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🤯 This year in social media is wild. The latest chapter is no exception. Fascinating data and anecdotes.

Data:
* Over 430K Fediverse accounts created in the past week. And it's accelerating.

mastodon.social/@mastodonuserc

Anecdotes:
Major communities may be moving soon.

kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/

Here's the Fediverse version of "celebrities" with exactly 1 subscriber so far... the person who claimed to be the former moderator of the celebrities sub-reddit.
kbin.social/m/celebrities

MastodonMastodon Users (@mastodonusercount@mastodon.social)Attached: 1 image 12,729,048 accounts +3,066 in the last hour +64,511 in the last day +432,666 in the last week

I'm still sticking with my call that *long-term*, decentralized social media will be the winner. Too many of the world's greatest Android and iOS mobile development teams are now building for the fediverse. Too many of the world's best *human* moderation, privacy, and safety, experts are on the fediverse. The user benefits are too aligned, despite companies not having the usual metrics and analytics to optimize the experience.

Fighting the fediverse is like fighting a flood by punching it.

mekka okereke :verified:

Yes, Mastodon still has huge problems with "HOA racism" and user safety. But there is a "path to green" for all of these problems. And people (including me! 🙋🏿‍♂️) are working on them.

Yes, the current version of ActivityPub is not ready for what's coming. But again, too many of the world's best SREs and API designers are now poking ActivityPub with a stick again, now that the scale constraints have changed.

If Fediverse wins, dozens (hundreds?) of mobile apps and services have a continued path to be sustainable businesses. Yes, some of the big ones are VC funded. But many of the others are not. Unapologetically: I like helping to create paths for user benefit centered, trust based, innovative, companies to thrive.

The Fediverse is messy. Just like democracy is messy. But they're both ideas that are too powerful to ignore. They tap into too much human power of both intellect and inspiration.

@mekkaokereke In order for the Fediverse to win, there has to be a more pragmatic approach to Corporates jumping in.

@justinmwhitaker

I don't think that's true.

I think it can continue to be messy and chaotic, and Fediverse still wins.🤷🏿‍♂️

I think that big corporations need Fediverse more than Fediverse needs big corporations. On current trajectory, the net flow of users is away from centralized platforms and towards the fedi.

I think that Meta entering fedi now, is an indicator that they see where this is all headed, and understand that they need to get there early. Like with Instagram. And WhatsApp.

@justinmwhitaker

I definitely agree that the fediverse will become more pragmatic in its approach to corporations big and small, but I don't think it's a pre-requisite.

I think that Fediverse being the attractor of users, creates the incentive for the pragmatic approach. As in, becoming the place where the users are, creates the right incentives for making things work better for corporations.

User needs come first.

@mekkaokereke It's going to stay chaotic and messy...but servers, bandwidth, and development cost money.

That net flow away from free ad/VC/data sale supported networks to charity driven servers maintained by volunteers or coalitions of the willing isn't supportable long term.

At some point, Mastodon, or whatever the site du jour is, is going to need a cash inflow to survive.

@justinmwhitaker

Ah, I see your point! Thanks for clarifying.

I think that happens naturally as well. The percent of people on Fedi that deeply understand the difference between capitalism and commerce, is increasing. The idea of labor (paying human beings for their time and expertise) is less taboo now. The idea that sharing the cost for a server without a profit motive is growing. When you eat at a restaurant with friends and split the bill, it's not "charity." It's also not profit driven.

@justinmwhitaker

"Use this server for free! Donate if you feel like it. Or don't! Up to you, mate!" works until it doesn't. Then we hear, "I'm shutting down in a month! Too much work, and y'all just yell at me anyway... 😢"

"This server is a co-op. It costs $5 a year at this level. We have subsidized memberships. If you can't pay, ask us! If you're able to, you can cover a subsidized membership for others! Every additional $5 you pay, covers a membership for someone else." is sustainable.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker as a point of reference, @SDF has provided services on the Internet longer than the Web has been around and uses this membership model extensively.

@trurl @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @SDF

#TootCat is run on a "pay what you can, if you can" model as well. I've been running it that way since the start of 2018, and I don't foresee burnout becoming a problem; it's a matter of being able to nurture a supportive community and (most importantly) being willing to delegate tasks rather than... well, the alternatives.

I've lost count of how many "I quit" admins I've tried to contact to ask if they'd like someone to take over managing their site (temporarily or permanently), and the answer is always* no (when they bother replying at all). ...so I have to say I'm a tad suspicious of the idea that burnout was ever the real problem.

