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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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.
In my opinion, the complexity is compounded by the absolutely abysmal mobile experience. Put succinctly - the software sucks - and it scares all the normies away.
And then there is the Mastodon peeps. God bless 'em. There are a lot of good people here, but a lot of terrible ones as well.
All this is going to suppress usage.
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@serrebi @GossiTheDog I don't care anymore I just want someone to make the everything client.
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@GossiTheDog Its clear there isn’t enough incentive for mass
Public to join the Fediverse. The messaging is to confusing, the onboarding is strange to people. Influencers are big part of modern social media and there is little incentive for them to be here.I’ll also say I don’t believe the majority of servers have the resources to take on mass amounts of people if they were to come.
Mastodon / Fediverse is a niche place. To be honest there is nothing wrong with that. So long as people have the means to keep things running there will always be a fediverse.
@64bithero @GossiTheDog I think also, deep down, most people just want to lurk around the popular kids where they can see what other people are looking at and doing.
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@faultcraft @GossiTheDog do you mean ideas on why that's happening?
@jerry @GossiTheDog yes, why folks may have left so suddenly.
I honestly missed it myself as I was going thru a big life change at the time. I was here as part of the twitter exodus right, but I just came back a year or less ago to Mastodon, and only recently really really here.
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@GossiTheDog I would guess 30% of that .7m are spam accounts. It’s a little sad.
@jerry I think it might be more.. I've been keeping a close eye on accounts here lately and sadly almost all of them sign up, post some links in their profile, and then disappear. I don't allow brand accounts but they keep coming, it's all from India and Vietnam - SEO farms basically.
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@jerry @GossiTheDog yes, why folks may have left so suddenly.
I honestly missed it myself as I was going thru a big life change at the time. I was here as part of the twitter exodus right, but I just came back a year or less ago to Mastodon, and only recently really really here.
@faultcraft @GossiTheDog I think there are a lot of reasons, but a big one is the network effect - people want to be where the people are. There was a big rush of people here after Musk bought Twitter, and that is the 2.7M accounts. Lots of people got disenfranchised for various reasons: the culture can be a bit toxic (especially at the time), it's very hard to fend off harassment in a federated network like this, the features are/were not at parity, and so on. So we are on the way back to where it's mainly the people who specifically want to be here and not some other social media site.
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@jerry I think it might be more.. I've been keeping a close eye on accounts here lately and sadly almost all of them sign up, post some links in their profile, and then disappear. I don't allow brand accounts but they keep coming, it's all from India and Vietnam - SEO farms basically.
@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.
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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.
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@jerry @GossiTheDog dammit! I'm just really really starting to love mastodon, and the bots have arrived to spoil it.
@tinmouth @GossiTheDog I am doing my damndest to keep them away.
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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 Yea, Mastodon requires a lot of effort. And lot of people want to be just spoon fed by the algorithm, instead of doing the work of following manually thousands of people.
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@tinmouth @GossiTheDog I am doing my damndest to keep them away.
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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.
I think this is mainly because a lot of users are quitting social media entirely. This is not isolated to just mastodon from what I can tell.
Like I lost contact to a lot of online acquaintances so far because they deleted ALL of their social media and went entirely offline.
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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's sad, but as a new fedi user, I sort of get why people jump off quickly. It's much slower paced than normal social sites, there's no in your face algorithm flooding you with highly relevant content from the start.
I've had lots of luck that I chose a great instance to create my account on, and by first following some people on there I was able to slowly find people who have similar interests or are generally just cool.
For Twitter refugees, it might look similar, but there's a much larger initial time investment required until it also feels similar.
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@faultcraft @GossiTheDog I think there are a lot of reasons, but a big one is the network effect - people want to be where the people are. There was a big rush of people here after Musk bought Twitter, and that is the 2.7M accounts. Lots of people got disenfranchised for various reasons: the culture can be a bit toxic (especially at the time), it's very hard to fend off harassment in a federated network like this, the features are/were not at parity, and so on. So we are on the way back to where it's mainly the people who specifically want to be here and not some other social media site.
@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.
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I think this is mainly because a lot of users are quitting social media entirely. This is not isolated to just mastodon from what I can tell.
Like I lost contact to a lot of online acquaintances so far because they deleted ALL of their social media and went entirely offline.
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@faultcraft @GossiTheDog I think there are a lot of reasons, but a big one is the network effect - people want to be where the people are. There was a big rush of people here after Musk bought Twitter, and that is the 2.7M accounts. Lots of people got disenfranchised for various reasons: the culture can be a bit toxic (especially at the time), it's very hard to fend off harassment in a federated network like this, the features are/were not at parity, and so on. So we are on the way back to where it's mainly the people who specifically want to be here and not some other social media site.
@jerry @faultcraft @GossiTheDog Yeah, this.
Musk influx was unprecedented, but fuelled by a combination of outrage and lack of alternatives. Neither of those were sustainable.
Bluesky gives people the combination of old-Twitter and gamified influencer-algorithm; and direct access to more official accounts (whether celebs or institutions), and bridgy bots give access to a load of Masto accounts too.
"Celeb" accounts I followed here have migrated to BS: Some won't, or stopped, bridging.
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I think this is mainly because a lot of users are quitting social media entirely. This is not isolated to just mastodon from what I can tell.
Like I lost contact to a lot of online acquaintances so far because they deleted ALL of their social media and went entirely offline.
@agowa338 I don't think that's the case, Threads has hundreds of millions of active users for example - TikTok etc pulling record numbers too.
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@tinmouth @GossiTheDog I am doing my damndest to keep them away.
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@agowa338 I don't think that's the case, Threads has hundreds of millions of active users for example - TikTok etc pulling record numbers too.
Well and how many of those are companies or AI generated garbage accounts.
Either by users that just generate AI videos and upload them or directly because of someone setting up hundreds of accounts and filling all of them with AI garbage or stolen content.
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@jerry I think it might be more.. I've been keeping a close eye on accounts here lately and sadly almost all of them sign up, post some links in their profile, and then disappear. I don't allow brand accounts but they keep coming, it's all from India and Vietnam - SEO farms basically.
As someone who's had accounts on and off for about 7 years, I think that may be confirmation bias
What I noticed instead is that in the early days when you followed someone they mostly followed you back. You posted a funny comment people followed. In no time you were part of a little online community and It was pretty easy to have a decent social experience (if you liked linux and pictures of cats, at any rate)
Now everyone seems to have settled down. Nobody follows you back if you follow them. Nobody chats to strangers. My last couple of accounts I came, posted some links, nothing happened, I got bored, I deleted the account. I am not sure what accounts you saw, but they might have been legit accounts who went through the same experience
