Post AxirOg6hsdcecuJpKq by jdp23@neuromatch.social
(DIR) More posts by jdp23@neuromatch.social
(DIR) Post #AxhjBRnolAejhnhhNg by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T18:55:30Z
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How decentralized are the deployments of the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.) and the Atmopshere (Bluesky, etc.)? I'm starting a project to track this! https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/
(DIR) Post #AxhkRNP4yzxQeLIAfg by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T19:09:38Z
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@Gargron might find this data interesting 👆
(DIR) Post #AxhmlIGQ09v6PQrkUi by wiersdorf@fosstodon.org
2025-08-30T19:35:34Z
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@ricci that… that’s not even close.Beautiful site Rob!
(DIR) Post #AxholnsEfzfIM0vRbc by christophwarner@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T19:58:09Z
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@ricci Great idea!
(DIR) Post #Axhqm8J0uX2ldAjfU0 by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T20:20:37Z
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@ricci The ATmosphere has multiple different kinds of servers, so focusing only on PDSs is very misleading. For example, the #Blacksky feed servers (which are hosted on infrastructure that Bluesky PBC doesn't run) have a couple million users.Specifically with PDSs, they're not really the equivalent of ActivityPub instances; they're more equivalent to the role of a pod in ActivityPods. I'm not sure where you're getting that 12 million number -- the stats I've seen elsewhere is that there are currently about 6 million MAU and 38 million or so total users. And, Bluesky PBC distributes the users it hosts over multiple PDSs, that's not reflected in these statistics.And, for many people the purpose of decentralization at the data storage level is to be able to move their data elsewhere. So at the data level, in a lot of ways the more interesting metric is how many people have their data on a PDS or instance where they can in principle move it to another one. In the fediverse this is basically people instances running Hubzilla or its descendents and anything supporting the Portable Objects FEP (ef61), so it's not zero but it's fairly small. In the ATmosphere this is (as far as I know) everybody.
(DIR) Post #Axhs87obVzDmR0Yv8S by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T20:35:49Z
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@jdp23 I'm aware that the architectures are substantially different; I decided to go with "where user data is" with the PDSes, since that is one of the things people care about.The way I'm scraping and the data files are here: https://github.com/ricci/distributed-social-networks/, as suggested by @bnewbold - basically pulling in information from all the hosts the bluesky relay knows about. I don't know exactly what user numbers it reports - my assumption is that it is some number of users that have been active "recently enough" to still be reported on, but I don't know the details. I intend to read the code but have not got to that yet. All PDSes run by bluesky-the-company are combined into one in this dataset, since they are all owned and operated by the same entity, subject to the same user agreement, laws, etc. Unless I am doing something very very wrong (and I would like to be corrected if I am!) I am seeing data from services such as blacksky - eg. in atproto-bsky-relay.csv in the dataset above, blacksky reports hosting 555 user repos on its PDS as of this morning, which is in line with comments I've seen in threads on bluesky.As to your point about data movement, the entire point of this website is to look at current deployment, and to track it over time (once I build up some history data). There are plenty of arguments to be made about the protocols, and plenty of people have them. What I wanted to know about what the deployment status, which is what this website is concentrating on.