* with the sole exception of TC's owner, back at the end of 2017.

@woozle @trurl @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @SDF well, nova had a pretty public quit of administering this instance, but had already set up a team of mods and admins and a nonprofit to accept donations, so I'd say that's another fairly positive example.

It would be nice if more admins would feel comfortable handing an instance off rather than shutting down, but sometimes finding someone to hand off to and doing all of the work to migrate everything over can be a lot of work at peak burnout.

@unlambda @woozle @trurl @justinmwhitaker @SDF

Yeah. She handled that whole situation so much better than I would have. I don't have that kind of strength.🤷🏿‍♂️

But yeah, she built a real organization with admin being a separate function from moderation, and a separate function from governance. She had the humility to say from jump "I shouldn't be the unilateral top of moderation, or governance, or admin. No new monarchs."

It takes a lot of foresight to set things up that way. Uncommon. Respect.

@woozle @trurl @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @SDF I did end mastodon.host ( along with funkwhale / peertube etc... ) due to a lack of funds to continue in 2018-19ish after 2+y of hosting that. Sadly the takeover went wrong and the new admin disappeared only 6m after he took over. I wish I had given that to someone who would have continued... Or found a way to secure enough funding to cover the hosting costs... Different times, the fediverse was only an infant ;)

@gled

That really sucks; thank you for talking about it here. I think more of these stories need to be told. What was the budget like (requirements & shortfall), at that point, if I may ask?

@trurl @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @SDF

@woozle @trurl @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @SDF

mastodon.host started at around $30 per month on a single VPS, but quickly evolved into 4 then 5 servers, with a monthly cost above $400. I think peak was around the $450-500/month. I got some donations from time to time, max was maybe around $30 iirc, far from getting into sustainable territories, even though super appreciated.

At the time, my servers were receiving more than 70% of the fediverse public posts, I was hosting one of the biggest funkwhale instance, plus a relatively sizeable Peertube one, the Plume flagship ( fediverse.blog, luckily this got separated and given back to Plume community before the break ) and a few other services ( xmpp chat over your mastodon creds, pleroma before it was considered bad, a mastodon public relay, etc.. ).

Most of the cost was the DB server, and then you add the workers, public front, and file server, this adds up fast...

Could I have reduced monthly expenses at the cost of slower service ? Yes for sure... Or I could have shutdown a few services too. Also the time spent maintaining the whole stack of different softs was getting a bit out there too, especially as I was maintaining a soft fork of mastodon to provide search before ES was introduced, and maintained a patch without ES after ES was introduced.

When I decided it was too much to continue sustaining this kind of running expense, I had contact with someone I thought would be continuing for a long time, and would pledge the same I did "If/when I have to stop, I will give the server to another admin the users approve of to continue instead of shutting down". Unfortunately, the service went dark one day and the admin just vanished.

All services/backup/domain etc... were out of reach for me to get control back and save, so it was all lost and users had to move elsewhere with no backups :/

Lesson learned, if I had to setup something again, I would not do it alone but rather with a group of admins, and a clear path to auto-financing the hosting part for long term sustainability.

I was lucky to have a mod team that was doing a great job, having to moderate only as a replacement for them when they needed to take a break or to validate their decision with the admin hat. That taught me also that mod burnout is a real thing, hence the supplementing when the mod team needed help.

Happy to answer any questions you may have :)

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker The internet as a co-op is a really attractive idea.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker

I want this system to be the norm and would like to see instance hosting solutions include ways to make it a one click operation

@zzz @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker

I just tested such a one-click solution for the soon to launch #Spacehost. I had a copy of Lemmy running with basically one click, plus the credit card info. It’s aiming to be AI-assisted 1-click host management, too.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker yes this. I love this and as someone who could definitely afford $5, I’d for sure help subsidize those who can’t. I’d pay more to get out from under the pop up ads and “like and subscribe now” harassment on basically all major internet platforms and sites.

@no1lion99 @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker Sounds like the Patreon model for mastodon instances.

Speaking of which, I wonder if there's a way to improve that whole area as well.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker I will only pay if it gives me a special badge that tells everyone I have bad opinions and boosts them above everyone else's.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker this reminds me very much about the points @hostsharing makes in their post here hostsharing.net/blog/2019/11/1 (unfortunately in german).

