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Chris Trottier

๐ŸŽ† ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐Ÿฅณ TIME TO CELEBRATE! ๐Ÿฅณ ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐ŸŽ†

๐Ÿ“Š ๐Ÿ“ˆ THE FEDIVERSE JUST REACHED 1 BILLION AVERAGE POSTS PER MONTH!!! ๐Ÿ“ˆ ๐Ÿ“Š

fediverse.observer/stats

84 comments
Chris Trottier

I'M OVER THE MOON TONIGHT ๐ŸŒœ๐ŸŒ๐ŸŒ›

1 BILLION FEDIVERSE POSTS!!!

THIS JUST GETS BETTER!

Chris Trottier

Yeah, reaching 10 million Mastodon accounts was cool.

But how about 1 billion posts per month?!

Seriously, wow!

We're a chatty bunch!

Chris Trottier

@oblomov In all the excitement, can you blame me for fat fingering a letter?

๐Ÿ˜ƒ

Oblomov

@atomicpoet I just found the typo particularly notable, don't know why 8-)

10 billion accounts would be a really interesting target, especially considering the world population isn't that big!

PTEC3D

@oblomov @atomicpoet Hey - I'm not saying it's aliens . . .

Chris Trottier

You know what's even more fantastic?

In September 2022, 581 million Fediverse posts were sent.

7 months later, posts have almost doubled!

Chris Trottier

Media pundits can talk and talk and talk about whether the Fediverse can ever hit critical mass.

But I don't know.

Is 1 billion posts per month enough critical mass?

mau

@atomicpoet It already has critical mass - the crowd here is overall more interesring and intelligent. This will slowly attract all influential users here, and the rest will eventually follow.

Chris Trottier

Here's some more great stats about the Fediverse:

1. Half Year Average Users (HYAU) just reached an all time high of 4,786,827

2. Active servers might soon hit 25,000

3. Misskey is the fastest growing part of the Fediverse, and in just one month doubled in size from 100,690 accounts to 226,480

Things are really taking off!

Chris Trottier

You know what's even more impressive about 1 billion Fediverse posts per month?

So much of it is quality.

Don't get me wrong, spam exists and I saw some of it yesterday.

But most of the time, I'm reading stuff that I enjoy.

Chris Trottier

People ask if the Fediverse can scale. They wonder if decentralized social media has the wherewithal to handle "serious" network traffic.

1 billion messages per month should be the answer!

How do we do it?

It's quite simple: horizontal scale is scale.

KarlE

@atomicpoet with all respect and gratitude, the #Fediverse should not be content with how it works so far. It scales by omission - in a way what they accused twitter, it just happens for different reasons.
When three people on different servers click on a post, they might assume they get to see the full thread. However, they will likely see three different selections of responses, one may be lucky and see them all because he shares the server with the original poster, ๐Ÿงต

KarlE

@atomicpoet one may see a big proportion because they are on a large server where someone follows someone else and it gets propagated. a third will think why the heck does this not get any responses because they only follow the original poster and nobody else on their server is interested in the topic.
Subscribe to a hashtag and what you get will differ immensely.
I do not think this is a situation that is desirable and we should be complacent about.

KarlE

@atomicpoet I think when clicking on a post in the web "client", my server should fetch the thread. This would allow meaningful discussion on a common ground.

Simon Lucy

@atomicpoet

That's not exactly scaling. If a single instance fails completely then all its users fail to get service, can't even login, that isn't scaling it's a Point of Failure. That instance could itself be scaled but it can't hand off the load to other instances and users can't migrate without their instance being up.

There are other distributed but non scaled features like attachments, in that case attachments are a burden for all instances and probably a limiting factor.

Chris Trottier

@simon_lucy And what if a centralized service goes down? Well, youโ€™re shit out of luck. Which was the case with Google+, Friendster, Vine and a whole lot of services.

On the Fediverse, the network persists even if one instance goes down.

I can also still read messages from instances that are no longer even active.

Simon Lucy

@atomicpoet not if it's scaled. Yes if it ceases to operate at all. Just like Mastodon instances that fail. You may get historical posts on Mastodon because they are on other instances but that is not scaling that's a kind of eventual consistency.

