mastodon - Link to source

We should not be optimising Mastodon so it can handle more people per server. We should be optimising Mastodon so it incentivises more serves with fewer people.

(And if you take that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you arrive at the idea behind the Small Web: ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-s…)

#decentralisation #federation #fediverse #SmallWeb


What is the Small Web?

Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about: The Small Web.
Aral Balkan
#fediverse #federation #SmallWeb #decentralisation
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

Food for thought: The bigger mastodon.social gets, the less successful the #fediverse is.

Sadly, the fundamental design of Mastodon mirrors the design of Big Tech (a server architecture that can support hundreds of thousands of “users”) and thus inherits its success criteria.

I feel it’s time we at least started thinking about what the web would look like if we all had our own place on it and what it would take to get there from here.

#decentralisation #centralisation #fediverse #SmallWeb

#fediverse #SmallWeb #decentralisation #centralisation
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

Optimising #Mastodon = designing flows that encourage people to leave mastodon.social for other instances, not accepting any more new members on mastodon.social, and making design changes that limit how much a single instance can scale.

A single instance that can scale to host hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people, is not a design success in decentralisation, it’s a design failure. (It’s a design success in #BigTech.)

CC @Gargron

#decentralisation #centralisation #federation

#Mastodon #federation #decentralisation #bigtech #centralisation @Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Hippo 🍉

this makes sense, and is incidentally something I was thinking about this morning too.

scholar.social/@badri/10927359…

Does it say something that I took "we should get people off mastodon.social" as an established fact rather than a new revelation? 😅


Badri (@badri@scholar.social)

I just realised there's whole "hashtag communities" like #astrodon over at mastodon.social. Wondering if smaller instances would be interested in reaching out to those people and letting them know they can switch? That particular instance is extremel…
Scholar Social
in reply to sudo βραχυκύκλωμα

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@specktator_ Been saying it for a while ;)

mastodon.ar.al/@aral/100542567…


ar.al🌻 (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)

The greatest challenge for Mastodon now that it’s getting mainstream attention is to figure out how to resist “embrace and privatise”. Tomorrow Google announces Gastodon. What do you do to stop it becoming Gmail? Suggestions: 1.
Aral’s Mastodon
@sudo βραχυκύκλωμα
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

casey is remote

@Gargron I disagree somewhat; yes, scaling well is an L for decentralization, but it is a W for the freedom of hosters.

What if you want to use #Mastodon to host your own centralized platform? #TruthSocial is a good example of this; #Trump aside, it's awesome that you can use #Mastodon to both be part of a huge network, make your own network, or make a standalone social site.

#Mastodon #Trump #truthsocial @Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Die Krähenpost

@Gargron Sorry, but that's naive in my opinion. When people decide to leave Twitter (yay!) and look for alternatives, Fediverse tech should just work! We only saw a 0.something percentage of Twitter users migrate to Mastodon and even this relatively small amount of users caused problems (and not only on Mastdon.social). Yes, big instances may cause problems in terms of centralization or concentration, but why not focus on the opportunity to show people that Fediverse is working 🤷🏻‍♂️
@Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Dr. Quadragon ❌

I wouldn't be so categorical.

> A single instance that can scale to host hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people

means that running an instance for couple thousands or hundreds people is becoming way cheaper, and as a result, more accessible.

This is the exact problem that, for instance, Matrix has. It's voracious, and a nightmare to work with, so just anyone from the street can't afford to host it. Whereas XMPP servers like ejabberd or Prosody can serve tens of thousands of users from a matchbox computer like rPi. So I can be confident that they will handle my needs easy-peasy.

And Mastodon as well is such a beast, that code optimization is way overdue. I think we should welcome it when the software is trying to get better, not bash its creator for it.

@Gargron

@Eugen Rochko
in reply to j

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@jay @Gargron Big Tech is designed to scale vertically because their success criteria is continuous (ideally exponential) growth*. It’s that ideology/success criteria that drives their client/multi-tenant server design. When you adopt that design, you inherently adopt the success criteria that created it. And if that ideology/success criteria are not aligned with your own, you have a problem on your hands.