(DIR) Post #AxhvT4ZL4xxyJJ6PEO by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T21:13:12Z
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@jdp23 This did make me realize that I should also be combining m.s and m.o since they are also the same company, the data now reflects this
(DIR) Post #Axhw0JGTSgUDRd7wSu by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T21:19:12Z
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If you want to focus only on decentralization of where the data is stored, then you should probably change the domain name and title to reflect that. Otherwise you're privileging a specific definition of "decentralized" by choosing one that erases other important kinds of decentralization. Blacksky has millions of users of its feed service, and a few hundred on its PDS -- both are examples of decentralization. All PDSes run by bluesky-the-company are combined into one in this dataset, since they are all owned and operated by the same entity,That's not how it's being presented. If you want to go this route then you should change the label, instead of saying "servers" it should say "number of companies operating servers", and instead of saying "biggest" it should say something about "most data controlled by a single company". And, you should also similarly combine fedi instances that are owned and operated by the same entity.In terms of the numbers, not sure how to explain why yours are so different from others but it's probably worth finding out just what it is you're measuring. Also using the Bluesky PBC relay as a definitive source leaves out PDSs whose data doesn't go there. So, it's not actually a measurement of how data storage is decentralized in the ATmosphere as a whole, just how it's decentralized in the subset of the ATmosphere that's connected to Bluesky PBC's relay. That's probably only a small distortion at this point but likely to grow over time.As you can tell I've been thinking about this a lot, I'm working on an update to https://privacy.thenexus.today/decentralization-and-erasure-blacksky-bluesky-and-the-atmosphere-2/ (the epilogue-in-process near the end is a start of the update but I'll probably say more) @ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxhwJzu19x1JBZ0kTo by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T21:22:47Z
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@jdp23 @bnewbold Can you suggest the a good source for other ATProto relays? I'm definitely interested in ones that don't connect to bluesky, and will include any others (or better yet any discovery mechanism)
(DIR) Post #AxhxTVWx2LArq2Jw7U by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T21:35:41Z
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@jdp23 Re: the discussion of blacksky in your article, and a comment included in the appendix "Bluesky has started out centralized and is slowly spinning out parts of itself from the center to the edges", this is exactly why I started this project right now - as you point out blacksky and other major ATProto projects that aren't bluesky have been picking up, and my goal is to put together data and metrics to watch how the technical aspects of this play out. (I'm not going to make any attempt to do any social analysis, I'll leave that to others.) None of the data sources I'm grabbing from right now have the history I need, so it'll take a while of me fetching stats before I can add an over-time view.
(DIR) Post #AxhxZnX7152BPTOZW4 by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T21:36:49Z
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No idea in general, sorry. I believe that spark.social has their own complete stack including a relay; the others I know of (like atproto.africa) are largely or completely paralleling Bluesky's. I think I saw something from Gander about having a Canada-only relay at some point but I might be misremembering.Also, AppViews can go to PDSs without needing relays, so it's certainly possible that some PDSs don't connect to any relay.@ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxhxuOWDDO5LuTnNuC by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T21:40:29Z
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@ricci I think your goal for the project is interesting (or I wouldn't be providing feedback 🤣) ... but even without explicitly doing social analysis, your framing embeds it (as any framing does).
(DIR) Post #Axi0S8jUc1oUhnE5PU by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T22:09:03Z
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@jdp23 Fair point.In response to this discussion, I've made a few changes:I've changed some header and intro text to be more explicit that it's measuring user dataI've added a paragraph about how there are other interesting ways of measuring decentralization, listing a few, and inviting contributions. For example, if you can suggest a way of incorporating the feed numbers you mentioned above, I'd be interested in doing so
(DIR) Post #Axi0bO2R4mQsmTUnzM by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T22:10:43Z
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@indigoviolet I wanted one, so I built it
(DIR) Post #Axi36TTr5kQkXrGy7k by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T22:38:46Z
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@ricci thanks very much, that much more clearly highlights what the charts show!for feeds, hmm, not sure. Bluesky's app has a directory of well-known feeds and so does blueskydirectory.com, so there's clearly some mechanism, but not sure where they come from. As far as I know there isn't any way to even see the number of subscribers to a feed, let alone the number of people who visit it, just the number of likes.Feeds would be really interesting to know more about because there's Bluesky PBC's own feeds (Discover in particular), Graze-hosted stuff, Surf-hosted stuff, and then people rolling their own. My impression is the only ones that have a lot of usage are ones Bluesky has (or had) on the short list for new signups, it's definitely rich-get-richer dynamics.
