Posts by jdp23@neuromatch.social
(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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #AxmN1HRzARfPVB2S0G by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-08-28T20:40:23Z
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@cwebber thanks for everything you do -- including sharing this history. It's very interesting to me, and I'll be updating the "Mastodon partial history" to link to this thread! Looking forward to a few years from now when Spritely has a history that's as long and as rich.
(DIR) Post #AxmN1IaWwA611y2mxc by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-01T23:53:00Z
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@cwebber done! I included a quote from the blog post at the start of the ActivityPub section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/#activitypub and linked out to the thread for history and artifacts.
(DIR) Post #AxmN1Jd34HhkG4EJWa by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-01T23:53:55Z
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@cwebber Also, a question about your preference. The first time I mention you in that section, I refer to you as "Christine Lemmer-Webber". After that, do you prefer "Lemmer-Webber" or "Christine"? I currently have Lemmer-Webber, but am fine with whichever you prefer. Others in the article are a mix, basically whatever people prefer.
(DIR) Post #AxpwRctK9X87On0IKG by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-03T18:01:48Z
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Interesting ... My quick reaction is that the different potential levels of blocking in AT Protocol are a complication, and so are the multiple paths of access. A couple of specific examples:Bluesky PBC controls the PLC directory, so if they blocked an did:plc account at that level it would affect access to 100% of the network. But did:web exists as well, and the blocking there is done by DNS authorities or whoever controlls the domain if multiple people are using it. If 99% of accounts currently use did:plc (I just pulled that out of the hat, and have no idea what the actual numbers are), that means B(1) = 99 ... but it also means that it's trivial for anybody blocked to create a new did:web account and evade the block. Then again, this is a situation where (if I understnad correctly) there isn't "credible exit" -- you can't convert a did:plc to did:web, so you'll lose your data and network.Similarly, looking at the MIssissippi situation, where Bluesky blocked access at the app level. 99%+ of the people currently use the app; Other apps don't block, and VPNs exist, so it's trivial to evade the block ... but a lot of people don't know this. So is that B(1) = 99, or B(1) = 0, or ...?I also wonder if a single overall number for the whole ATmosphere obscures important differences between different subnetworks. If Bluesky PBC's Relay and AppView block a PDS, then that PDSs. users are arguably essentially cut off from the "Bluesky network" (whoever that's defeined). But, their own internal connectivity might be a lot less affected -- if for example they've got their own custom AppView. Then again they also potentially have their own internal choke points. So Blacksky's B-index (or Gander's, or Spark's) is different than Bluesky's, and I'm not sure about aggregating them.@bnewbold
(DIR) Post #AxrwJgLtn2i28FV8MK by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-04T17:09:50Z
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Glad it was useful! It certainly is interesting work -- a lot to think about here ...Agreed that did:web is very niche. I was discussing this with Rudy Fraser and he pointed out that there are shadow copies of the PLC directory (in fact rsky-relay currently uses its own copy), so if Bluesky PBC when away it could probably be rebuilt. So the current B-index has different implications in terms of the power of their administrative discussions and the impact of a financial collapse.In terms of the what-ifs, I tend to look at things through a threat modeling lens. Sometimes threats can be prvented mitigated proactively; other times, it makes more sense to wait and do the mitigation and recovery afterwards. I had seen the fedi hosting anlaysis when you did it (although it didn't click until now that you were the same person). Instance blocklists are another place where there's been concerns in fedi that relate to the B-index. A couple of years ago there were concerns that The Bad Space would somehow get used as a blocklist for the entire fediverse. These particular concerns were somewhat unrelaistic -- as I said at the time"The Bad Space includes mastodon.social on its default blocklist – and mastodon.social is run by Mastodon gGmbH, who also maintains the Mastodon code base. Mastodon's not going to adopt a default blocklist that blocks mastodon.social, and Mastodon is currently over 80% of the fediverse. So The Bad Space isn't going to get adopted as a default by the entire fediverse."But the underlying issue is real. One specific threat is that Meta has talked about providing moderation tools for fedi (out of the goodness of their hearts of course, nothing to worry about here) and it wouldn't surprise me if they embed their own blocklist as part of it, and maybe even over time make that a requirement for federating with threads.net.@ricci @bnewbold
