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   Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:25:53 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

   Thanks, everyone. So, Fedidb.com shows that about 1 out of every 4 users on the Fediverse is on mastodon.social. I think if mastodon.social rolled up over 3 months, per the server covenant, then maybe 10% of them would move to other servers. Most accounts would just disappear.

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     John Francis 🇨🇦🦫🍁🫎 (johnefrancis@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:28:21 JST John Francis 🇨🇦🦫🍁🫎

     in reply to

     @evan MAU or total? There's so many inactive & garbage accounts on there, if 10% are active meatbags who move elsewhere, I think that would be a great success.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:28:47 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     I think there would be a period of activity as those of us who are left try to figure out what to do next, and a bunch of other servers throw in the towel too. Then, with considerably less activity, a slow decline. A few holdout servers, a long tail of family or personal servers, and then quiet. A lot of bots still running. Without content, people wouldn't load their timelines, and without people being active, no new content. Vicious cycle.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:34:40 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     I think there will always be servers speaking ActivityPub on the Internet.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:35:38 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     But I don't think that's necessarily a "real" social network.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:38:02 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     In this situation, if we're lucky, ATProto would continue to take off and would stay open.

     If we're unlucky, under VC pressure Bluesky would try to claw back some control over the network and/or protocol.

     If we're very unlucky, Bluesky would eventually close, too, and probably take the ATmosphere with it.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:40:31 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     How do we avoid this? I think we need more people here. More big servers. And a more diverse set of protocol implementations.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:41:27 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     Anyway, my answer is no but. No, the Fediverse would not survive, but some remnant ActivityPub servers would.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:42:18 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     @usul there are some out there somewhere

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     Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD: (usul@piaille.fr)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:42:20 JST Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:

     in reply to

     @evan I thought the same about NNTP or FTP

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     Bruce Elrick (virtuous_sloth@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:49:38 JST Bruce Elrick

     in reply to

     @evan Would you have the skill to analyze your timeline's last month for what percentage of its posts come from mastodon.social?

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:49:46 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     How could this happen? I can think of three reasons.

     mastodon.social is run by a nonprofit with a million dollar budget. It costs about $100K/year for hosting alone. They might just run out of money.

     There could be a legal threat, and the service might not survive it.

     Or the team might just go in a different direction -- building a PDS or a collaborative notepad or something.

     I don't think any of these is likely, but none of them are impossible.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 12:53:14 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Bruce Elrick

     @virtuous_sloth probably!

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 13:07:02 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Sean Coates

     @sean I don't know; I got it from the 2024 annual report. 84K€ for hosting, probably not counting admins.

     joinmastodon.org/reports/Mastodon%20Annual%20Report%202024.pdf

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     Sean Coates (sean@scoat.es)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 13:07:03 JST Sean Coates

     in reply to

     @evan Are the details of that $100k/year posted somewhere? I don't doubt this, but I'm so curious about how this happens. Must be must bigger than I can fathom? (Is there a "market" for a much more efficient Mastodon?) So many questions. (-:

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:39:25 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • mojala

     @mojala I think it is pretty common.

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     mojala (mojala@mementomori.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:39:27 JST mojala

     in reply to

     @evan Slightly off topic, but contrasting this to other social medias I use (whatsapp groups, LinkedIn) most of the mutuals here I only know from here. For the others, theres usually a real life connection. I don’t know how common this is.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:40:12 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Moritz Dietz

     @moritzdietz

     https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola

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     Moritz Dietz (moritzdietz@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:40:13 JST Moritz Dietz

     in reply to

     @evan if the protocol supported true account migration (all posts with all attachments, all likes, boosts etc.) we might see more people standing up their own single or multi user instance. I'd do it, but I don't want to loose all my previous posts and data.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:56:04 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Tero Hänninen

     @0xtero what do you mean by "big four"?

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     Tero Hänninen (0xtero@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 18:56:05 JST Tero Hänninen

     in reply to

     @evan Yeah if we define Fediverse as ”general purpose social network” like the big four, then yes, it would disappear, but it’s questionable if we’re tall enough to be on that ride to begin with.

     If Fediverse is ”connected network of communities” then no. The communities would lose some members but keep going, that’s the current ongoing trend anyway. But I think there will always be Fediverse communities on the internet

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 19:02:11 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • mojala

     @mojala it would be great to have global user search, opt-in using the discoverable flag, so you could find your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 19:24:18 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Tero Hänninen

     @0xtero interesting! There are good metrics here:

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_social_platforms

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     Tero Hänninen (0xtero@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jul-2026 19:24:20 JST Tero Hänninen

     in reply to

     @evan Facebook, Insta, Threads and Twitter. I do realise there are lot more but those seem to be the pre-accepted answers to ”what are your socials?” question around my neck of the woods.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 11:46:45 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Rob Ricci
     • Arianne B

     @adb my new hero @ricci showed me https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/ and I really love it.

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     Arianne B (adb@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 11:46:47 JST Arianne B

     in reply to

     @evan Thanks Evan for exploring this and thinking about it. I wasn't aware that the fediverse at present has this very distinctive shape - actually somewhat similar to the ATmosphere with its one huge instance and a couple of smaller ones. I don't have any thoughts cos I'm a novice here but I appreciate knowing more.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 11:52:01 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     One thing that people who don't write #ActivityPub software might not know is that Mastodon has remarkably low rate limits for other servers to make requests -- getting data from or sending data to a Mastodon server. The rate limits are hard-coded in the Mastodon software, and they're for the whole server. mastodon.social has the same rate limits as your server on a Raspberry Pi. That means that the server that you need to access about 1/4 of the time is throttling everyone's access to it.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 11:52:50 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     One steep price of centralization that we all pay today!

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 18:45:24 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Linux Renaissance

     @darth I literally just did

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     Linux Renaissance (darth@silversword.online)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 18:45:25 JST Linux Renaissance

     in reply to

     @evan explain please

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 18:54:27 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Bernard Vanneste

     @burnie configurable rate limits in Mastodon, or having 20 or 50 newbie servers (maybe per-country subdomains like fr.mastodon.social, mx.mastodon.social, au.mastodon.social).

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     Bernard Vanneste (burnie@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 18:54:28 JST Bernard Vanneste

     in reply to

     @evan What to do with this information? Would a 'newby' or start server with some help and a time limit (3 months?) work? By then users can find a community and move to it? Maybe an idea for a poll ...

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 19:44:36 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Greg Price

     @gregprice I think it would not just be from having fewer accounts on the network posting, although I think we are dipping pretty low for a sustainable network already.

     mastodon.social is also a hub in the network; users there redistribute content from other parts of the network with their boosts and replies.

     It's also the flagship server. It would be a hit to morale to have it taken offline.

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     Greg Price (gregprice@sfba.social)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 19:44:37 JST Greg Price

     in reply to

     @evan Why do you think that losing 1/4 of users would make people no longer want to be here? The network had 1/4 fewer users in the past, and it was already lively then.

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     Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 21:40:09 JST Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸

     in reply to

     • Linux Renaissance

     @darth no problem. I think rate limits are important for any Web servers. In the Mastodon software, they are hard-coded, so a big server like mastodon.social with 3M users has the same limits as a personal server on a RazPi with 1 user.

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     Linux Renaissance (darth@silversword.online)'s status on Saturday, 04-Jul-2026 21:40:11 JST Linux Renaissance

     in reply to

     @evan I still don’t see the problem. It’s not like I ever had a functional problem with my Mastodon server so if it is conserving cpu cycles the way you described it then all seems good, no?

     EDIT: sorry, now I read your bio and I see where you are comming from. Ignore my reply.