Reddit: Why is Mastodon struggling to survive?
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Reddit: Why is Mastodon struggling to survive?
The whole narrative is wrong here. My server is not struggling and will survive as long as I live.
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Xandra Granade 🏳️⚧️replied to Roni Laukkarinen last edited by
@rolle The massive drop on New Years doesn't look like the kind of organic drop I'd expect from a mass exodus; it looks like some methodological change in how data is collected.
I don't think anything can be said from that screenshot without understanding more about the methodology.
All by way of agreement, the whole narrative is wrong.
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Henry Fisherreplied to Roni Laukkarinen last edited by
@rolle I'm not sure my post was about your server specifically. I was discussing social networks in general and the metrics that show a clear negative trend. If the network is supposed to be "something big," then this kind of dynamic is pretty telling of its decline. Now, if the definition of a "successful" social network is simply one that still has more than two users, sure, I guess it's not technically dead—just on life support.
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I thought your post was good (and the reply from AvgGuy100 is outstanding); your math seems on target to me. I can see why there's pushback on "struggling to survive", Mastodon's not in any danger of going away (and Twitter had very low user retention for its first N years) ... still you're completely right that the numbers reflect a major problem. Not sure if you've ever seen @[email protected] Mastodon Is Easy and Fun Except When It Isn’t but it's got some great perspectives from people who checked out Mastodon and didn't stay.
As for what Mastodon needs to do to turn things around, https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-hard-fork/ is my take on some of the things a project based on the Mastodon-and-forks code base could do ... I talked about it in terms of a fork (because Eugen's made it clear he's not interested in doing these things) but at least in prinicple the main project could as well. Time will tell.
But whatever happens with Mastodon, other projects are more likely to change the dynamics in the fediverse. I think GoToSocial's upcoming release 0.17 may well be a tipping point, and there's a lot of other interesting stuff. Mastodon's problem is that they want to be a Twitter alternative, but the technology isn't well-suited for it, and until the racism is addressed Black Twitter isn't likely to move. GoToSocial's a better match for the model of networked small-to-medium-size communities, which is a better match for ActivityPub. The onboarding still needs to be addressed -- but people are working on that, including @[email protected], who talks more about it in how to buy shoes in the fediverse. So overall I'm relatively optimistic.
@[email protected] @[email protected] -
Jonreplied to Xandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ last edited by [email protected]
The early 2023 drop is a measurement artifact, but reflects reality: the numbers are Monthly Active Users, so it reflects people who checked things out in late November saying "nope".
It's true that the numbers on fedidb have changed a few times, and the early 2024 vertical drop might reflect a chance in policy. There's a question about whether to count instances that are disinformation (pravda.me has a lot of users, is that a good thing?) or that are widely blocked because they allow CSAM.
In general though while I think "struggling to survive" isn't accurate, I think the narrative as a whole is -- more at https://blahaj.zone/notes/9z91slemze9q002p
@[email protected] @[email protected]