Don't confuse scaling for traffic with resilience of an overall service made up of independent operators. Resilience, product resilience is important but it is not the same as scaling to a level of traffic that's magnitudes greater than at present.

Chris Trottier replied to Simon

@simon_lucy You miss the point. Scale doesnโ€™t even matter if Big Social pulls the plug on the service.

On the Fediverse, that will never happen.

Whatever scaling benefits you believe come from centralization ultimately means jack if the service lacks persistence. Which eventually is going to happen for Big Socialโ€”itโ€™s always a matter of time.

Meanwhile, the Fediverse is now sending 1 billion messages per month. And itโ€™s doing this because 22,000+ instances are federating right now.

Simon Lucy replied to Chris

@atomicpoet

At which point did I say centralisation?
You're using the term scaling in an entirely inappropriate way.
How many of those billion messages are unique? How many get to be viewed or themselves cause further messages. Just spouting numbers out of context makes no sense.

Scale always matters and it makes no difference whether it's what you call centralised, single ownership, or multiple individual ownership.

Chris Trottier replied to Simon

@simon_lucy Bullshit. I'm using scaling in the context of "How does 1 billion messages get sent."

And it's 100% true that the Fediverse is capable of sending 1 billion messages per month, as we've already just seen.

mekka okereke :verified:

@atomicpoet

I'm less concerned about Mastodon itself "scaling" and more concerned about it DDOS'ing tiny sites all over the internet. This problem is still getting worse.

Mastodon encourages a resurgence of blogging, but simultaneously can increase the technical burden of hosting a small blog.

I'm also not that worried about ActivityPub "inefficiency," because at some point, some working group is going to finish a spec for an updated ActivityPub, and servers are all going to slowly migrate.

Chris Trottier

@mekkaokereke Now this is quite a valid concern, and something that has frustrated me at length.

I actually do wonder what will happen once thereโ€™s 100 million active users, and a site goes viral.

Enrique Barcelli

@atomicpoet @mekkaokereke

This is a good point. Each site fetches the posts from the original site, right? so the only 'efficiency' comes from multiple users in one instance sharing the same fetch.

There are about 23,000 instances at the moment and about 10,000 users.

Is it possible to model/simulate some scenarios for something going viral and the kind of burden they may put on different types of instances? ๐Ÿค”

Tony Hoyle

@atomicpoet
If it's simply boosted a lot, not a lot.. the post gets spread around servers and the original site doesn't see much of a hit.

If it's a link to a site, getting buried is a risk that has existed forever.. partly why things like blogspot took off.
@mekkaokereke

Daniel Freysinger

@atomicpoet Speaking from an American perspective, there are many who don't believe anything can succeed without a profit motive. Some of the best things in life are free.

Nia Molinari

@atomicpoet same, and my blood pressure is calmer.

Drifthood

@atomicpoet content is everything, now that we can own it, we own it all

kit

@atomicpoet @chancerydaily Iโ€™m really impressed that itโ€™s hit that level and not become total overload for small servers

Mark Darbyshire

@atomicpoet Do the stats for Misskey include Calckey or is that separate?

Chris Trottier

@mark I believe that's separate.

Calckey has 4,546 users with 355,214 posts sent per month.

Mark Darbyshire

@atomicpoet Interesting, so given the growth rates, Misskey could be on its way to replacing Calckey again.

Chris Trottier

@mark Not really. You got to consider where Misskey's growth comes from: Japan.

Mark Darbyshire

@atomicpoet Oops, I meant overtaking, not replacing.

Chris Trottier replied to Mark

@mark I suspect that Calckey has overtaken Misskey amongst English speakers.

DELETED replied to Chris

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social @mark@tech.lgbt it has its reasoning. afaik Misskey isn't even fully translated into English. documentation and issues are all in Japanese. not all non-native Japanese speakers can read Japanese, even

Ten Pound Auspol

@atomicpoet The "Mastodon effect" has definitely put the fediverse as a whole on peoples radar. I work in IT but literally had never heard of the fediverse until Elon shat all over Twitter.

Since then I've also discovered other tools like Pixelfed and Write.as and thinking about migrating to those as well.