(DIR) Post #Axi5Xbu45GsyOXbCrI by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-30T22:45:27Z
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@ricci it's a really challenging situation because the discourse has such a toxic historyl that I suspect we're likely to see a lot of people sharing your site as "proof" that AT's not decentralized, which will kick off another round of the discourse etc etc etc. Very frustrating!
(DIR) Post #Axi5XdNAcXlGx6Dxrc by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T23:06:00Z
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@jdp23 Part of the reason I made this is that I got tired of The Discourse being mostly around arguments about the protocols and anecdotes around this instance or other. Those are very important - discussion about movability of data, for example, is quite important. Black folks seem to have had a fairly rough go of it here in the fediverse - blacksky may indeed create a better space for them. Etc., etc.But most of the discourse I've witnessed has been largely data-free other than top-line numbers about users and instances. What, in fact, do these networks look like right now?It was actually a comment by @bnewbold about wanting a dashboard for decentralization that got me on this. Though the choice of metric and implementation, and thus any mistakes, are mine. (FWIW he also mentioned wanting such data for things like git forges, etc. and if I can find a way to get such data I'd love to put it up too.) I know, I've been around long enough to know that data does not actually make discourse less toxic, but sometimes, I try...
(DIR) Post #Axi6Y5LGjOuneT77T6 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T23:17:22Z
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@jdp23 Yeah these sources don't seem to provide actual numbers, but I'll poke around in the software to see if they are visible at the protocol level in some way that can be counted
(DIR) Post #Axi7Cvn98zgVu9d8S0 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:24:43Z
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@ricci @jdp23 FWIW, I think this is is a helpful contribution to the conversation because it is specific, and I think what is being measured does matter.I don't think that it is the *only* thing that matters, but it is a measurement/metric I would like the atmosphere to improve on over the years.
(DIR) Post #Axi7kVlMQPLP1Wo6im by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T23:30:49Z
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@bnewbold @jdp23 Yeah, what I do hope is that it will be possible to point people who have it stuck in their heads that "bluesky is centralized" to this in N months they will be surprised at the progress
(DIR) Post #Axi7xjFpZjLwdCMVQ8 by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:33:10Z
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@ricci @jdp23 it also buttresses the argument of some folks who say "bluesky is centralized": if what they mean is that the atmosphere "market" is centralized, today, then they are correct! this specificity/framing helps avoid folks from talking past each other
(DIR) Post #Axi84yYp46Kg87hVrM by bnewbold@social.coop
2025-08-30T23:28:51Z
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@ricci @jdp23 one thing i'd point out is that (I assume) this counts the vast majority of Threads users as not "part of Fediverse". otherwise Threads would dominate fediverse in a big way (though maybe not as much as bsky dominates atmo PDS hosting!).which I think is accurate!
(DIR) Post #Axi84zpWLVHe4CWMWe by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T23:34:31Z
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@bnewbold @jdp23 Yes this is a good point, and not one of the data sources I looked at has data on them. Not sure whether this is due to the general antipathy towards threads or because they don't implement the API endpoint to report the data or what.
