This is something I continue to think about a lot. I thought changing the default was a bad decision at the time and haven't changed my mind! It's not just the centralization aspects of it; it's also that (based on retention rates) most people don't have a good experience on .social -- so they wind up leaving fedi.
Rotating the default doesn't seem to me like it would address the :"good experience" aspect of the problem. For most people who are looking for a Twitter-like experience, .social's as good an approximation as anywhere else in fedi -- not great, but other instances aren't any better. And for people who are looking for a local community that aligns with their interests or geography, they're not going to find it on other largeish open-registration instances (and it doesn't make sense to have anything but a largesish open-registration instance as the default).
@julian@fietkau.social
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
Approaches that might work better involve integrating a good instance picker into the signup process, or an onboarding flow that treats the initial instance as a "starter instance", a base for exploring that makes it easy to move to another instance. Realistically though it's not clearly how likely it is that Mastodon gGmbH will prioritize the work that's needed to support either of these -- which isn't an argument against pushing for them, just that we should be looking for other alternatives as well.
In general it seems to me that might be better to focus our efforts in terms of making it easier to join communities in fedi as a whole, not just Mastodon. For many people something other than a Mastodon-based instance may well be a better choice. Of course that still leaves the problem of people who search for "mastodon", or have read an article about Mastodon and followed the links to either the Mastodon app or joinmastodon ... but I don't know how to address those without Mastodon gGmbH's cooperation,
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org I'm personally also quite intrigued by the idea of treating the default as a “tutorial server”. Video games manage to design sandbox areas that anyone can use to try out new toys, but that naturally get boring after a while unless you leave them and explore. I think trying to translate that concept to fedi servers could be fruitful, albeit difficult.
And actually I'd go farther and say it might be better to focus on community-led alternatives to commercial social networks in general -- not just fedi. For people looking for a US-focused, Black-centric microblogging experience, Blacksky might well be the best option today (and as Northsky becomes more real, that's likely to be a good option for a North American-focused 2SLGBTQIA+-centric microblogging experience). For people looking for a Palestinian-friendly photo/video-sharing app, Upscrolled might be a good option even though it's not decentralized.
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
I feel that its worth pointing out in these conversations that nobody starts new servers anymore. Its hard (to measure kinda impossible now since fedidb removed the 'first seen' statistic, and server age does not show up in nodeinfo), but virtually no new servers have been started since 2024 that have gotten over 1k mau, I think it was like 4 total (this spring when the stat was still available)
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
I feel that its worth pointing out in these conversations that nobody starts new servers anymore. Its hard (to measure kinda impossible now since fedidb removed the 'first seen' statistic, and server age does not show up in nodeinfo), but virtually no new servers have been started since 2024 that have gotten over 1k mau, I think it was like 4 total (this spring when the stat was still available)
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
It's a great point. Fediverse Observer still h as this info and from a quick pass it seems like the only new Mastodon instances with > 1K MAU that have started in the last two years are qlub, a québécois social network, and the alt-right server noauthority.social (which isn't completely new, since it was a split from noagenda.social). There are also a handful of peertube, wordpress, nodebb, and snac (!) instances.
( https://fediverse.observer/list and sort by Active Users)
@laurenshof@indieweb.social @julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org Anecdotally, I have been in contact with a professional association that is cautiously interested in hosting a Mastodon server for (possibly) a few hundred MAU in Germany, but is very scared of the social media liability laws that have gone into effect lately, some of them on pretty short notice.
Talking to them is an interesting mix of “we don't have a mandate to take this kind of risk” and “if we can't figure this out, then who can?”
imo a core problem is that perceptually, an app is usually tied software (the mastodon app) instead of network (the fediverse app) or server (the indiewebsocial app)
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services this is the kind of situation this new Mastodon service is aimed at, no? https://joinmastodon.org/hosting
@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
There are already many good independent managed hosting services for Masto and Fedi instances such as https://masto.host or https://fedihost.co or https://cloud68.co
It would be even more centralisation if Mastodon gGmbH was hosting other instances, they would become even more tempting for corporations to buy out.
@julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services this is the kind of situation this new Mastodon service is aimed at, no? https://joinmastodon.org/hosting
@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
There are already many good independent managed hosting services for Masto and Fedi instances such as https://masto.host or https://fedihost.co or https://cloud68.co
It would be even more centralisation if Mastodon gGmbH was hosting other instances, they would become even more tempting for corporations to buy out.
@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
There are already many good independent managed hosting services for Masto and Fedi instances such as https://masto.host or https://fedihost.co or https://cloud68.co
It would be even more centralisation if Mastodon gGmbH was hosting other instances, they would become even more tempting for corporations to buy out.
@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange
There are already many good independent managed hosting services for Masto and Fedi instances such as https://masto.host or https://fedihost.co or https://cloud68.co
It would be even more centralisation if Mastodon gGmbH was hosting other instances, they would become even more tempting for corporations to buy out.
The Nexus of Privacy
