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Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

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Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#31

Post by thejohnconway »

ajross wrote: post #10

The pessimism of the comments here confuses me. In fact, Mastodon has handled this extraordinarily well, as I see it. I'm very much in the "median Twitter user" bucket: I don't post much, I have a feed of a few hundred accounts that I follow because I want to hear what they have to say, and I browse the feed once or twice on most days to catch up, with occasionally binges during newsworthy events. And... I've done al…

Yeah, I run a Mastodon server, registrations are open, and it's never gone down. What I see mostly are people coming over from Twitter and making a go of it. Some bounce, most stay, and some vastly prefer it.

Part of the trick is moving over communities. You don't need the world and its dog. It's working already. It's replaced Twitter for me, and then some.

The pessimism here on HN is bizarre! Isn't this what so many people wanted?

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#32

Post by jeffbee »

phoe-krk wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter only works because it is centralized. The fediverse works less and less well as the number of federated instances increase. It has anti-scaling properties. And, on the non-technical side, it has a disorganized anonymous set of moderators you've never met or ever heard of, with no particular guiding philosophy or rules, and these guys have total access to your profile and they can do anything they want. On the…

> And, on the non-technical side, it has a disorganized anonymous set of moderators you've never met or ever heard of, with no particular guiding philosophy or rules, and these guys have total access to your profile and they can do anything they want. Didn't you just describe Twitter?

Nobody knows what the hell is going on with MuskBird, but when it was still Twitter there was a two-sided terms of service, under which Twitter offered its users concrete, enumerated benefits. Mastodon instances do not have "terms of service" they have "rules". The "rules" are unilateral in that they bind the user and not the service provider. The entire model is strictly worse for the user than Twitter was.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#33

Post by georgyo »

phoe-krk wrote: post #26
323 wrote: post #5

It seems the Mastodon ecosystem has serious problems scaling. Most of the servers are closed to registrations, and we are just talking about a couple million new users over 2 months. What if 100 mil users want to move? Are we going to relive the Twitter history, which crashed every time Justin Bieber tweeted?

It's an error to treat the Fediverse as you would treat Twitter, where there is a singular platform in some way external to its users. Fediverse is a mesh network with single-user instances being feasible. If a single node has problems scaling, split it up. If a whole network has problems scaling, add more nodes. Fediverse is not yet at levels where the whole network is congested, either.

This is a nice thought, but reality is always different.

A really popular person might have many millions of followers on tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes.

That person then boosts a post from another server and they have effectively DDOSed that server. All the other nodes will start querying that server about that post or image.

You can say that a single user should not have that many followers, however the root of the issue is that mastodon will have some scaling issues.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#34

Post by [deleted] »

cbozeman wrote: post #8

Mastodon is not and will not ever be a replacement for Twitter. Twitter's too large and the people who had bleu checks before the $7.99 fee are addicted to attention, validation, and/or lording their bleu check status over others. That's why Mastodon won't replace it. Sure, a few small (relative to Twitter) alternative Mastodon instances will pop up, but no real challenger or contender for the throne.

[deleted]

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#35

Post by this_user »

phoe-krk wrote: post #26
323 wrote: post #5

It seems the Mastodon ecosystem has serious problems scaling. Most of the servers are closed to registrations, and we are just talking about a couple million new users over 2 months. What if 100 mil users want to move? Are we going to relive the Twitter history, which crashed every time Justin Bieber tweeted?

It's an error to treat the Fediverse as you would treat Twitter, where there is a singular platform in some way external to its users. Fediverse is a mesh network with single-user instances being feasible. If a single node has problems scaling, split it up. If a whole network has problems scaling, add more nodes. Fediverse is not yet at levels where the whole network is congested, either.

And who is supposed to do all of that? Without a central organisation doing resource planning, scaling, and paying for all of that, this is never going to run smoothly. 99.99% of users have no interest in running their own instance. Even groups or organisation will eventually get to the point where running and scaling their instance becomes a full-time job. But without any way of monetising that work, or finding sponsors, there is not much incentive to do that.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#36

Post by vorpalhex »

drstewart wrote: post #11
nerdponx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pay a hosting company to run one for you. At least you get to control your own community and moderation. Even if you are still subject to the whims of your hosting company, you still retain a fair amount of autonomy unless you are running a community like Kiwifarms (in which case I find it hard to be sympathetic anyway), or your hosting company happens to be located in a jurisdiction with enforced censorship laws.