Co-ops seem to be an interesting model which can carry the human and physical operating costs of our federated infra which do show positive scaling effects (more co-op members, less costs for all co-op members).
While avoiding the downside of a winner-takes-all mentality, that is preeminent today.

I just recently discovered that post and it really got me thinking and excited!

www.hostsharing.netFree Software is evilOpen-Source-Software ist böse. Sie ist die Waffe, mit der GAFA das Internet monopolisiert hat. Jeder Open-Source-Entwickler spielt GAFA in die Hände. Der Einzelne ist machtlos gegen die Übermacht der Internetkonzerne. Gemeinschaftlich betriebene Infrastruktur könnte ein Weg sein, das Internet wieder zu dezentralisieren und ein wenig digitale Souveränität zurückzugewinnen.

@slowdownitsfine @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker @hostsharing

And in fact, this is kind what's happening. Cosocial.ca is already a co-op. My current server is filing to be a society. The governance models are happening and I expect co-ops will be the way this succeeds.

@gatesvp @slowdownitsfine @mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker Great news. Hostsharing was founded in 2000 in the good old days of the internet. ;-) Our mission is to build cooperative property of technical infrastructure. Our members use our own servers for all kinds of use cases. Cooperatives are long term service partners for their members as scaling serves the members. We have members – in many cases organizations – that run services like Mastodon or Matrix for their peers in our coop cloud.

@hostsharing This is an amazing project you're running! I noticed your site is in German, which I haven't acquired yet. Until I do, could I still become a member?

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker Wikipedia shows that the “Donate if you want” model can work, but effort has to be put in to it. It helps that when they run their donation drives, they say very clearly how much they need to make and how much they’ve made so far, and they can put a banner for it right at the top when you go on the site. Fediverse sites building that kind of functionality in for server admins would help keep them alive.

@stopthatgirl7 @nicolas17 @justinmwhitaker

Yes, the donation model can work. It's working now.

My point is not that donations can never work.

My point is that other models can work too.

There are more choices than "Ad supported" or "Donation supported."

@mekkaokereke I’ve contributed to my instance/server since Oct when I setup up an account and one for my 75 y/o mom, consider it to be like a streaming service or subscription, both of us are happy to be here. More people should support their admns.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker
This is key! An administrative group that's not profit-driven can run a system more efficiently than one that's constantly diverting a significant percentage of revenue to the dead-end of its shareholders' pockets.

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke Then that cash infusion should come from donations to a foundation (similar to Wikipedia, the Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, etc.) and not ads or venture funds. There are ways to make open source projects sustainable without the compromises inherent to private financing.

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke I don't believe that (server) cash is an issue right now, simply because I don't see people optimizing for it right now. No real perf testing, let alone optimisation, lotsa tiny, inefficient instances. Plenty of techies willing to subsidize their hobby. Engineer time, OTOH, is expensive and scarce, and there are more important things to fix, like UX. If the Fedi scales, funding may become an issue, but until then, trying to scale seems more important.

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke The good news is that tech advances + FB, Google, Amazon, MS have driven down the price of cloud computers / hosted servers - I used to pay $100-$200 a month for what can now be bought for $10 a month.

I don’t think the long-term issue is the server CPU cost but rather the storage (TB, PB) cost. I want to succeed but I worry about how fast the data costs of video will grow.

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke people need to get used to the need to pay for services if we want them to be well run and reliable.

Right now most instances are running on volunteer labor and volunteer money, and it's *possible* to go from there to actually paying people to run servers for us.

It's much harder to go from ad supported to user supported, because the business models are too different

@justinmwhitaker
Not really seeing that ad, nor VC nor data sale supported is supportable long term.
@mekkaokereke

@ami @mekkaokereke Considering that all social networks seem to have a life cycle, that may be true.

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke

This point needs a lot more emphasis. Instance admins, mods, devs, maintainers, b/w, h/w, s/w, heat dissipation, security, payment mechanisms all need to be funded.

Migration marketing needs to help migrators understand the value of their "ad/VC/data sale" free use of the Fediverse. Opt-in ad/data sale could be an ecosystem service for some migrators.

Broadly, an extractive social ecosystem siphons away much, much more currency to crypto-fail schemes, executive salaries, and investor returns than paying instances a living income when delivering their services. That "net flow" is part of the evolutionary force for creating services in a non-extractive social ecosystem.

Running an instance should be a gig that can support a comfortable life, at a minimum. Attracting users to an instance that is creating ecosystem services is a useful force for sustaining the ecosystem. Useful services spread throughout instances.

