
from the freedom-of-thought,-expression,-and-association dept.
The Fediverse - including Mastodon, Pixelfed, and others - is experiencing explosive exponential growth with over 700,000 new users, and 100,000,000 posts in January.
Pixelfed alone is growing 100k users per WEEK now, has gone 10x in a month.
Mastodon servers are welcoming influxes, and new servers are standing up at a rapid pace, with new active daily users up 200k in Jan, about +25%, and posts up by a similar +30% to 16 million/month.
Tumblr is planning to federate.
Forum software NodeBB has officially launched their 4.0 version, which includes ActivityPub support.
https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-101/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/
https://www.404media.co/decentralized-social-media-is-the-only-alternative-to-the-tech-oligarchy/
https://mastodon-analytics.com/
https://mastodon.social/@fediversecounter/
https://cdevroe.com/2025/01/14/pixelfeds-moment/
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04, @02:20PM (15 children)
It's an order of magnitude behind BlueSky for posts (bsky.app just passed 1B posts recently) and I'm not up to date on BlueSky user (+bot) numbers, but they passed 25M a little while ago, most of them new since election day.
Mastodon is a "better" infrastructure in terms of independence / resistance to buyout enshittification, in the end I think it will outgrow centralized rivals as one buyout after another turns them into cesspools.
In the meantime, I find the UI of Mastodon to be a bit more clunky, harder to pickup and use, than BlueSky. Mastodon devs, if you're listening: Starter Packs are the killer feature you're missing at the UI level. Enabling new users to quickly build up a feed with interesting content is what my Mastodon experience is lacking.
And, then, flamebait mod me all you want, but Mastodon devs and "public faces" have a whole lot of trannies hanging out there - and while I believe in live and let live and they should have all the rights and protections etc. etc. and it's perfectly understandable how they are boldly advocating for their rights... if you're talking about a mainstream venture: all that is going to turn a lot of mainstream users away.
While Mastodon can and should foster "safe spaces" for all kinds of minority groups to be themselves openly, if they want a mainstream user base, they need to have "safe spaces" which aren't constantly assaulted by LGBQT+ rights crusaders in ways both overt and overshadowing from the rafters.
On the tech-head side of things, if you already have a domain, you can basically turn-key add your own Fediverse integrated Mastodon instance to it with a cloud provider starting around $6 per month. Well worth it, IMO compared with maintaining your own hardware, backups, dealing with your ISP's flaky connectivity and upcharges you'll face when they decide they don't want you doing that from home. And, yes, if you intend to self-host massive video podcasting libraries, that will cost more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 04, @04:47PM (14 children)
I'm not going to mod you down, but I am going to call you on your BS. Saying "I'm not bigoted, but other people will be" is a very common cover for actual bigotry. Calling the people in question "trannies" doesn't help with the idea that you aren't actually bigoted yourself. Ditto for "I don't mind them existing, but I wish I didn't have to see them existing" sentiments.
And if you don't get why, substitute another commonly oppressed minority and tell me how it would be OK to argue that an environment is cool and all, except there are too many _____s or they're being too up-front about existing.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04, @07:45PM (2 children)
>I'm not going to mod you down, but I am going to call you on your BS
There's a difference between being a bigot and living in a country where maybe 1/3 of the population are bigots and 9/10 of the other 2/3 don't want to spend their lives in pitched battles with them. Yes, I'm in that 9/10 - the whole thing seems like a giant waste of time and emotional energy. The hard core bigots are dying off - look at the age of the leader they elected. I'd rather live peacefully making incremental progress toward a better world than inflaming the issue, giving the bigots a platform to shout from.
I notice you didn't hurt yourself with a PC label for trannies, and I won't bother either. The PC labels, pronouns, etc. are all part of the flame war as far as I am concerned, if that puts me in your bigot column, so be it. In my view, it's not a binary world, and the extremists on all sides need to lock themselves in their respective echo chambers and have a good scream fest until they get it all out.
Meanwhile, as a mainstream endeavor, all such controversy should calm the F down if they don't want mainstream people to be turned off.
>substitute another commonly oppressed minority
O.K. Canada's First Nations people, they're mostly pretty cool about their past abuses, but when they have to sign every message with a new biting insight into how abused their great grandparents were as children, that's not a forum I want to spend my time in, either. DEI oppressed white boys are way past my tolerance threshold too, and their recent launch into defense of whites still trying to live in South Africa. Same goes for Jews and the Holocaust, my God they can get annoying when they ratchet it up to Never Forget in every other sentence, and at the risk of touching a sensitive nerve that might not be ready for any negative attention: people of Color in the US, whatever it is they like to be referred to as these days. I'm not selective, I get tired of all of it; even those oppressed groups I, members of my family, and our close friends are members of.
Everybody has a right to air their grievances, but don't expect a raging hall of grievances environment to attract a majority of daily social network users. There's a place for everything, and social justice should, in my opinion, retreat into the religion and politics corner of polite discourse.
