Raw numbers are perhaps not enough to get across just how bad the centralisation of the Fediverse by mastodon.social is. I've done a chart to show this visually, hopefully this will make the situation clearer?
Given the circumstances, getting people to join other servers except mastodon.social would greatly help decentralise the Fediverse. It's no longer big vs medium vs small, it's more like supergiant deathstar mastodon.social vs everyone else 😞
#Mastodon #Fediverse #MastodonSocial
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Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •p.s. For anyone wondering why this centralisation is a problem, here's an in-depth look at why mastodon.social's increasing percentage of the Fediverse is dangerous: fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-ide…
p.p.s. I'm not saying join any random server! I run a website at fedi.garden to recommend good alternative servers. My point was just that in terms of size, no other server is anywhere near as large as mastodon.social.
Fedi.Garden
fedi.gardenEl Duvelle reshared this.
Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •p.p.s. If anyone currently on mastodon.social wants help moving to a different server, there's an easy-to-understand step-by-step guide at fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma…
Let me know if you have any difficulties with any particular step 🙂
Transferring your Mastodon account to another server | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipsEl Duvelle
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •I think one of the main problems is you can't transfer your posts to a new account. But I heard that @jonny was maybe working on finding a fix for this! So, one can hope that if this gets fixed it will be much easier for people to move out of mastodon.social.
PS: thank you for all your great guides :)
Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle
If you follow the guide, your old posts will remain in existence and help redirect people to your new account 🙂
Jürgen Hubert
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •@elduvelle
I recently did a poll, and nearly half of all people who voted said that it bothered them that their posts didn't migrate with their accounts.
I have to admit, I was quite surprised.
El Duvelle
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •@juergen_hubert you were surprised that it wasn't more? Or less?
@FediGarden
Jürgen Hubert
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle
That it wasn't less.
I mean, for me #Mastodon is #microblogging first and foremost. And in microblogging, posts are ephemeral and soon forgotten. Personally, I don't really _care_ what I posted a year ago - unless I bookmarked it. And even then, the old posts arent even _gone_ unless the old instance closes down.
But evidently, a very large number of Mastodon users feel very differently about this.
mementomori.social/@juergen_hu…
Jürgen Hubert (@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social)
Jürgen Hubert (Memento mori)El Duvelle
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •@juergen_hubert
I see! Indeed I am more on the side of "permanent repository of my thoughts", I often search my old posts for some link, poll or info that I know exists in the past. I wouldn't want to migrate instances if it meant loosing my post history. I'd rather loose my follows / followers - you can always find then back - than my posts.
I guess I probably also have some trauma from when I had to leave twitter to join mastodon and had to say bye-bye to all my precious tweets.. Not ready for that to ever happen again!
Ben Royce 🇺🇦 🇸🇩
in reply to El Duvelle • • •i've moved and deleted thousands of old posts. it doesn't bother me, i think like juergen. but also, i never quote post, and don't see the point: just reply to the person
but i appreciate some people want to keep their posts forever, and like quote posts. it's not like someone else having another option hurts me in any way
but moving posts is *hard*
if you reply to 10,000 comments on 1,000 servers, then move, every database on every server needs an extensive update
Moss Wizard
in reply to El Duvelle • • •El Duvelle
in reply to Moss Wizard • • •It's also not that easy to set up, you have to figure out a host, make the website, regularly update the website, probably pay for the domain name etc. (I never made a website, there are probably a lot more steps). It's a good thing to have but certainly not a replacement for social media.
Jürgen Hubert
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle @Moss
It's possible to split the middle, though. For instance, I am running a #WordPress site - and turned it into a #Fediverse server with the #ActivityPub plugin.
Now people can search for individual blog posts on their Fediverse instance, and read it and comment on it as if it was a Mastodon post (for instance).
There are also quite a few other Fediverse-based blogging solutions that allow people to blog right into other people's feeds.
Moss Wizard
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •El Duvelle
in reply to Moss Wizard • • •@Moss right.. I certainly wouldn't have the motivation to do that. Plus wouldn't you need to ask permission to the posts authors for their content to show up on your website? What if they delete / edit their posts later?
Nah, I just want account migration to work properly on here and not having to worry about any of that :)
@juergen_hubert
Moss Wizard
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle @juergen_hubert Hmmm your posts are “precious” but you don’t have any motivation to protect them. If you have an expensive piece of jewelry, do you leave it out on the street because getting an apartment or lock box is too much effort?
Also, migrating accounts doesn’t delete your old posts—they just stay on the old server, where you can find them and boost them anytime you like, as long as the server hasn’t been deleted.
Veronica Olsen
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •El Duvelle
in reply to Veronica Olsen • • •@veronica
5000 posts 😭 @juergen_hubert @FediGarden
(This is my post count.. I'm not proud)
me
in reply to Veronica Olsen • • •Jürgen Hubert
in reply to me • • •...out of curiosity, how often have you actually looked at it since you downloaded it?
El Duvelle
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •@juergen_hubert @me @veronica
I also spend hours (days?) figuring out how to get a twitter archive working.
Do I go back to it sometimes? Yes! I would say once every few months to try and find something that I posted. Unfortunately it couldn't archive other people's posts, or even poll results, so it's not that useful.
I also used it to (re-)make some of my pinned posts on here, e.g:
neuromatch.social/@elduvelle_n… (my "work" account)
neuromatch.social/@elduvelle/1…
This is the archive: elduvelle.github.io/
El Duvelle Neuro (@elduvelle_neuro@neuromatch.social)
El Duvelle Neuro (neurospace.live)Emma Liv 🌈 🇨🇦 🏳️⚧️
in reply to El Duvelle • • •hannah aubry
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to hannah aubry • • •@haubles
Hi Hannah,
Thank you for taking the time to reply about this 🙏
If it's any help for the discussions within Mastodon, Nextcloud solved this issue by drawing up a pool of reliable instances with good track records, then recommending one from the pool on a rotating basis.
Because they only recommended one at a time it avoided the "paralysis of choice", but as it was rotated it spread the growth, and because the pool was all reliable instances it maintained a level of quality.
hannah aubry
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •of course! 💞
That’s one solution we’re discussing. And we’re looking at it from the account migration perspective too. We know it needs to be easier to switch instances. The technical solutions will take time, but there are things we will start doing immediately to try and help this in the meantime, too - things like doing more education about the existence of other servers, improving tutorials about how account migration works now, revisiting the server covenant, etc. Are there any other non-technical things we should start doing immediately, while the technical changes are in progress?
Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to hannah aubry • • •@haubles
Yeah, there are many different aspects to this, definitely!
Switching the "Join mastodon.social" buttons to instead recommend a different server from a pool would be the quickest and easiest first step. It wouldn't need technical changes, it could be manually edited, and recommended server changed manually monthly or whatever? (Obviously you would need to check first with server admins that they are okay being in recommended pool 🙂 )
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Fedi.Garden 🌱
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •@haubles
About helping people move, if you find any of the text on my site at fedi.tips useful it is available for anyone to use and build upon under CC-By-SA 4.0
I know my site's appearance has a slightly more janky homemade feel which may not fit in with your site's slicker appearance, but perhaps some of the text might be useful?
My transfer guide is at fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma… for example.
Whatever you decide, thank you for communicating, it's greatly appreciated!
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Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipshannah aubry
in reply to Fedi.Garden 🌱 • • •