tide, or global warming on a cool day. People who signed up and wandered away now know that the service exists, and may wander back, who knows. The real question is whether the Fediverse will attract continuing support by virtue of being useful, and the answer there is pretty obvious.
@mmasnick also, no shit it isn’t a direct replacement. I’m sure most of us would be happier if it were!
@film_girl @mmasnick not all of us. i certainly don’t crave an ad-driven centralized Twitter clone.
@mmasnick This mirrors similar reports about #MySpace back in the day. People were sure that #Facebook posed no challenge. And for a little while, they were right as MySpace had a huge lead.
But the trend wasn't their friend. Inevitably, MySpace died, and so will #Twitter in the not-too-distance future.
@mmasnick agree 100% ... and it's likely not much different than the trends seen when other social networks enter the awareness of the general public. A bunch of people sign up, some of them become very active contributors, some become intermittent contributors, and others become... oh look, a shiny new toy over there!!
@mmasnick plus Elon has just killed 3rd party apps which were the best part about Twitter in general. That’s not going to do them any good. All the producers are coming over here.
@mmasnick wired lost the plot a long time ago. These days I only read their articles if I want to be disappointed or worse.
@mmasnick It really depends where Mastodon bottoms out. It’s not going to kill Twitter overnight like people thought but it could start growing again.
@mmasnick "quoted server admin had 4900% increase in active users. Clearly mastodon is on the way out"... Also, holy shit! they're framing CDA§230 as something "on the way out" instead of "we need to fight like hell to keep this in place"? what the hell has gotten into tech journos?
@mmasnick You're right, it was a badly written article. And the accompanying picture, what was an image of a line of penguins supposed to convey? (Poorly-selected images, and likely a stock photo--one of my pet peeves, and a sign of a publication out of imagination and funds).
@mmasnick I've wound down Twitter for Mastodon after my engagement on Twitter dropped off a cliff. I presume I was shadowbanned, but eh whatever.
The community on Mastodon is great, positive and supportive. Occasionally my posts go wild, too - it's got me into the habit of posting daily and striving to post interesting stuff.
On the bird site, I have no desire to post. My timeline is increasingly filled with corrupt liars. I do still visit to stay up to date with some friends, but that's it.
@mmasnick yes, and also, why does everything always have to be a horse race? Why does the media always focus on winners and losers? It is so tiresome.