For that matter, a big turn-off of mainstream BlueSky for me is the overwhelming pre-occupation with politics. There should be a better way to stay informed without being deluged with all of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04, @08:49PM
OP GP: And, the above is a big part of why I don't like people "identifying" themselves in in-your face ways, it invites garbage like that.
I guess I'm "together" with another bsky user who was astounded that strangers would just walk up and just start shoving their political identity in your face, in my case it was some guy talking about "That China Virus" - so, thanks for letting me know where you stand, but why would you ever just start shoving your political identity in a stranger's face outside a grocery store waiting to cross the parking lot? Fishing for reinforcement from like minded bigots? Pushing your identity "out there" to make any who might oppose you uncomfortable? Wear a MAGA hat if that's what you want to do.
It just doesn't have a place in what I call polite conversation.
(Score: 4, Offtopic) by Mykl on Tuesday February 04, @10:53PM (10 children)
FWIW, my trans Aunt (started transition circa 1995, full operation about 2010) calls herself a Tranny.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday February 05, @05:14AM (9 children)
There is a huge difference though between people reclaiming a derogative, and applying said derogative. Black people are free to use "nigger" if they so wish, but that really doesn't make it okay for white/other people to use it.
And people who keep insisting using hurtful terms even after they've been informed they are in fact hurtful, well, that says a lot about those people. If you can't extend a basic kindness like that, what values do you really have?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday February 05, @06:22AM (8 children)
I understand the point, but must admit that it bothers me when one group of people gets to use a word yet another doesn't. IMHO, an individual who uses a particular word gives up the right to be offended by that same word.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday February 05, @08:22AM
Mmm, but Thexalon was right to call out the slur usage here — this is not a space where only your aunt hangs out 🙃
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 05, @12:05PM (3 children)
It's very simple to understand: It's not the sound of the words that are the problem, it's the threat behind it.
The reason the words are hurtful is that not only are they derogatory towards the people they're talking about, they have a history of being a threat of hate crime violence. e.g. a white person calling a black person by a racial slur spent about 75 years being a prelude to a lynching. The people that are typically targets can use those words for themselves because the people they are talking to (probably) know that they aren't going to do that.
And since a staggeringly huge percentage of transgender people have been physically beaten for being transgender, and there's significant evidence that they're also murdered more often than others, they're understandably a bit sensitive to that risk.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @12:46PM
Fair enough, but I notice you still don't use an acceptable label to communicate membership in the group.
Is the official "trans-sexual persons" any less of a threat of potential violence or more respectful?
Returning to the point made in the top post, based on the whole back and forth here, do you acknowledge how the presence of people embroiled in such controversy changes the character and broad appeal of a social media site, whether it should or not in an idealistic sense?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday February 05, @10:49PM (1 child)
Disagree. The highest proportion of violence against black people is perpetrated by black people, and use of the N word is frequently used as a prelude to violence in those scenarios. The ubiquitous use of that word in the black community is, in my opinion, a huge problem.
Yeah, I'm going to need a reliable source for that
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06, @12:11AM
And it's you who is the sole and final arbiter of what constitutes a "reliable source," correct?
Why am I not surprised?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday February 05, @04:34PM
Maybe so, maybe no. At issue is the context. Sometimes pejoratives are taken back. Your aunt might have an interesting story to tell about that.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday February 05, @09:26PM (1 child)
Just admit you want to use the N word and not get beat up.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday February 05, @10:52PM
Actually, as mentioned above, I'd prefer that nobody use it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 04, @04:35PM (2 children)
Seriously. One of the main problems of the current social networking sites is that they are controlled by corporations, who are controlled by their management and shareholders. And since many people are substituting social networking feeds for reading news articles, that means said corporations get to decide what their readers think is going on.
(And no, I'm not saying news organizations aren't also biased as all get-out.)
So switching to something with less central control will help reduce that risk. Of course it can create other risks, like particular corners of the "fediverse" being echo chambers, but that's a problem with the legacy corporate-controlled systems too.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Thursday February 06, @06:47AM (1 child)
Social networking sites have to be controlled by something and owned by something, and there are not a lot of choices. Corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, and government are the basic possibilities. Choosing something like a church or the United Nations doesn't really get you out of that limited list. A choice of "nobody" (setting up a site and then abandoning it) has enormous difficulties. What is so bad about a corporation that wouldn't be as bad or worse with one of the other three?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday February 06, @01:01PM
The obvious other choices are:
1. Non-profit organization
2. Public benefit corporation (like Soylent)
3. No one entity, but a whole bunch of entities that can communicate with each other.
The Fediverse generally goes for #3. The idea being that if, say, you don't like your current Mastodon server, it's trivial to move to another one and not much harder to set up your own.
The problems with a corporation running a thing are:
1. Corporations are answerable to their shareholders, not their users. That means that stuff that is detrimental to their users but good for the shareholders will happen.
2. If any one person owns a majority of the stock, then the corporation answers to that person alone, with the only real check on what they can do being governments who aren't corrupt enough to let them get away with it for the right price. A cabal of a few people that control the majority of the stock isn't much better.
3. For-profit companies exist to maximize profit, not the user benefit. So they will do stuff that is profitable even if it annoys their users.
