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   mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Dec-2024 08:42:01 JST mcc

   • Evan Prodromou

   @evan I think this is a potentially good sentiment but I am struggling with the (here papered over) distinction between the Fediverse and the "connected component" of the Fediverse.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Dec-2024 08:42:00 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc hmm. This is a very interesting concept.

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:15:30 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan (i sometimes toy with talking about e.g. "the mastoverse" or "the lemmyverse", or some similar name for the japanese server clique that the mastoverse doesn't talk to well, each of these "verse" terms referring to the subset of the fediverse you can 'see' from any one specific point

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:15:30 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc I'm less interested in that than the connected component. I think it's an interested topic because of the way blocking works.

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:33:10 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan When you talk about "The Fediverse" in the top post, I don't think you mean that in the sense of "all servers using an ActivityPub-like protocol that can interoperate with at least one other server". I think you're imagining some mesh of servers that can "mostly see" each other. It's not a "clique", because there are various broken links within that mesh (for example mastodon.social defederates/silences many servers, and many servers have defederated/silenced mastodon.social).

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:33:10 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan If this is the "Fediverse", it has user pairs that can't see each other. But there are hops where user `a` on server `A` can mutually speak with user `b` on server `B` who can mutually speak with user `c` on server `C` even though `a` and `c` are visible to each other. So you *could* describe this graph subset as a connected component. You have a notional community because `a` and `c`, due to their mutual conversation with `b`, share a milieu.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:33:10 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc Yes, absolutely true. However, many of the ways that information flows from `c` to `a` in this structure are inhibited by domain blocks.

     `b` can't share posts by `c` to `a`, and some parts of a conversation between `b` and `c` are hidden, too. So, unlike a situation where `a` and `c` just don't know each other, domain blocks inhibit connectivity and network value.

     *Ideas* that `b` gets from `c` can be communicated to `a`, though. So it's not perfectly blocking transmission.

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:33:11 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan So what you've got is a sort of directed graph with colored edges, where there are many nodes and each node can "see" N other nodes. There are at least 3 categorizable types of "sight", and if node A can "see" node B the reverse is not necessarily true. If we want to talk about "the part of the graph that can all mutually see each other" then graph theory offers us a variety of vocabulary for talking about that. "connected component" & "clique" are good starting points w/wikipedia entries.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:34:38 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc I also think that it's interesting that we're talking about the "connected component" of the Fediverse as if it was the umpteen thousand Mastodon and similar networks. Just by number of users I think the Threads-Flipboard component alone (with at least these two networks, their millions of users, and whatever other networks that connect to them) is probably bigger at this point.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:37:34 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc Anyway, I would love to see someone do more social network analysis work on the Fediverse. I think it's a topic really worthy of investigation.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 02:44:59 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc Holy crap, this post happened at a fortuitous moment!

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     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 03:00:41 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan Sure. Another question is whether Matrix is part of the fediverse, or is it a different fediverse, or what.

     Is Threads-Flipboard in two way communication now, or is it just that Threads can be followed/syndicated from Flipboard?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 03:00:41 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @mcc Matrix no. Threads-Flipboard, yes.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 03:09:15 JST Evan Prodromou

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     • Edward L Platt

     @elplatt @mcc Yeah, but in a lot of networks you'll get one big component and a few dinky unconnected ones. Which is why people talk about "the" connected component of a network -- that is, the biggest one.

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     Edward L Platt (elplatt@greatjustice.net)'s status on Thursday, 05-Dec-2024 03:09:16 JST Edward L Platt

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan @mcc It's interesting to talk about "a" connected component for the Fediverse. They emerge when links are assigned randomly, but it's possible we could end up with several similarly sized connected components based on different community standards.