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Top-level
 It's got to be stopped, and it will only get worse the more it grows. I've been keeping an eye on the meter at https://instances.social/mastodon.social and it currently shows mastodon.social as 13.8% of all Fedi users. I know it will be painful for people to defederate from 1 in 7 users, but it will be a lot less painful than 1 in 4, or 1 in 2, or wherever it is heading for on the current course. 30 comments
Yeah, might be worth considering! I'm waiting for the next update of the official app to see if they fix the onboarding. If they leave it as it is, with m.s still promoted as the main way to sign up, that will say a lot about their intentions (IMO).  @FediThing wait, did they mention they are considering removing m.s as the blessed default?  @rysiek @FediThing I think a coordinated mass limiting (i.e. "silencing") for a one to two week period might be enough of a shot across the bow without inconveniencing too many users who are caught in the cross fire without being really aware of the issue. Because of their size/default instance for the official app etc. I feel like limiting is the best near term step. Leaves defed as a final option if things continue to go south. @rysiek @FediThing because a portion of this is a political issue, the coordination should include educating/informing the general population about what is happening, what changes they'll experience as a result, what the goals are, when it will resolve (or escalate if not addressed.) Otherwise we may just drive a bunch of people back to Birdchan/Bluesky because they suddenly lost 1/3 to 1/2 of their followers/following. Yes, definitely. Mastodon gGmbH is setting up lots of unwitting users for a nasty shock, it's very irresponsible of Eugen to play "defederation chicken" like this. Maybe we could take a model from real life industrial disputes, where strikes are brief to begin with and become more frequent if the management refuses to talk? @FediThing @rysiek yep. Exactly. While I think that all who are concerned about the current direction are totally in the right, I think it's important to consider how it plays for what is now a large part of the Mastodon user base who doesn't know/doesn't care, and at least make some attempts to bring them along. Reach/teach those that are reachable/teachable anyway. Some still won't care, but at least an attempt can be made. @mrbitterness@exile.social @rysiek@mstdn.social @FediThing@tech.lgbt  Defederation should be a nuclear option only for virtually unmoderated servers in my book. Blocking larger servers doesn鈥檛 do any good, doesn鈥檛 encourage users to migrate or set up own servers, and seems self-defeating. Better would be help mid to smaller servers do better distributed outreach and onboarding and teach users on big servers the value and ease of moving to smaller servers. And I say this as an admin of a small/medium server.  @tchambers yeah, that's my concern. let's say that everyone does defederate m.s and people do spread across smaller servers, but after some time one of those grows in size and gets hit by a similar wave of spammers. do we repeat the same thing over and over, further fracturing the Fediverse? at some point most people will grow tired of it. @noodlejetski @tchambers @FediThing or we learn that maybe we should keep instance size in check and spread the load. Large instances disable registrations, admins that want more action open new instances instead of scaling one till infinity and beyond. @rysiek @noodlejetski @tchambers @rysiek It's a server admin's duty to close signups if they are growing too large. They can redirect people to sign up on other servers instead. This is what mastodon.social themselves used to do very regularly. What we need to avoid is any instance being "too big to defederate", it's like banks being "too big to fail".  @tchambers @FediThing @rysiek Yeah, I am happy on mastodon.social but I never discourage people from migrating off. It's a good landing zone, but it's healthy for people to move off into more specific communities.  @tchambers Funny, I've been arguing this too, but I'm starting to come around to @FediThing's position. The combination of John Mastodon's decision to funnel most newbies into his mega-instance, with the persistent crypto-spam coming from it, is the final straw for me. Something's got to give. (1/3) @tchambers a) reverse the decision to funnel all new users of the official apps into his instances b) manually approve all new accounts on them to weed out spammers (2/3) @tchambers d) maintain a mod to user ratio of no lower than X per thousand. Thoughts? (3/3) @strypey @tchambers @FediThing I don't find ultimatums useful. Plus he already knows what needs to be done. Anyone is free to defederate anyone, but everyone can ask "to what end?" Defederation is a fundamentally self-defeating tactic to fighting centralization. And when does it stop? The top 3 largest servers etc? Top 10? Much better: focus on growing the middle and lower end serers than blocking the big. There's a danger is that the more m.s grows the more the network effect will kick in. I'm often having to deal with people on @feditips who think m.s is better because it's where everyone is going anyway. There could be a feedback loop where growth causes growth. Also, as m.s gets bigger there's more chance of it being sold to someone worse. Eugen might change, or get bored, or get an offer he cannot refuse (not mafia, but just a lot of money 馃榿 ). @tchambers @strypey @rysiek @feditips Growing middle and low ends is what used to happen on the old onboarding, where it asked people to choose a server. It no longer does that, and people are no longer being driven to middle and low ends. That alone should be cause for concern. @FediThing @strypey @rysiek @feditips The proper use of "network effects" should be to rally the thousands of mid-range and smaller servers to grow, and to encourage users to migrate to them from M.S. not to balkanize or fragment the Fedi. Onboarding doesn't only happen at the JoinMastodon level unless folks don't push it at the local servers. BTW: the new onboarding now only apply to the mobile app, right, the web UI is unchanged? And don't most use other apps now (Ivory, icebubes etc)? |
Gregory's Server
@FediThing I wonder if a coordinated one or two day temporary defederation from m.s by a lot of other instances, announced ahead, would provide enough of a shock to the system for this to start getting fixed?