I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
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First off, I love the concept of Mastodon. @jerry also does a truly great job with infosec.exchange! Sadly, while some of these critiques off of Reddit have changed, many of them are still true (or an element of truth) today...
@kodamachameleon number 3 is interesting. It is true that it’s the slowest and the most resource intensive. But it’s also the one the scales the best. I had 50,000 people running on a single mastodon instance that was scaled across a bunch of hardware. That’s not possible on pleroma, misskey, etc. I wish it were, btw.
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@GossiTheDog The 2M was a short spike partially caused by a software bug counting accounts before the e-mail was confirmed alongside massive media coverage. Should not be used as a benchmark. It was 250K prior to that.
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@GossiTheDog sometimes I feel like the mastodon HOA do the network a great disservice.
I'm all for proper use of CWs and alt text, but the apps should make this easier to understand and discover for new users.
Having the HOA harassing the newbs for minor offences is a great way to bounce folks to the commercial networks.
Getting grief from the HOA for the “crime” of *checks notes* signing up on the default instance really makes people want to give the place a fair shot too… /s
For better or worse I am stubborn though, and stuck around long enough to find “my people” here anyway.
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog I've been spending a fairly large amount of my time thinking about how to make a social media aita that's only humans, and that's a hard problem
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For those who don't think the user base is dwindling, a few years ago Mastodon was celebrating about 2m monthly active users. Nowadays it's 0.7m.
@GossiTheDog Sad to see, but I am not super surprised.
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For those who don't think the user base is dwindling, a few years ago Mastodon was celebrating about 2m monthly active users. Nowadays it's 0.7m.
@GossiTheDog That's sad. Billionaire control of all forms of media is stronger than ever, and Mastodon is a great alternative.
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I don’t use an app. I’ve become completely negative installing any app on my mobile devices.
Right now, I’m on a tablet and I’m using the web interface
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @rob @GossiTheDog same, and I don't trust apps either.
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog I’ve also seen it happen
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog I'll take <1M accounts of folx who want to be here over 100+M accounts of bots and Nazis any day.
Though I really with more folx here reported and suspended the intimate image abuse accounts.
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@GossiTheDog The 2M was a short spike partially caused by a software bug counting accounts before the e-mail was confirmed alongside massive media coverage. Should not be used as a benchmark. It was 250K prior to that.
@Gargron @GossiTheDog So, no, don’t think there’s been much of a change at all in Mastodon regular users recently. I’ve watched this for a long time and I’ve been surprised at how stable it’s been.
I’ve also included stats from Bluesky, nobody there publishes a MAU number, so I use Daily Likers as a proxy. It’s basically same order of magnitude as Masto (really makes you wonder why you would put $100M into that). (1/2)
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@Gargron @GossiTheDog So, no, don’t think there’s been much of a change at all in Mastodon regular users recently. I’ve watched this for a long time and I’ve been surprised at how stable it’s been.
I’ve also included stats from Bluesky, nobody there publishes a MAU number, so I use Daily Likers as a proxy. It’s basically same order of magnitude as Masto (really makes you wonder why you would put $100M into that). (1/2)
There continues to be endless self-flagellation about the ills of the platform which is frankly eye-rolling because none of it matters. Network effect dominates everything; Twitter has platformed Nazism and literal CSAM generation in the last year and their usage numbers have hardly budged. (2/2)
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog I've been thoroughly enjoying it, though that's as a user, not an administrator. As a user however, I find the character limit on Bluesky too limiting. I don't post a ton, but when I do I don't want to have to string multiple posts together just to get a point across. This comment, for example, is over 100 characters too long for a Bluesky post.
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog
I wonder what makes your particular instance a target...
We're seeing about two new user requests a week at our perhaps stodgily named and sleepy instance. They are all real as far as I can tell. -
@GossiTheDog I'll take <1M accounts of folx who want to be here over 100+M accounts of bots and Nazis any day.
Though I really with more folx here reported and suspended the intimate image abuse accounts.
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For those who don't think the user base is dwindling, a few years ago Mastodon was celebrating about 2m monthly active users. Nowadays it's 0.7m.
@GossiTheDog i know there were a few people complaining of racist abuse who left for places like upscrolled. not saying that accounts for the drop but would've contributed. will be interesting to see what happens if and when bluesky starts to enshittify.
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog “the Fediverse is just like Usenet and email” they say as though those ended well
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I've had 20 sign ups to my Mastodon server in the past 48 hours, and 100% of them have been scammers, phishers and SEO spammers.
I make an effort to go in and suspend the accounts, nobody ever protests the suspension.
The fediverse is at a crossroads, the user base is dwindling and the new users are mostly just SEO spam accounts.
@GossiTheDog it reminds me of the end of g+. Just vast swathes of spam outside of the communities I was in
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@jerry @GossiTheDog ahh ok, that's somewhat what I thought. I can see that shift flowing slowly until it just all drops out due to critical mass of network of people they care about being available.
For me, the reasons I came here still outweigh the reasons for going on the others. I have named accounts on those I created today also, but primarily to squat the handles in case that's a problem for me later.
I do miss folks being around and being with me in the passions, logic, and reason for being here. It's the loss of that that hits the most. My mind fills the blanks and it is all negative and unsure how to make peace with it. Human nature perhaps makes more sense.
Small web is more attractive anyways, TBH. I want to be in webrings with folks that have dope sites and we're all a clubhouse of odd and diverse friends brought together by a very particular stance unwavering from!
I went from being on here to simply being alone to then being back on here and just getting back to it, getting used to it again.
It's a lot. It's not all doom scrolling. There is flowers and art and smiling people and just real people in life. It's pretty special, too.
I think you nailed it @faultcraft
It's dark times man. Most people don't want to acknowledge that, and the people that keep me here in the Fedi are the ones bearing whiteness to the failing of the light.
I've had about a hundred different versions of this conversation with my coworkers as well. Most people, by a wide margin, are not rational. They don't organize their worldviews and beliefs around abstract systems of knowledge.
Not to say that most people are all (or even mostly) MAGA or Qanon types. Simply saying that in the face of todays hyper-complex systems -social media, the economy, or the systems of knowledge that underpin technology, geopolitics- these people buckle. They just want to raise their kids and pretend its going to work out in the end.
The Fedi isn't offering that. That's OK too. AI aliens videos making fart jokes is good enough to ignore the ICE wolves circiling outside their doors. Most people need pain, personal intimate -and tragic- to contextualize what's happening outside their bubble of 100+- friends & family.
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@GossiTheDog To be fair, the larger fediverse recently crossed the 1 million mark again: https://fedidb.com/stats
Yes, arguably, it might be slipping again, but look at Bluesky, they're not doing that much better.
https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth
Only five times as many MAU as the fediverse.
Worth also pointing out that, as you probably have seen, Bluesky closed a $100 million funding round last year, all while experiencing a gradual decline in the number of active users.
@stefan @GossiTheDog I've found it very interesting as a phenomenon, both anecdotally and statistically, that people clearly prefer to be pandered to, lied to, and are completely fine with their data stolen. I don't mean this as in they are ignorant, you can literally lay out facts in front of people and they will still choose the ad-ridden hellscape of mainstream social media, simply because of it being a Skinner box.
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@GossiTheDog I definitely see a lot of that. Since we moderate signups here, I would estimate it's about 50/50 between legit people and spammers/scammers signing up. But we are overall losing more people that we are gaining.