(DIR) Post #Axu3ji7Svj5j8a1p9E by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-05T17:42:22Z
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Maybe what the PLC question points to is that it's not an overall B-index, it's a B-index scoped to specific threats B(PLC, 99.9) = 1 and that's likely to remain the case for the next 6+ monthsB(Relay, 99) = 1 but that's (maybe) in the process of changingOn blocklists ... it's a can of worms. On The Bad Space, I have thoughts at https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-bad-space/ ... as far as I know few if any instances use it as a blocklist, although when I set up an instance I did used their 60% list along with Seirdy's Tier0 as starting points. Seirdy's work is extraordinarily good, the detailed receipts are invaluable, and there's a lot of value complementing the automated aggregation with personal judgment. TBS's sources prioritize safety for marginalized people -- the race aspect gets a lot of focus, obviously but it's often overlooked just how many of the TBS sources are trans- and queer- led.My guess is that Seirdy's lists, Gardenfence, and Oliphant have the broadest usage, but I don't know how broad it is -- and I don't know how many instances automatically process updates. A complication here is thatthey're all aggregations of the blocklists of various source instances, and there's a lot of overlap on their sources; plus, some of the sources take cues from the others. Which makes sense: if an instance known for good moderation decides to block somebody, it's a good idea for everybody to look at it and make their own decisions, and if there are receipts everybody will make a similar decision. For that matter,no matter the source, a post to FediBlock with receipts will also lead to blocking by multiple instances.I don't think any of the larger instances directly use any of the blocklists; some consult them as part of curating their blocklists, but don't treat them as ground truth. Seirdy's FediNuke and Gardenfence both had ~140 entries last time I checked (early this year), with substantial but not complete overlap, and all of those are on Seirdy's Tier0 and Oliphant's Tier0 ... but according to CARIAD, there are only ~70 instances that are blocked by 80% of the instances that make their blocklists public. wtf. Seirdy has receipts on the blocklist page, why would anybody not block hose instances? @jaz has links to CARIAD's stats at https://neuromatch.social/@jaz@mastodon.iftas.org/115146871066372145@ricci
(DIR) Post #AxyQQJkeNenzdZuzFQ by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-07T20:15:26Z
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@ricci I've looked a bit and haven't found anything great. Statista has some numbers (and might have more as paid data) but it's only the top few, and the last data I saw from them is a year old - https://www.statista.com/chart/34197/share-of-us-respondents-use-email-providers
(DIR) Post #Ay9E7eqmeKOCrSgLvE by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-09-13T01:19:24Z
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@ricci yeah that is one of my favorite labellers, really showing the power of the model. kudos to @aendra.com!
(DIR) Post #Az7XQhMY2T3gPkPP2e by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-10-12T03:38:24Z
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@futurebird 1000% … I’m right where you are on this. Great thread
(DIR) Post #AzdqzvtIEB1avS6x8q by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-10-27T17:48:25Z
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Yeah. Back in the day, Facebook's reaction to very successful groups like Un millón de voces contra las FARC and One Million Strong for Obama) was a great example of this: they reworked group functionality to make it a much less effective organizing platform. Similarly tThe Get FISA Right organizing on my.barackobama.com (using the platform to challenge Obama's postiion) was so threatening that it was part of the reason they shut the whole platform down after he was elected.@futurebird @osma
(DIR) Post #B0qpr9bEQzqwUaWMAy by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-12-02T21:59:00Z
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@jupiter_rowland wasn't able to reply to this thread, so left a comment at https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/101051cc-9e44-4eba-a847-78fa1f22bee1 noting that "Most of my Fediverse data and identities are anything but locked to any instance. All my Hubzilla and (streams) channels are nomadic and cloned across two fully independent servers each."True enough. Although I'd also say the way that Hubzilla / (streams) / Forte architect Mike Macgivirn's ideas have been (unfortunately) largely ignored by the rest of the fediverse supports @snarfed.org's point that tying identity, moderation, and data to a server is generally seen as desirable -- or at least not so undesirable that it's worth doing anything about.@ricci @thisismissem
(DIR) Post #B1Y6zpJhXEx7g94enI by jdp23@neuromatch.social
2025-12-23T19:03:38Z
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@futurebird I'm Jewish so my guess is that Joseph's mother guilt-tripped them into spending the holidays with their family, and the census story is just a later embellishment.