(DIR) Post #Axi8BsuaSy3IdZAwCm by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-30T23:35:46Z
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@bnewbold @jdp23 Sounds like you are at least somewhat satisfied with the current framing of the site, but if you do have any suggestions regarding changes I'm happy to hear them
(DIR) Post #AxiArFMO6lqi2b1ts8 by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T00:05:39Z
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Yeah great point. Even if Threads did implement the endpoint, it's not clear whether it would reflect the number of user who have turned federation on (the last estimate I saw was 30,000, although it was a while ago) or all zillion threads users. There's a similar dynamic with flipboard. Also note that some fediverse instances don't share their numbers -- they put a zero in that field (either intentionally or because it's just not supported) or block access to the endpoint. There was hilarity a while ago when GoToSocial instance that had blocked the endpoint generated random stats for anybody who was ignoring the block and there were briefly reports that fedi usage had surged to over 60,000,000 users!!!! Oops. Anyhow Misskey (and maybe some of the forks) are very undercounted on fedidb etc, and many GoToSocial instances opt out of the collection so they're probably underrepresented.@ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxiBVA4DCuubCwYpeq by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T00:12:52Z
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@jdp23 @bnewbold Hmm, I was under the impression that misskey and others were still intentionally misreporting numbers, and am excluding them even though they are in the data source I'm using (fedilist). If this is incorrect I will need to fix this
(DIR) Post #AxiBXtzpPkPsEZojQW by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T00:08:04Z
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you optimist you! unfortunately there are some very loud voices on the fedi side who are completely interested in trying not to talk past each other, IT'S ALL ABOUT BEING RIGHT!!!!!! Unfortunate.@bnewbold @ricci
(DIR) Post #AxiBXvGWh9MqAeda5o by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T00:13:23Z
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@jdp23 @bnewbold Well, producing, sharing, and writing about data is literally my job so I gotta keep some optimism
(DIR) Post #AxiBfVOEmenkEfrNMe by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T00:14:45Z
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Oh I meant that to Bryan for optimistically thinking that relevant data framed properly would help keep people from talking past each other. It could happen! But I'm not particularly holding my breath.@ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxiDTKz9qEnkOrSFxA by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T00:34:54Z
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Not sure about Misskey tbh. The fedi data is ridiculously messy, and whenever I look at it for much more than very high level overall trends, policy decisions (include pawoo, baraag, and the bots on pravda.social? include misskey despite concerns that it's underreporting? count Threads and Flipboard? truth.social?) dominate everything else. @ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxiEv9C7NDZntSLEBc by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T00:51:10Z
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@ricci belated response ... posts crossed and I was just suggesting that! so I edited to update :)a few other examples I know of the same entity runs pawoo and mastodon.cloud, maybe also mastodon.jpjerry from infosec.exchange runs a constellation of instances also including, infosec.space, fedia, maybe half a dozen others. stux also runs a few sites, mstdn.social and masto.ai for sure (maybe others). blahaj.zone, lemmy.blahaj.zone, and piefed.blahaj.zone are another small constellationAlso @marcelcosta looked at the decentralization within the Mastodon ecosystem a while ago, using a biological measure of ecosystem diversity, he might have some good perspectives. we had a long intermittent thread of discussions on this watching the effect of the change in default to mastodon.social (which basically flatlined all other instances) but alas i failed to bookmark it so can't find it today.
(DIR) Post #AxiLsY9mo5JK7hxXSy by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T02:09:09Z
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Oh yeah, I had to make some policy decisions for sure: for example, do I leave bridgy in? It accounts for more than 55% of the non-bluesky PDS users on the ATproto side. But: they are "really" fediverse users. But: they are participating in the atmosphere! I left it in.The most amusing policy decision I made on the fediverse side was to omit a site called yellbot that allows you to basically encode the type of "yell" you want in the username, and it will generate posts "yelling". It claims to have 1.1M users. @jdp23 @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxiNSSqu6eUM3CogOu by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T02:26:49Z
