this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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Fediverse

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Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

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Your thoughts on the concentration of users around big and flagship instances ? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

It's inevitable.

It also serves to give new users a stable instance that they can learn on. Then they'll either switch instances, stay with the biggest, start their own, or abandon federated social media entirely.

But that initial stability gives the best chances of people staying. I started on the big, obvious ones for lemmy and Mastodon. On lemmy, I abandoned my .world account pretty quick for this one because it offered what I need. It ended up being one of the bigger ones, but I don't plan on switching. But when someone in my life wants to try lemmy, I tend to recommend one of the less annoying instances lol.

Mastodon, it was similar; .social didn't fill my needs, so I migrated. Twice so far.

There's always going to be a "biggest" instance. It's going to be the one that's easiest to find. You could plug in the smallest instance for Mastodon, and it would decentralize more. But it might also overwhelm that instance. Mastodon in particular has an organization that can maintain a solid instance with massive numbers. Letting it serve as a gateway just makes sense.