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   Rob Ricci (ricci@discuss.systems)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:06 JST Rob Ricci

   Hachyderm is the El Paso of the Fediverse

   It can be kind of hard to understand how big a server (instance) on the Fediverse really is. I know mastodon.social is much bigger than the server I'm on, but how much bigger, really?

   So what if we compare the populations of servers to cities?

   I built a tool for that! https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/fedicities/

   Let's compare mastodon.social, the biggest server on the Fediverse, to the biggest city in the world, Shanghai (pop 24.9M). In comparison, pixelfed.social is like Ahmedabad, India (pop 6.4M). hachyderm.io is like El Paso, Texas (pop 679K). The server I'm on, discuss.systems, is like Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany (pop 32.1K).

   Cool but maybe I'm not so familiar with some of those cities. What if we compare to cities in Mexico? (mastodon.social is Mexico City, Hachyderm is Tepic) Or Ontario? (mastodon.social is Toronto, Hachyderm is Caledon).

   Play around with this tool, select an area of the world you're familiar with, and get a better sense for how big all these servers really are! Check out what your own server is comparable to!

   • Embed this notice
     Damon L. Wakes (damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:02 JST Damon L. Wakes

     in reply to

     @ricci Please do let me know if you figure it out! I'd be keen to have another poke around. It is interesting to see the scale of the servers compared this way.

   • Embed this notice
     botvolution (botvolution@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:02 JST botvolution

     in reply to

     • Damon L. Wakes

     @ricci @DamonWakes
     Its important to remember that if this is based on the number of registered accounts, that the number of *active* accounts can be wildly different.
     sdf is a great example. While it has about 70k registered, the number of active accounts runs to a few hundred (i did a bit of digging via the api a few weeks or maybe months ago, I've got a post about it somewhere but sdf search doesnt work properly)

   • Embed this notice
     Rob Ricci (ricci@discuss.systems)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:03 JST Rob Ricci

     in reply to

     • Damon L. Wakes

     @DamonWakes hmm, I've tried searching for the same server and I'm getting more global results (a city in Japan) so I'm not sure what's going on here. I did have some bugs related to searching earlier so it seems quite possible I didn't squash them all

   • Embed this notice
     Damon L. Wakes (damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:04 JST Damon L. Wakes

     in reply to

     @ricci It's just done it first try on a fresh start in Firefox Focus (which shouldn't preserve anything between sessions). Any chance it's because I'm searching for mastodon.sdf.org?

   • Embed this notice
     Damon L. Wakes (damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:05 JST Damon L. Wakes

     in reply to

     @ricci This sounds neat, but it seems to have a very funny idea of what "global" means.

   • Embed this notice
     Rob Ricci (ricci@discuss.systems)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:18:05 JST Rob Ricci

     in reply to

     • Damon L. Wakes

     @DamonWakes hmmm... I assume this is after doing multiple searches, or is it on initial page load? Look like something isn't get cleared out properly

   • Embed this notice
     botvolution (botvolution@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:21:49 JST botvolution

     in reply to

     • Damon L. Wakes

     @DamonWakes @ricci
     Brilliant

   • Embed this notice
     Rob Ricci (ricci@discuss.systems)'s status on Saturday, 07-Feb-2026 07:21:50 JST Rob Ricci

     in reply to

     • botvolution
     • Damon L. Wakes

     @botvolution @DamonWakes This is the number of active accounts, I update them daily