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Probably the right decision, although it would have been funnier if you had included it and reported it as the leargest fedi instance 51% of the active users@ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxikTPT8T8OcnD7Qhs by marcelcosta@bcn.fedi.cat
2025-08-31T06:43:14.476871Z
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@jdp23 @ricci Yeah! I tried to apply network decentralization analysis, which are used also in ecology and immunology to analyze the Fediverse decentralization. It was when Musks waves started.As far as I remember, when comparing two time points the Fediverse was gaining decentralization rather than losing it (the hypothesis is that too much people was landing into mastodon.social). I think that that data also suggested a centralization in terms of the software used.The post I shared in SH: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/analysis-of-fediverse-diversity-in-terms-of-decentralization/3252/7
(DIR) Post #AxikTQtPAx0HCyPvI8 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T06:44:41Z
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@marcelcosta @jdp23 This matches another pair of point-in-time analysis I saw that showed the share of users in the biggest servers going down from nov '22 to april '25
(DIR) Post #AxilBlW3rKjpuddb3w by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T06:52:45Z
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@marcelcosta @jdp23 Someone also pointed me to this post over on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tree.fail/post/3laytzonyqc2v - I didn't look too hard into the methodology by interestingly, the number shown in the screenshot (97.06%) is actually slightly lower than the number on the live dashboard today (97.14%) suggesting *increasing* centralization over the past few months.I want to add the caveats that:a) I believe bluesky just turned over, or started turning over, control over the standard, which is a big deal; it's factored into their score but this change is not yet reflected on their dashboardb) In the discussion they had the same thoughts as here re: that feeds were interesting, and probably more decentralized, but that they don't know how to measurec) They had similar uncertainty about whether there were significant alternate relays and how to find them (though now, there is at least blacksky's)
(DIR) Post #Axilea0Hk27mbZVx8C by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T06:57:58Z
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@marcelcosta @jdp23 Also, I find the indexes you used pretty interesting, I will see about adding them!
(DIR) Post #AxinV198AdvPnbDhS4 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T07:18:37Z
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Map of ATproto (Bluesky et al) user data servers / map of ActivityPub (Mastodon et al) servers.* ATproto / atmosphere: https://ipinfo.io/tools/map/88dbbbbc-8dc1-4b85-be3b-d8e5171f7454 and first attached image* ActivityPub / fediverse: NB:* These are the locations of *servers* hosting user data (PDSes for ATproto, instances for ActivityPub), not *users** Each server only counts *once* on these maps, regardless of how many users it has
(DIR) Post #Axio8pxpAKuwhVv26y by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T07:25:50Z
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lol I just realized that the randomly-generated slug for the fediverse map starts with 'fed'
(DIR) Post #AxioIABdLbOw1ipDsm by falcennial@mastodon.social
2025-08-31T07:27:30Z
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@ricci great review! really cool
(DIR) Post #AxioJq4p5PkSEiRFho by falcennial@mastodon.social
2025-08-31T07:27:50Z
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@ricci 🤌🤌💯
(DIR) Post #AxiqoZfMLny0E0JNzs by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T07:55:46Z
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What I remember from the various analyses is that mastodon.social's share reduced significantly from November-December 2022 -- they shut off signups for a while at the peak of the rush.In March-May 2023 they changed the default signup to mastodon.social at which point .social's number of new users increased, and other large well-behavied instances basically stopped getting significant numbers of new users, (although pawoo/baraag/pravda weren't as affected, which makes sense). The "But no" section of A faux "Eternal September" turns into flatness has datra for a three-month period starting in late May 2023 (and so overlapping the June/July surge from Reddit, which was the last time Mastodon or the ActivityPub Fediverse grew) mastodon.social attracted 402,000 new users, and it's number of active users increased by 92,000mstdn.social, mastodon.world, and mas.to combined only attracted 31,000 new users, and their number of active users decreased by 10,000https://indieweb.social/@jdp23/110439292699086836 is a fragment of the thread where we were discussing some of this, alas somebody deleted their posts so it's hard to get to the rest of the thread. Starting in August 2023 or so .social started shrinking too, but since it still gets a lot of new users it's generally shrinking more slowly so its percentage continues to increase -- it's up to almost 40% of Mastodon users now using FediDB's numbers (although I think those exclude pawoo/baraag/pravda). @ricci @marcelcosta
