this post was submitted on 07 May 2023
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Technology

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Mastodon monoculture problem (rys.io)
submitted 2 years ago by rysiek@szmer.info to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi), the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and lead developer of Mastodon-the-software, got some people worried about the outsized influence Mastodon (the software project and the non-profit) has on the rest of the Fediverse.

Good. We should be worried.

Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole Fediverse, on a single instance. Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.

This has poor consequences now, and it might have worse consequences later. What also really bothers me is that I have seen some of this before.

I go on to dive a bit into the history of StatusNet (the software), OStatus (the protocol), and identi.ca (the biggest instance) on a decentralized social network "grandparent" of the Fediverse.

And draw an analogy to show why mastodon.social's size, and Mastodon-the-software-project's influence on broader fedi is a serious risk we need to do something about.

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[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

My understanding is that mastodon.social is actually blocked by a fair few instances. Sometimes for the sole reason that it’s simply too big for effective moderation to occur.

It seems natural that the fediverse evolves toward a big centre with lot’s of small instances on the fringe that are more bubbly/fragmented in their connectivity … just like cities.