Chris

@atomicpoet Seeing that Twitter apparently has (or had, source below) ~456,000 tweets per minute โ€” which is roughly the Fediverses "monthly mass" in 36.53 hours โ€” i don't think the "evil media pundits" care all that much.

bernardmarr.com/how-much-data-

Chris Trottier

@christopherklay Your math is off.

Either way, itโ€™s not news that Twitter sends more messages than the Fediverse.

Chris

@atomicpoet My bad, somehow messed that up. It doesn't really change the point, but it's fixed now.

The point here being; Media is well aware that the Fediverse exists and is growing. It's just that the entire Fediverse โ€” with all of it's different endpoints/services โ€” still only makes up ~5% of the posts of a single non-fedi service (Twitter) at this point.

It's good to see it growing and i definitely prefer it here โ€” but it's still absurdly tiny compared to the mass that is social media.

DELETED

@atomicpoet

I billion posts per month on the Fediverse speaks for itself as being awesome!

Sincerely, Monica Andrews

Sampath Pฤแน‡ini ยฎ

@atomicpoet Wonder how this compares to Usenet newsgroups in 1995

Amaury Cork โ˜‘๏ธ

@atomicpoet it is particularly true if you compare Twitter users and tweets! Far more people on Twitter just created an account and are not using it.

anubis2814
@atomicpoet What I would love to see is the number of responses. I bet its way higher per post compared the the birdsite.
John Samuel

@atomicpoet
That demonstrates the increasing activity on Fediverse. Unbelievable number, compared to last year.

Chip_Unicorn

@atomicpoet
I would say that the posts on the Fediverse are above average...

Killer Space Squid

@atomicpoet Whew, my fingers are tired from so much posting. In Dr. Evil's voice, one bill-i-on posts. Hehe.

Arindam Basu

Unfortunately thereโ€™s not much interactions or dialogues, or at least I do not get responses to things that I post. Itโ€™s more like people just put posts and not react or respond to anything. I am not sure any more whether a billion or a trillion individual posts without interactions matter more than a few posts with many responses and discussions โ€ฆ

Frottier

@atomicpoet
cool. do the high quality premium posts next.

Eniko | Kitsune Tails out now!

@atomicpoet can't believe people think there isn't a big enough potential audience for them on a platform with a billion posts per month

Oblomov

@atomicpoet the November jump is very visible there too: the change in slope is dramatic.

Andrew

@atomicpoet I'm glad I could contribute by making so many average posts

Chris Trottier

@zyklop Let me explain:

1. Mastodon isnโ€™t the Fediverse, it is merely part of the Fediverse
2. An โ€œactiveโ€ user is simply measured by how many people log into their account
3. While Mastodon MAUs is inching down, HYAUs just peaked at 4.8 million active accounts
4. Certain Fediverse server software, such as Misskey, is growing faster than Mastodon
5. Your chart isnโ€™t recent and stops at Jan 2023

Miia Mustang

@atomicpoet ๐Ÿคฏ๐Ÿฅณ๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿพ๐Ÿฅ‚

Krita :transgender_flag:

@atomicpoet Three hundred and seventy four posts every second.

Xela

@atomicpoet Amazing, we should praise Elon for his tireless striving to increase the Fediverse. ๐Ÿ˜œ If only he weren't such an unappealing personality.

But joking aside, seems like people start to actually explore and use alternatives to Mastodon, which I find interesting. IMO that was overdue. Don't get me wrong, I like M, but the Fediverse is more than just one implementation. ๐Ÿ˜„

DELETED

@atomicpoet
applauses applauses ๐ŸŽ† ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐Ÿฅณ CELEBRATE! ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐ŸŽ†

๐Ÿ“Š ๐Ÿ“ˆ THE FEDIVERSE JUST REACHED 1 BILLION AVERAGE POSTS PER MONTH!!! ๐Ÿ“ˆ ๐Ÿ“Š

โ–ถ๏ธ

@atomicpoet I thought a lot of people jumped ship in April 2022 when Elon first announced he wanted to buy Twitter but I guess nobody posted on Mastodon when they made the jump?

Chris Trottier

@jakeduhjake It was a small jump. Not as big as the jump in November.

thepoliticalcat

@atomicpoet Hey, wow, I should be getting more traffic! /jk

SGOTI

@atomicpoet Now tell us how many post are cat related?

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