I've seen some people talking about a small fediverse -- fewer people, more old-timers.
I feel like access to the fediverse is a human right, and I want all people to have that access. So I'm 100M+.
But I also want everyone here, especially the people who've worked so hard to build the infrastructure and culture of the fediverse, to feel the safety and control that a small fediverse provides.
@evan if the protocol you made is worth it's money (which I assume it is, but I didn't work out the details yet), its implementations should allow fetching state on demand (of the users' social circle).
If this is true and the implementations are reasonable, then I see no risk to the infrastructure whatsoever. Of course, people like me who want to preserve everything will have to buy more and more disk space over time, but it's pretty manageable.
@evan I worry about any project that aims to cover 100% of all people and considers less than 100% market share to be insufficient.
I think it's fine for many different tools and infrastructure systems and interaction styles to exist, and I don't think there's any need for any one of them to be actively used by billions of people.
I think every one of those billions of people should have the opportunity to use any of those tools that makes sense to them, which could include "the fediverse".
@evan It’s like asking how many people should have email accounts. An extra 4 billion users wouldn’t materially affect my email experience. If it did then the fediverse is badly designed.
The social contracts and how we form circles/tribes/communities here will be the hard part.
And the discussion re meta et al show that "just growth" is not the way.
We could argue how many forums should you be able to access? And should every user from every forum post in every other forum? Technically yes, socially we need to set boundaries.
Not only to avoid friction, but to conserve context. Look at the issue of people and mentioning stuff "here"
@evan
For me it is German/European stuff.
And our experience about train travel and how we just talk past each other and are not willing to give all the context for a german user of DB to someone not having this infrastructure. And vice versa for other things
Having context and a "small group" to talk to might be awesome. Totally social issue.
(As a European I am amazed about all the health posts from a rich country)
@evan I don't think my desires matter at all here tbh. It will be as big as it gets, what's important is what it becomes not how big it becomes. (Or the many things it becomes, as the case may be!) What would be a real shame is if it just became another corporate shopping mall masquerading as a communal space that everyone else has to try to work around (as people already do in the walled gardens).
@evan I have been really enjoying it at its current size. But it would be wrong of me to say that what I've been enjoying should be unavailable to others. The best that could happen would be for the Fediverse to be widely accessible (1 billion users or more) while still managing to maintain its fun, friendly, and personal character.
I do not care about the size of the fediverse. I am fine with every lightbulb tooting, and every drone offering a livestream so billions of users are fine. If it scales
I am fine being in "a corner of the fediverse" aka a community with 100s of folks
What I find important is that we have no dominant "too big to fail" dynamics here.Aka everyone must federate with some key instances. So having a large fediverse, with islands of variable size is fine to me
@evan It should be as big or as small as there are people who have a legitimate interest in using it. That said, I'm in favour of a large number of small instances rather than a small number of large instances.
@evan The fediverse is based on a protocol, not an app. This is kinda like asking how big the email universe should be. Or SMS.
The more people using the protocol, the better. But your universe is always going to be the people you connect with. So always as big as you want it to be.
@evan totally is. Fediverse is composed of diverse groups that use ActivityPub.
Ok now that I've thought more about it, I guess I just misunderstood you. You meant how big MY fediverse should be. I haven't thought about that much. But i guess my answer would be as big as possible. I want to meet other people whole traveling and be able to connect with them, much like it's possible now with meta products (Whatsapp, fb, insta)
@evan ok. Is truth social part of the fediverse? If meta starts using ActivityPub but only connects to its own apps, does it become its own fediverse? What if they only connect to pixelfed and defed everything else?
https://twit.social/@a let's assume that the "fediverse" is the largest connected component of the total graph of accounts on ActivityPub-enabled servers.
@evanhttps://twit.social/@a I would argue that to be part of the fediverse a server must be open to federate with other servers by default (i.e. no whitelisting).
@evanhttps://twit.social/@a I see it close to the “world wide web” concept. An http server confined to a private network is not part of it, no matter how big the private network is, there is an openness/neutrality element to it.
@galactus@evan i like that perspective. Although I feel like pretty soon we will need a "common list" of servers to defed from (servers that are known to be populated by "bad actors").
@evan@galactus I agree with whoever said you should have higher options, but it's clear that people want to connect with people: the larger the better.
@evan its timely you put this pole up , i hope that the fediverse can scale to something multicellular(multinetwork) as opposed to a global metastasized corporate level network. the power of small things working together seems to be more useful for a larger body ?
it's an attention layer, not a community. who should be on the internet? the #openweb protocols let everybody put up content and everybody see it, if you could find it. free speech. #ActivityPub lets everyone collectively decide what ideas, art and information goes viral. no longer determined by the owners of big media or those with enough money to advertise. the democracy of reach.
@evan Everyone should have access. Every. Last. Person. (Whether they use it or not is another issue). So, with estimates that the global population will cross 8 billion this year, I’d add another line to your poll, because 7,999,999,999 people would be a failure. No one left behind.
@evan Nice easy one here, cheers, Evan! We're already over 12M, enough for the population of Benin (https://mas.to/@miblo/110577846040839604), and we don't feel anywhere near capacity to me.
I mean, if we can't make a global network function well with enough accounts for a geographically bounded nation, what hope do we have, really?
@hellomiakoda@evan just a note here. The data you post to mastodon is not private. Anyone has access to it, no login required. Please make sure you know this and post accordingly. Anything you wish to start private should not be posted here.
@evan As many as possible, but it matters how and when this growth happens.
If you tried to start Wikipedia from scratch today, just put the wiki software online and let the Internet have at it, the result would not be a relatively reliable source of information on almost any topic. The result would be an unusable clusterfuck. Some of that is the culture, a last bastion of old Internet ideals. Some is governance, organizing and conflict resolution. Ultimately, healthy growth simply takes time.
@evan I also have technical concerns about scaling fedi as it is now:
Currently, as fedi grows, it becomes increasingly resource-intensive & expensive to run a server, even if your server doesn't add users or activity. This will eventually price out individuals & small groups, like my server. This will result in centralization & inequity if it isn't addressed before we reach that scale.
If fedi uses more resources than centralized services, it may accelerate the climate crisis at scale
@evan that question does not make sense to me because I can live in my own little corner of the fediverse and not federate with any other corners that I won't want to see. Right? Or did I miss something important?
@evan what are your concerns about "too many people in the fediverse"?
As long as I can hand out in my own corner (or corners), which has some protection from hostile sites, I don't know why I should care about how many other people are using how many other sites.
@bhaugen ah! So, you took my question to imply that I personally want a small fediverse. And that's what "does not make sense to you".
There are people who want a small fediverse. I'm not one of them. I'm wondering how many of them there are; it looks like not a lot in my network, by the results of this poll.
@evan what did not make sense to me was that it's possible to control (to some extent, but not totally, according to some of the comments) the reach of one fediverse site by which other sites it federates with and which it either ignores or blocks. I'll follow up with a different angle...
@bhaugen So, I don't understand what that has to do with the original question. "How many people should have telephones?" is a different question from "How many people should have bhaugen's telephone number?"
@evan does your original question assume no control, boundary, blocks, etc?
Or do you think once connected to the fediverse, no practical boundaries are possible?
@evan@bhaugen you can make a hometown/glitch-soc instance where you don't federate with any other instance at all. it's an insulated community (or single user instance - or rather "blog"), not on the same social web. off the social web more or less.
Add comment