Exactly. The average person is dying to pay to have the privilege of an extra job moderating and administrating their own social feed! This is a bulletproof plan that really understands consumer behavior.

Who says unpaid? Make your friends buy you dinner or throw some cash your way.

One of the benefits of the fediverse is that you can experiment with new payment models.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#37

Post by phoe-krk »

jeffbee wrote: post #32
phoe-krk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, on the non-technical side, it has a disorganized anonymous set of moderators you've never met or ever heard of, with no particular guiding philosophy or rules, and these guys have total access to your profile and they can do anything they want. Didn't you just describe Twitter?

Nobody knows what the hell is going on with MuskBird, but when it was still Twitter there was a two-sided terms of service, under which Twitter offered its users concrete, enumerated benefits. Mastodon instances do not have "terms of service" they have "rules". The "rules" are unilateral in that they bind the user and not the service provider. The entire model is strictly worse for the user than Twitter was.

> Mastodon instances do not have "terms of service" they have "rules". The "rules" are unilateral in that they bind the user and not the service provider.

Of course they do. If the instance administrators do not abide by the rules they set, every user has the possibility to jump ship to an instance whose team actually does its job properly. This is undoable on Twitter, which makes me doubt that the overly general statement of

> The entire model is strictly worse for the user than Twitter was.

holds any actual merit.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#38

Post by xigoi »

deltarholamda wrote: post #22
spaceribs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I could pose this question another way, what does Twitter do that Mastodon can't?

If you want to give somebody your handle, you say "@elonmusk," instead of saying "@elonmusk@mast.don.vanity.tld". (I didn't think Horseshoe Theory would bring back bangpaths, but here we are.) Personally I believe a big central silo for so-called public discussions is a terrible idea, but I do understand there is some value to it. However, there will always be a problem with this sort of thing because a very large nu…

> If you want to give somebody your handle, you say "@elonmusk," instead of saying "@elonmusk@mast.don.vanity.tld".

People seem to be using e-mail just fine…

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#39

Post by phoe-krk »

georgyo wrote: post #33
phoe-krk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an error to treat the Fediverse as you would treat Twitter, where there is a singular platform in some way external to its users. Fediverse is a mesh network with single-user instances being feasible. If a single node has problems scaling, split it up. If a whole network has problems scaling, add more nodes. Fediverse is not yet at levels where the whole network is congested, either.

This is a nice thought, but reality is always different. A really popular person might have many millions of followers on tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes. That person then boosts a post from another server and they have effectively DDOSed that server. All the other nodes will start querying that server about that post or image. You can say that a single user should not have that many followers, however the roo…

Yes, and we're already seeing it e.g. with https://mas.to getting hugged to death because of pg joining it. If anything, it can be treated as a technological problem, solvable e.g. by (theorizing now) splitting a single instance over a series of machines, or a social problem, by (not theorizing anymore) a famous enough person hosting their own instance as already suggested several times on the Fediverse. The Fediverse will eventually establish a concrete way for handling that sort of matters.

Re: Server stats say movetodon.org reached a new record of 49k users yesterday

#40

Post by phoe-krk »

this_user wrote: post #35
phoe-krk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an error to treat the Fediverse as you would treat Twitter, where there is a singular platform in some way external to its users. Fediverse is a mesh network with single-user instances being feasible. If a single node has problems scaling, split it up. If a whole network has problems scaling, add more nodes. Fediverse is not yet at levels where the whole network is congested, either.

And who is supposed to do all of that? Without a central organisation doing resource planning, scaling, and paying for all of that, this is never going to run smoothly. 99.99% of users have no interest in running their own instance. Even groups or organisation will eventually get to the point where running and scaling their instance becomes a full-time job. But without any way of monetising that work, or finding spon…

Donating to server admins seems to work for the instances whose growth I'm in/directly observing. And then, running an instance with a few hundred users is not a resource hog.
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