Gregory's ServerDefederation should be a nuclear option only for virtually unmoderated servers in my book. Blocking larger servers doesn’t do any good, doesn’t 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.
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 @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 😁 ). @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)? |
@tchambers @rysiek
I've been trying to teach people about smaller servers for a long time, on things like @feditips and @FediGarden
It's tough though, because by the time they are on m.s the damage has been done. It's much harder to get people to move to a smaller server, than to steer them to the smaller server in the first place. If they start out on somewhere other than m.s, the job is much easier.
The problem we have is Eugen now has total control over most people's onboarding. If he says m.s is the server people should sign up on, most people will believe him and never look any further into it.
I don't think it does any good to allow this centralisation to continue. It doesn't encourage users to migrate, quite the opposite, it gives the impression that mastodon.social is the place to be. There could be runaway feedback.
If m.s gets bigger and bigger, and if Eugen shows no signs of changing course, I'm not sure there is any other way to affect the situation other than defederation.
@tchambers @rysiek
I've been trying to teach people about smaller servers for a long time, on things like @feditips and @FediGarden
It's tough though, because by the time they are on m.s the damage has been done. It's much harder to get people to move to a smaller server, than to steer them to the smaller server in the first place. If they start out on somewhere other than m.s, the job is much easier.