 #Mastodon monoculture problem > Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole #Fediverse, on a single instance. > Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software. 馃У/1 30 comments
I also dive a bit into why the apparent monoculture of #Mastodon on the #Fediverse is a risk to the whole network, and why identifying all of Fediverse with just Mastodon leads to problems. For example, if we only talk about Mastodon, people will (and do!) demand features to be implemented in that project even though there are other, compatible, projects that might already have them, and might fit the particular use case or community better. 馃У/3 Finally, I give a laundry list of things that I believe need to happen to mitigate the risk stemming from #Mastodon monoculture on the #Fediverse. I also list some things every person using fedi can do themselves to help mitigate that risk. I've already seen one vibrant decentralized social network wither on the vine due to monoculture and flagship-instance-itis, and while fedi is much bigger and more resilient already, I do think we should worry about it here too. 馃У/4/end  @rysiek I think something missing from the list is: Set up limited defederation, which hides new posts from mastodon.social on public timelines but keeps followers and followings active. This amplifies decentralised accounts while not impacting existing relations. @sheogorath I thought about it and decided against it for now. But that's just my opinion, of course.  @rysiek Perhaps mastodon.social should be the learner instance: the one you join when you first start using the fedi but which you're expected to migrate off of to a more appropriate to you instance in a reasonable time (6 months?). (I have slightly more nuanced thoughts on the actual implementation but does the principle make any sense?) @edavies it would definitely make more sense if it was set up that way, than the way it is set-up today. @edavies It would work if the mastodon.social domain would be changed to something like mastodonbeginners.social. With such domain name many people would migrate to other instances naturally, as soon as they would start to feel uncomfortable with "beginners" part. #MastodonSocial #MastodonBeginners #MastodonMonoculture #Mastodon #Fediverse @rysiek @chlopmarcin Yes, something like that might help. I've tooted on this idea once before: the other one mentioned this: https://functional.cafe/@edavies/110264604135941189  @rysiek Thanks for your valuable thoughts - yes, the monoculture Mastodon is and will be a problem in the #Fediverse .
 @rysiek  @TerryHancock @rysiek It鈥檚 why I chose newsie.social and advise people to choose not to big, not too little. We go back to the early days of the Internet. #NotMyFirstDistributedSystem  @rysiek thanks for posting this. I have it in a tab to read a lil later and may comment again, I just wanted to say that I'm very much in agreement that the Mastodon monoculture needs to change, I've thought so for years and I'm really hoping I can get my personal crap sorted so I can work on the projects I've been dreaming up for so long to change it. high hopes for this summer.  @Micha艂 "rysiek" Wo藕niak 路 馃嚭馃嚘 Thanks for this writeup! These problems are felt every day by those of us using, and preferring, software other than Mastodon. Especially the part about people using "Mastodon" to refer to the social network is really annoying.
@rysiek@mstdn.social Thank you fot that article. It is important for us here to remember that decentralization should NOT have center. @rysiek wouldn't it help if the ActivityPub protocol and future developments of it was maintained by the IETF or some other standards organisation? @rysiek well, look at that! That is a sign of maturity, and I'll guess that OStatus didn't have this when the mentioned fragmentation happened? There are no guarantees ever that one instance/brand won't get big enough to break away from the ecosystem and manage on their own, to everyone's detriment probably. Still, it's an interesting discussion. I don't really know enough about the alternatives to Mastodon-The-Software. Some questions popped up: @rysiek I've migrated my account from one Mastodon instance to another. Could I also migrate to another type of instance if I wanted? For example, migrate my account from a Mastodon instance to another instance running GNU Social? Could a site admin migrate their entire site, including users and content, to another software? Eg from Mastodon to Friendica or GNU Social? > Could I also migrate to another type of instance if I wanted? Probably, depends on the other instance software. > Could a site admin migrate their entire site, including users and content, to another software? That's almost certainly way trickier.  @rysiek@mstdn.social great article! Also, the official link for Calckey is https://calckey.org @rysiek@mstdn.social thanks for putting this good read together, and really appreciated it being down as a blog post as well as a thread 馃憤  @rysiek  @OutOnTheMoors ah, ok. I was worried there for a sec. Thanks! :blobcatfingerguns: @rysiek @faoluin One reason I'm a little optimistic is, although I'm on mastodon.social, most people I follow are not. In most social networks, about 10% of the people create about 90% of the content, and these people skew away from the big servers. So there's some systemic pressure for everyone to be good federation members. But yeah, my slight optimism does not mean I feel I can just shrug and assume everything will be fine. So I'm happy that people are being pushy about good federation |
Gregory's Server
In the blogpost 猬嗭笍 I mention the history of #StatusNet (the software), #OStatus (the protocol), and identi.ca (the biggest instance). Identi.ca used to be about 1/10th of all of "OStatus-verse". Then it got redeployed using incompatible software and tore the heart out of that decentralized social network.
I feel this history is very relevant today, as mastodon.social is about 1/10th (by monthly active accounts). And continues to grow.
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