4. For-profit companies generally demand constant growth. Once they've established their maximum reasonable user base, they have to start extracting more and more revenue from those users.
And all that leads to enshittification happening much faster in a corporation-controlled service than a non-profit or community-controlled service.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday February 04, @04:36PM (2 children)
Running these types of nodes on the Intertubes will soon be highly regulated, so it's best not to get all excited about this, The DOGE Brownshirts will soon be coming for them.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 04, @09:10PM (1 child)
With luck, locating those nodes outside US jurisdiction will at least slow down that process. At least until the US builds their equivalent of the Great Firewall of China.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @02:08PM
Never say never, but I don't think that the 2025 brownshirts with red caps have the fortitude to be able to implement a Great Firewall around the USA.
They seem more of the mindset to spend billions on acquisitions to change conversations through influence as owners.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 04, @05:02PM (11 children)
I like lists. I sometimes visit Torrent Freak to get their repostings of the entertainment industry's list of pirate sites. Which many have noted ironically helps pirates find pirate sites. Last time I looked at Mastodon, years ago, there were very few servers to join. Maybe time for another look?
People could change or break any business very quickly simply by doing a massive boycott. If FaceBook was boycotted, they would immediately see trouble and scramble to make changes. It won't happen though. People won't give up their social media. But maybe, they will move to a better social media platform. Isn't that what happened to MySpace? Then there's Twitter's fate: enshittification, but not a gradual one, it was abrupt, after a hostile takeover.
I wonder that most people have such high tolerance for having their pockets picked, their lives analyzed and that info sold. As I have said before, privacy has value, to hide your weaknesses and weak moments from opportunists and enemies. Many of these social media sites blow the doors off privacy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @12:36PM (4 children)
The green site still exists, but it has little value to me, or the users who migrated here or simply stopped using it, but do you think their self published user stats reflected the dip in usage?
I personally know quite a few people who rage quit Facebook recently, but again I doubt their released stats will accurately reflect that or my 99% reduction in interaction time with their POS interface.
I wrote a bot BBS user in 1988, I am certain that the majority of "users" counted by the larger social media sites are various forms of bots and/or multi registration people doing various forms of astroturfing and other manipulations.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 05, @01:23PM (3 children)
Speaking of cooked books and such like fraud, something I often wonder is how pervasive such lying and cheating is. Has it gotten worse lately, or it's about the same as always? Or, have things improved?
I had the misfortune to join Match.com just when their fraud was at its peak. Over 50% of their matches were people who had left, or were employees of Match forced to create a profile, or were not genuinely available for some other reason. At first I wondered if the dismal response rate of less than 10% was me. Pretty mean of Match to feed people's worries on that however inadvertently, as an unintended side effect of the fraud they were committing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @01:43PM (2 children)
I can't imagine that the bot ratio has decreased over the decades...
Don't feel bad about your match.com experience, dating services before the internet were full of service created profiles too.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 05, @02:17PM (1 child)
And now ChatGPT can be your boy/girl friend. Easier than ever to fabricate a profile. Yeah, the bot ratio has probably gone up.
Match had a little farewell gift: a mystery message from someone "who might be hot" that arrived just after my 3 month subscription had expired. If I wanted to read the message, I would have to renew! By then I had heard of that trick, didn't believe the message was real, and did not renew.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @03:59PM
Good call.
Sometimes some people may be "happy enough" to chat with a bot, but they definitely should be disclosed so they know that's what's happening.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday February 05, @12:38PM (2 children)
"Many of these social media sites blow the doors off privacy."
No. People who use these sites, of their own free will I might add, blow the doors off their own privacy.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 05, @01:08PM (1 child)
Well, yes. The difference between an extrovert and an introvert, or a bold person and a shy person. Social media is the ultimate place to show off. Even shields the show offs to some extent. Reminds me of studies of fish behavior, in particular bold vs shy. The bold fish took more risks to get more rewards. Sometimes it ended badly for the bold fish. Caught by a predator.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 05, @02:10PM
Classic Chinese lesson for their children: the tallest tree is the first cut.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, @08:18PM (2 children)
You're welcome.
https://joinfediverse.wiki [joinfediverse.wiki]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 07, @04:37PM (1 child)
Okay, so I tried to join Lemmy. Chose a server. They want the candidate to write them a little message telling them why you want to join. I did that. Then, so far, no response. Why the heck isn't that process more automated? Somehow other sites can completely automate sign ups, despite the problems with spam and bots and so on.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 07, @06:21PM
i was asked to write whether I believed that pineapple should be served on pizza. I wrote less than a dozen words and received access the following morning.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday February 04, @05:07PM (1 child)
Lemmy [join-lemmy.org] is the Fediverse's alternative to Reddit and it's great! Much better than Reddit IMHO.
Lemmy has been growing fast too and you should give it a whirl.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 07, @04:39PM
Seems Lemmy is not so easily joined. The sign up process is not fully automated, needs human intervention, and if no human can be bothered, you can't join. I dunno, maybe I should try more servers?