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Your thoughts on the concentration of users around big and flagship instances ? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by anticurrent@sh.itjust.works to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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Mastodon has seen a renewed interest these last few days, but when you look at the statistics mastodon.social siphons the biggest part of the pie, it sees a few thousands new sign-ups a day, while medium sized instance and smaller ones only get a few, sometimes just single digits increase.

This has been exacerbated since mastodon changed its UI both on web and mobile apps, to make the flagship instance the default one for sign-up in an effort to lower the entry barrier, which on the same time is leading to unhealthy concentration, on a platform that advocates for decentralization through federation.

Do you think this is the way forward on the fediverse ?

#mastodon #pixelfed #lemmy #fediverse

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[-] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 17 points 1 month ago

I really dislike it, the better way would have been randomly choosing one of the mid sized ones.

[-] Madiator2011@lm.madiator.cloud 5 points 1 month ago

Same here. One reason why I build my own instances for my friends :)

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Great. Are you participating in Lemmy Federate?

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

any idea how much disk space it costs to join this? like if you have an empty instance, does it add more than 1GB per month?

[-] iso@lemy.lol 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I created this tool and have been using it in my instance since the very beginning. My instance is almost 2 years old and it's total database size is 60.2GB.

What people don't understand about this tool is:

  • If a community is generating enough activity, it's likely that someone from your instance is already following that community.
  • If a community isn't generating enough activity, it won't create much of a network/storage burden anyway.

Sure, it will make a small difference, but it's nothing compared to the benefits it provides.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Thank you for the tool and the information!

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 1 points 1 month ago

this is the way.

small instances that can have niche content, owned and operated by those users (think beehaw) but with the ability to consume/interact with content from the rest of the fediverse (onramping).

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

At least the Lemmy site randomizes the instance list for you.

[-] greywolf0x1@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Way to go

this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
75 points (94.1% liked)

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