(DIR) Post #AxirOg6hsdcecuJpKq by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-31T08:02:19Z
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Yeah mastodon.social's share reduced significantly from September-December 2022 -- they shut off signups for a while at the peak of the rush, and over that period mstdn.social added more user than mastodon.social. That started changing in early 2023, mastodon.social was growing 3x as fast as mstdnsocial, and then In March-May 2023 they changed the default signup to mastodon.social at which point just about all the new users started going to .social -- 30x as many as mstdn.social. And it wasn't just .social, it was all.the large(ish) instances except for the bad actors (pawoo, pravda, etc). The "But no" section of A faux "Eternal September" turns into flatness has datra for a three-month period starting in late May 2023 (and so overlapping the June/July surge from Reddit, which was the last time Mastodon or the ActivityPub Fediverse grew) mastodon.social attracted 402,000 new users, and it's number of active users increased by 92,000mstdn.social, mastodon.world, and mas.to combined only attracted 31,000 new users, and their number of active users decreased by 10,000https://indieweb.social/@jdp23/110439292699086836 is a fragment of the thread where we were discussing some of this, alas somebody deleted their posts so it's hard to get to the rest of the thread. @ricci @marcelcosta
(DIR) Post #AxiuXDarYvBCf6BiKG by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T08:37:27Z
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@marcelcosta @jdp23 I've added the Shannon Index to the page; I calculated Simpson too, but Shannon seems more different to HHI than Simpson does, and I need to do some redesign of the page if I want to add too much more data. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at the text about Shannon and let me know if it can use any improvement.
(DIR) Post #AxjCKkLGI94Zdi5qRk by liaizon@social.wake.st
2025-08-31T11:56:52Z
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@ricci would be very interesting to add nostr to the mix here.
(DIR) Post #AxjClXoQz4LSbBW61Q by sun@shitposter.world
2025-08-31T12:01:47.592054Z
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@ricci there are multiple more axes across which to measure decentralization for example most names on bluesky are controlled by a central naming service and bluesky the corporate entity can effectively censor you from the network through control of this naming service. did:web is offered as an alternative decentralized naming system, but the last time I tried to use it it still required me to interface with their servers to create my account in a way that their servers recognized. after you create the did:web name you're free, but I don't actually understand why I have to use their servers to be recognized.
(DIR) Post #AxjD6QpG9hTJ0krXbE by sun@shitposter.world
2025-08-31T12:05:33.631351Z
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@ricci I feel like there could also be a distinction between "technical decentralization" and "practical decentralization". At this current time if flagship bluesky servers ban you or drop your messages or remove you from their appview you'd effectively disappear to almost everyone on the network.
(DIR) Post #AxjDDEpt8EifquP0AS by lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com
2025-08-31T12:06:42Z
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@ricci It would be interesting to map this against servers repartition worldwide (because of course there are no datacenters in the Sahara), but I'm not sure such data exists.
(DIR) Post #AxjDFHahrL2KybHAdU by moth_ball@shitposter.world
2025-08-31T12:07:09.896485Z
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@sun @ricci In my mind it's simply because decentralization is just a word for them and the entire network seeks a status as the Other Birdsite with everything else being irrelevant. The users won't understand the principles anyway so what does it matter? They're idiots anyway.
(DIR) Post #AxjDUexLGqOnmmCCjA by sun@shitposter.world
2025-08-31T12:09:56.374512Z
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@moth_ball @ricci I like to play a game where, when bluesky announces a new feature, I try to guess if if it would work if you don't use their servers. the answer may shock you.
