Mastodon

Open-source, Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs) are emerging as alternatives to the popular yet centralized and profit-driven platforms like Facebook or Twitter. In DOSNs, users can set up their own server, or instance, while they can actually interact with users of other instances. Moreover, by adopting the same communication protocol, DOSNs become part of a massive social network, namely the Fediverse. Mastodon is the most relevant platform in the Fediverse to date, and also the one that has attracted attention from the research community. Existing studies are however limited to an analysis of a relatively outdated sample of Mastodon focusing on few aspects at a user level, while several open questions have not been answered yet, especially at the instance level. In this work, we aim at pushing forward our understanding of the Fediverse by leveraging the primary role of Mastodon therein. Our first contribution is the building of an up-to-date and highly representative dataset of Mastodon. Upon this new data, we have defined a network model over Mastodon instances and exploited it to investigate three major aspects: the structural features of the Mastodon network of instances from a macroscopic as well as a mesoscopic perspective, to unveil the distinguishing traits of the underlying federative mechanism; the backbone of the network, to discover the essential interrelations between the instances; and the growth of Mastodon, to understand how the shape of the instance network has evolved during the last few years, also when broading the scope to account for instances belonging to other platforms. Our extensive analysis of the above aspects has provided a number of findings that reveal distinguishing features of Mastodon and that can be used as a starting point for the discovery of all the DOSN Fediverse.

Mastodon light theme extension for browser

Conversations about Meta's new project continue, a look at what's happening with federated forum software, new updates for Pixelfed and more!

Hello, I’m a Fedizen interested in monitoring the dynamics of the Fediverse in terms of centralization/decentralization, so I have performed a small analysis of the Fediverse diversity comparing two time points. I would like to share it with you in case you find it interesting, too. Also, any technical or conceptual feedback will be welcome. As source data, I have used data acquired by @spla consisting in users and active users (MAU measure) by each known server. From his server mastodont.cat,...

Yes, ActivityPub for Administrations also used BBB and it was a good experience, great software.

#Twitter post importing is coming to #Calckey! Which means you’ll soon be able to upload all your old Twitter posts to your Calckey account! @fediversenews@venera.social 📎

A place for Fediverse software! Ping @kainoa@calckey.social to get an invite. More info: https://fedi.software/@admin/pages/about

Browsing posts tagged #dataviz

Aggregrating the latest trends from across the fediverse.

A tool called Dissenter lets you comment on tweets, websites and anything else with a URL.

A dynamic collection of engaging Mastodon accounts, organized by topic area

Everything you want to know about decentralized social networks and the protocols that power them

Learn about your followers and accounts you follow.

Decentralization is what makes so many of the Fediverse’s unique features possible. And it can also...

Twitter’s new CEO will leave product design and tech to Elon Musk.

One banned tool is already working on Android-to-Android meshes that survive internet outages

All of the posts on Mastodon about how the Blue Sky team was silly for releasing a social media network in 2023 without blocking and moderation, even in private beta, and that the Blue Sky team should have known what would happen... ...are being written on Mastodon: a social media platform that in 2023, still doesn't take into account that Black users face a disproportionate amount of very specific types of abuse, and is missing key features that would make the Black population safer. 🙂🙃

More time for Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

Browse the Fediverse

Audio chat space for Mastodon, Akkoma, GoToSocial, and Calckey