Mastodon.social's continued growth as a percentage of the Fedi is (IMHO) worrying, I did a thread about this: https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/115492120189076969
M.s is currently 28.7% of all active Fedi accounts and rising. For whatever it's worth, if m.s reaches these network percentages I'm going to take following actions:
40% - Stop recommending mastodon.social accounts on @FediFollows & https://fedi.directory
45% - Limit mastodon.social
50% - Defederate mastodon.social
Thoughts? Do these sound okay?
@homegrown @FediFollows I've used the #fediverse since 2017, had accounts on many different instances. A month ago i created my current account on #MastodonSocial because i was transferring over 1K music posts from #Bluesky where i had done a music discovery project earlier in 2025 but wanted to leave there and not lose all that work.
I chose Mastodon.social because it was a TON of work and i needed to know i was choosing an instance that could handle that many posts and wasn't going away.
@homegrown @FediFollows It took me 6 days to post over 1K posts to create this:
https://mastodon.social/@transicorn/115428184719312347
So feel free to limit, defederate or whatever from it, but i personally feel i made the right choice in choosing it to share this #music with info for people on the #fedi.
I don't have to worry about it shutting down and that's ultimately what matters to me with this profile/project.
It is interesting that you are confident you don't have to worry about it shutting down. It'll be interesting also to see how that plays out. I'm not making any prediction nor suggesting a preference, just saying.. Nothing is for sure. Time will tell.
If not shutdown, another scenario is it gets bought out, or just somehow becomes de-facto financially controlled by some entity that causes a severe de-federation. Then you won't be sharing your music with #fedi, you'll be sharing it with mastodon.social.
@keith @homegrown I bridge my account to #Bluesky here so it's not just #Mastodon users i'm making all that #music available to, i also have access to millions more daily vs this network that has less than 1 million users and is declining.
Any instances that defederate from #MastodonSocial over time on this degrading network only further degrade their own users' reach.
If you think #MastodonSocial is going to be 'bought out' and turned into a centralized platform i'd disagree.
@transicorn @keith @homegrown
I think the two things that need to be noted, as moderation on a large and well-connected server, are that, as much as I agree with you...
1) not every server is looking for reach, and they're making their decisions accordingly, and that is okay, because that's how we build diversity amongst instances.
2) The vast majority of users, even if we count all the blocked users on Nazi Fedi, are still federated with Mastodon.Social: this is mainly a group of smaller servers which, once again, are making decisions for their own users based on legitimate concerns and thoughts.
Just Keep Calm and Fedi On. As long as we all stay in this together, and all keep our focus on building the best network we can, I don't think we will have a problem.
@Raccoon @keith @homegrown I understand not every #instance is looking for reach, but if you combine that fact with the user base declining here with no real chance of growing over time with ATProto being what most are choosing now as alternatives to #Twitter, #Facebook, etc. then that means that most of the smaller instances would be poor choices for new users coming here.
They would be great for those who want a small network, which makes them more centralized in some ways for said users.
@Raccoon @keith @homegrown In terms of growth and getting more folks on #Mastodon to overall make it more diverse, any instances choosing to #defederate are only actively hurting the #network and ensuring that outsiders may be less inclined to join them, or leave once they experienced that when they wanted a diverse network with reach...
There will be less diversity in users, and less users overall for the sake of small instances doing this.
@transicorn @keith @homegrown Well, Bluesky stats also show it to be a dying or stagnant network at best (decline in active users for most of this year) and the probability of dying for Bluesky is predicated on its lack of growth unlike Mastodon which has not made a pact with the venture capitalists.
As Of Right Now:
#Fediverse Active User Stats
@transicorn I was talking about active users which is the much more useful stat than all time registered accounts.
You can see graphs of that here among other places for Bluesky: https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.dev/bsky_users_total.html
The downward trend is clear. Bluesky has fallen from the peak of 15.1 million monthly active users to just 5.35 within the last 12 months.
6 Million Active Users on #Bluesky Right Now...
Less Than 1 Million On The Entirety Of ALL ActivityPub Instances
@transicorn the point is that Bluesky is declining just as well. The added problem for Bluesky is that continued funding via venture capital requires growth which they do not have at all. Both 5 million and 1 million are nothing compared to the likes of Threads or X which have a MAU in the hundreds of millions.
That said, all AP instances probably are at least and maybe significantly above a million, just difficult to pin it down exactly due to the distributed nature.
I bridge my account to #Bluesky because more people are there and #Mastodon is losing active users.
I'm not worried about being able to connect with others, but perhaps those here living in this bubble might want to consider what defederating on a network that is losing active users does to the health of the network and future of it for anyone wanting to come here.
@transicorn While I'd certainly like to see more users I can understand not everyone cares that much and has other priorities. The thing is that the fediverse has been around and likely will continue to be for a long time at this point. Not everyone cares to chase the numbers that much and whether they grow or not isn't so much a question of life and death here unlike for something like Bluesky.
@ikuturso @keith @homegrown You cared enough to argue in a response claiming #Bluesky is dying or stagnant and Mastodon isn't having problems simply because they haven't made a pact with venture capitalists.
So if the response now is it doesn't matter to people on #Mastodon if it's losing users i don't understand why you'd even bother to respond.
@transicorn yeah I said I would personally like to see growth and I do care about the facts so wanted to correct the impression you seemed to have that Bluesky is somehow not having this issue.
@ikuturso @keith @homegrown #Bluesky unlike #Mastodon / #ActivityPub is in its infancy and #Blacksky and other #ATProto based #PDS servers are now coming online.
That means they are only beginning to #decentralize, while #ActivityPub is actively losing users #ATProto is working towards growing because of this.
That should obviously tell you something about where this is all going for the two networks.
@ikuturso @keith @homegrown Because of this i believe, going back to the OP here we're responding on... #Mastodon instance defederating i think hurts this network over all.
I would also argue that growth overall for both Bluesky and Mastodon could increase should more people #bridge accounts between the two.
@transicorn @keith @homegrown Personally I don't disagree with that and I'd rather see bridging continue, I think even the limited Threads federation is probably more good than bad. I can see why other people with different priorities might have a different conclusion though.
@ikuturso
Yes! THIS point: "Not everyone cares to chase the numbers".
It remains to be seen if a decentralised federated "social" network can accommodate both number chasers and.. um what could one call the others... Maybe put it in terms of quantity vs quality?
Numbers, likes, follows, boosts, re-whatever, i am still not convinced there is much value in it, apart from the value as the addictive behaviour modifiers they were designed to be.
Not even for artists, musicians or others looking for "exposure". I come from a time when we wrote, drew, printed and photocopied flyers and handed them out in bars. I recorded many demos and saw many bands and musicians come and go. I saw many extremely talented writers and players go unnoticed.
It is not better now with "social" media and likes, follows. I believe it is worse. Jaron Lanier, for what it is worth, wrote a lot about this.
@keith @homegrown Here's the reality of the situation:
Mastodon.Social is the flagship instance that many new users will be coming to whether or not anyone is happy about that. I agree with the OP about diversity of the network being better if more smaller instances pop up, but people need to use them.
At present fedidb shows this to be a dying or stagnant network at best. Most went to Bluesky, most won't come back.