The "At some point" point is now. Set user expectations now.

@CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke Running an instance should be a hobby, and done for fun.

It shouldn't be a "gig". It should be much akin to installing a hose reel on a house, and putting the hose on there to use.

Once you start commercializing social interactions, you've already killed your social network and directed it towards the worst of what we've already seen.

@ubergeek @CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke why stop there? This attitude that you should do it for the community good and not for pay is what helps to keep the wages of nurses and teachers down.

@zbyte64 @CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke Except, hosting your own fedi instance costs at most, $4/month for a single user, and can also be a home for ~20 others as well, without much maintenance beyond that.

Teaching is literally a full time job.

@ubergeek @CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke Have you taken a hard look at the legal requirements of running an instance? You’re legally at risk if you don’t comply with DMCA, COPPA, taking steps to deal with CSAM, the EU’s GDPR and soon the DSA, and a lot more. Accidental breaching any of these as a hobbyist admin could destroy your life, and ignorance is not a defence. Sadly, I don’t think hobbyist servers are the answer.

See eg
denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.ht

www.dreamwidth.orgCaptcha Check

@penllawen @CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke yes, I have. And it was explained to me if I run a personal instance, it's not like the EU is gonna slap me with fines.

@ubergeek @CynthesisToday @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke A purely personal instance is relatively safe, sure. You know you’re not going to break the rules. But Mastodon can’t scale on purely personal instances, I fear.

@ubergeek @penllawen @CynthesisToday @mekkaokereke

Because a normal user's expectation is that the "work" they put into the site isn't going to disappear overnight.

Thus far, all you can do is export your contacts, blocks, etc., but your posts are gone when the server admin decides "enough is enough".

Former Twitter or Meta users will put up with that loss exactly once.

After that, the Fediverse is burned to them.

@justinmwhitaker @penllawen @CynthesisToday @mekkaokereke What "work" is going into talking with friends?

I do not consider my leisure conversations to be labor.

Now, with that said, if we're going to consider conversations between friends to be labor... When are instance admins going to start paying users for creating the content then? When will Facebook, Reddit, Insta, etc start paying fair labor rates for the "work" they put into the site?

@ubergeek @penllawen @CynthesisToday @mekkaokereke

The work to find and grow that network of friends.

And what you consider "work" is irrelevant to most social users.

The reason that many won't leave Twitter is because they've been there since 2006 and have built their followings/followers, lists, bookmarks, etc. over that time.

It's sunk cost, but people still value their effort on those sites even if you don't.

@justinmwhitaker @penllawen @CynthesisToday @mekkaokereke Built their followers? That's "work"? For what? To effectively deliver ads to people?

Do we really care to have that "work" replicated here?

@penllawen @ubergeek @justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke

I need to think on the "can't scale on purely personal instances" statement.

It's possible to run a bunch of services (Apache server, SMTP server) on a UNIX workstation and still use the workstation as a workstation. Just trying to relate the environment to what was done more than 10 years ago (last time I did something like that). I can't think of a reason why the ActivityPub protocol (lots of HTTPS stuff) couldn't be run on a personal workstation to service personal instance needs.

There is instance admin stuff, but the mod problems go away. The legal rules as described in denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.ht are true of my workstation, too. However, most of the time, a warrant would be required for the legal actions wrt my personal workstation.

Not saying for sure that personal ActivityPub wouldn't scale but, until I thought about it more, I wouldn't rule out scalability of single use ActivityPub.

www.dreamwidth.orgCaptcha Check

@justinmwhitaker @mekkaokereke
Cash flow is doable. If the tidal flow looks obvious you will see VC money go into apps that do servers as the bundle. Facebook etc will run their own instance. It will be no different from www. Cash flow isn’t the problem, it’s user gate-keepers. The fun thing is that they don’t actually get a say, the moderators do.

@mekkaokereke @justinmwhitaker The web (HTTP) won, and it’s messy as hell, but it’s also powerful and a great equalizer. ActivityPub could be the same.

@mekkaokereke I don't understand how this Meta situation is any different than Gab or TruthSocial. Aren't they built on ActivityPub? And can't they technically federate with other servers/instances? I don't know much about much, but this feels different than when large corps absorb smaller competitors and then dismantle them. They literally can't do that to the fediverse. Right? I haven't been on FB since 2016, and I know their track record regarding genocide and destabilizing governments, so I have no love for them. But the concern here feels... too much? I don't know.