(DIR) Post #AxjNv0rbRP4snjiTRo by Peperlito@boitam.eu
2025-08-31T14:06:37Z
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@ricci HHI! <3#antitrust
(DIR) Post #AxjO7EOkweOSFm38im by raito@nixos.paris
2025-08-31T14:08:51Z
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@ricci cc @renchap
(DIR) Post #Axjbgwpl1e03bi2a2a by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T16:41:02Z
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@liaizon Strong agree - do you know if there is a good place to get data on user numbers? I'm not familiar enough with the platform to be able to track this down myself
(DIR) Post #Axjbp3ijIyFhHZcZQ8 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T16:42:31Z
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@sun This dashboard that I was pointed to does try to capture some of those other axes: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:524tuhdhh3m7li5gycdn6boe/post/3laytzonyqc2v
(DIR) Post #AxjcBDD0hxHp55Ldjs by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T16:46:30Z
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@sun This site is a sort of an attempt to capture one dimension of that practicality; the protocol does support distribution of user data across many PDSes, but is that feature used a lot in practice
(DIR) Post #AxjcHZ2KSwqmW3Nfn6 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T16:47:40Z
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@moth_ball @sun I disagree, I think they do understand it, I think it is just extremely uncommon for systems to start centralized and move towards decentralization
(DIR) Post #AxjcM60xnRitxBu3Au by liaizon@social.wake.st
2025-08-31T16:48:27Z
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@ricci well it's not gonna be trackable in quite the same way as the other two so it might require some sort of custom scraper or something to get the data. Tagging @rabble who might have some insight into how one might grab these sorts of data points.
(DIR) Post #AxjcSTm6Mx8DNlzlzM by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T16:49:30Z
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@joe I agree, unknowable.FWIW, the main reason the number I report is low compared to typical instance counts is that I'm calculating based on MAU, and there are a good chunk of instances that report zero MAU
(DIR) Post #AxjdJ1AVSQuC0dSkiG by silverpill@mitra.social
2025-08-31T16:58:44.230633Z
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A picture is worth a thousand words: https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/Here's another nice website: https://burningtree.github.io/bsky-dominance/I am happy that I don't need to waste my time anymore debunking the "decentralization" of Bluesky.@ricci
(DIR) Post #AxjiCltJqQOcf3GS6C by moth_ball@shitposter.world
2025-08-31T17:54:04.097897Z
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@ricci @sun You give the user too much credit
(DIR) Post #Axjx1O11lvdGjstoJM by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T20:40:00Z
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@damon I would like to include it but I don't know of any sources for comparable data; do you have any pointers?
(DIR) Post #AxjyPTn63EEdYTR3hI by pepper0@aus.social
2025-08-31T20:55:34Z
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Made a lengthy post about https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/https://aus.social/@pepper0/115125289266261739@bnewbold @lertsenem @breathOfLife @marcelcosta @indigoviolet @scoop @joe
(DIR) Post #AxkE5pEqCNihY33x68 by tesaguri@fedibird.com
2025-08-31T23:12:39Z
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@ricci So, that means servers that don't report MAU via NodeInfo, like Misskey, are excluded?The admin of Misskey.io said on June that the server had ~100k of MAUs (they say they only counted users who consent to analytics though) (<https://misskey.io/notes/a8y6w6zwbd950e9h>), which might have contributed to the stat significantly if they were to report the precise number via NodeInfo.@joe [参照]
(DIR) Post #AxkE5qU7Z3XLPjDfYO by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-08-31T23:51:13Z
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@tesaguri @joe I must admit I'm not 100% sure how the data source I'm using: https://fedilist.com/instance is crawling. For misskey.io, it reports 670k users, 3k MAU; the total users might be right, I'm not sure, but the MAU definitely isn't. (I'm sure there are other instances that have problems like this, misskey is just particularly well known for it - and as I said, leaving it out is not because I don't think it matters but a matter of not wanting to throw off stats with numbers I'm pretty sure are not accurate.)
(DIR) Post #AxoCa8qORmSblWnNWC by piegames@flausch.social
2025-09-02T21:47:05Z
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@ricci given the current matrix.org outage, can you maybe also add the Matrix ecosystem? Maybe also mail would be interesting to have as a comparison, should sufficient data be available
(DIR) Post #AxoCa9apf7bi5YWSu0 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-09-02T21:53:13Z
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@piegames I'd love to do that, on both counts. Do you know of a good source of users/server data for either? (I'd imagine matrix might be more feasible to get just because the email ecosystem is just so huge)