Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi), the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and lead developer of Mastodon-the-software, got some people worried about the outsized influence Mastodon (

Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi), the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and lead developer of Mastodon-the-software, got some people worried about the outsized influence Mastodon (the software project and the non-profit) has on the rest of the Fediverse.

Good. We should be worried.

Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole Fediverse, on a single instance. Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.

This has poor consequences now, and it might have worse consequences later. What also really bothers me is that I have seen some of this before.

I go on to dive a bit into the history of StatusNet (the software), OStatus (the protocol), and identi.ca (the biggest instance) on a decentralized social network “grandparent” of the Fediverse.

And draw an analogy to show why mastodon.social’s size, and Mastodon-the-software-project’s influence on broader fedi is a serious risk we need to do something about.

  • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
    10·
    2 years ago

    the issue of “too big to block” is an interesting problem for federation that i’ve seen no particularly good answers to yet (probably because it hasn’t really been an issue up until recently). feels like there’s a tightrope act nobody’s mastered yet of balancing the desire to be where everyone is with the need to keep the whole system decentralized, while simultaneously ensuring everything can both interoperate as needed and moderate as needed without tearing the system apart.

  • petrescatraian@libranet.de
    5·
    2 years ago

    @rysiek Maybe we could suggest server alternatives to people that complain about stuff.

    e.g.: when someone says “hey, Mastodon is cool but I wish I could have quote-toots etc.” we could say “hey, come to libranet.de, we have this, but also that&this&etc. And you can get to keep your followers and follows”

    • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
      6·
      2 years ago

      Yup. The problem is that these users will have trouble understanding how can it be “Mastodon” without being Mastodon, if you get my drift. Plus, ideally this would also be done by Mastodon-the-software project — “if you want functionality X, check out instances of this compatible-but-different software project.”

      But absolutely, doing so yourself in such cases makes perfect sense.

  • grey
    4·
    1 year ago

    Yeah. I’ve also seen a lot of people point out that he’s kind of hijacking the whole networks branding with “mastodon” too. Because it’s not mastodon, it’s activitypub, the protocol and the network is activitypub, which one can use via an array of apps and clents and servers. But he acts like the whole is just his mastodon, mastodon, and mastodon. It’s like if google took over all the branding of the WWW and just pretended that the web is chrome, http is chrome, html is chrome, and there are no “web browsers” there is just chrome. That’s what he is doing with the activitypub network.

  • Sinthoras39
    1·
    1 year ago

    It is way easier for newcomers to just choose the biggest instance. Newcomers are also often not really familiar with the concept of decentralization. Really big instances like mastodon.social or lemmy.world should shut their registration if they’re expieriencing high demand on their registration and direct to smaller, for example more local instances.