* with finite resources (an interesting one to think about… 🤔)

@Eugen Rochko @j
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

KitKat

@Gargron

It implies also making interoperability between servers seemless.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3…

You can feel the problems even as a tech enthusiast... and get used to it so you don't view it as a big problem.
But normal people who are not tech enthusiasts are less likely to go through that effort and have a more difficult process

Taking a Look at Mastodon | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com
@Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

David

@Gargron The mega instances are great for on-boarding as they provide a gentle introduction to the concept of federation. If there's a hard limit we shut the door to new citizens of the fediverse and that's not worth it. There should be a point where dot-social users are encouraged to migrate out. A gentle reminder from the admin, or a mandatory donation to the server maintenance fund after year 1 would keep its user growth in check.
@Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

AlexanderLFrancis

@Gargron as a recent escapee from #twitter it was helpful to have a wide-open mastodon.social that has accepted me until I find my footing and figure out where my people are. Many I meant to follow went to instances that are now full. Having a (temporary) central clearing house might be useful though I see the sense in encouraging it to stay temporary.
#twitter @Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Willis Jackson III

@Gargron I'm new to mastodon today. I think that makes sense, but it's a pretty big hurdle to figure out which community makes sense on day 1, so I went with the default knowing I can move later. The community belonging concept feels tough to me right now as I exist and want to communicate in multiple communities, and I'm not sure how I would decide to join one today if targeted communities existed for all of my interest areas.
@Eugen Rochko
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Mark

Totally agree. Although if Mastodon gains some more traction there will be people leaving mastodon.social because they find it does not fit their needs.

I for one am on my own server because mastodon.social often feels to left for me.

But decentralisation is key. For the good of the Fediverse and people in general.

We are not built for one monolithic community where everyone is the same.

We are all equal, not the same.

in reply to GeneticJen

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@GeneticJen Hey, every step is a step and that sounds like a very positive one :)

I think what I was saying was about “decentring yourself” (as in making things that don’t rely on you being at the centre to be successful) but decentralising yourself sounds good too :)

PS. Hugo (@mastohost hosts mine and he’s great, in case you don’t want yet another server to admin).

@Masto.host @GeneticJen
in reply to GeneticJen

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@GeneticJen I’d love nothing more than to be able to skip to that step. And we’re not a million miles away… but I’m still working on infrastructure :)

(I also wish it was just about writing lines of code. It’s not. It’s about attempting to make it sustainable both in the current environment and in the one we want to move towards, about trying to use bits and pieces of what exists to build a bridge towards where we want to be… and about sharing every brick so others can build other bridges.)

@GeneticJen
in reply to Nick

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@CorruptComputer @astrojuanlu @ottona Ah, sorry to hear that; not what I would have expected.

So the process is currently to manually export your data, run the migration feature, and manually import your data back?

(If so, yes, this is very confusing and I would likely have lost five years’ worth of posts had I not seen this and tried it myself too. I’d expect a migration feature to migrate all my data. The flow should guarantee this.)

CC @Gargron

@Eugen Rochko @ottonafo 🇺🇦 @Nick @Juan Luis
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Nick

@astrojuanlu @ottona @Gargron You can manually import your Following list, Blocking list, Muting list, Domain blocking list, and Bookmarks.

Your Followers rely on the old server being able to handle the request, which I had issues with.

Your Toots are not portable at all, and there is a feature request from 6 years ago asking for this over on the GitHub but no work has been done on it as far as I can tell. github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…


Import toots from CSV · Issue #981 · mastodon/mastodon

Toot import should be fairly straightforward, but the concern becomes that it could allow abuse. I think the following constraints on imported toots should be sufficient: Imported toots just show u...
GitHub
@Eugen Rochko @ottonafo 🇺🇦 @Juan Luis
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Rokosun

If you're interested in a more decentralized system then there are p2p networks like scuttlebutt.nz/, you can try it out by using the @manyver_se client. I guess its good to have these options :blobcatshrug:

What I like most about p2p networks is that everyone is a node in the network by default, you don't need to know how to run your own server to have that freedom.

Scuttlebutt

scuttlebutt.nz
@Manyverse
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Ethan

.@aral I agree but it's undeniable that the common folk doesn't want and shouldn't need to run their own instance.

A few design choices that might move people towards a more federated Mastodon landscape:

- Have a page that shows you with which instances you interact the most

- Allow moderators to limit or soft-limit new registrations

- Have generalist instances suggest users to move to other communities after a while

@Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

killdang

the twitter migrants mostly don't want to think about 'instances' and 'federated structure,' they just want to write something fairly short, push the button and have a wide audience of other people see their messages. I understand the concern, but I also think that not as many people would make the switch if we didn't have the big catch-all instances. Overall usage is important, it is a social network. Maybe people can start out there and move after getting more used to the platform.
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Max

@tamitha Related to those though a bit of an aside: I use masto.host and have recommended it to a number of people to bootstrap small instances. One reason is I appreciate masto.host’s Hugo’s stance that he never wants to host a large fraction of the Fediverse. He’s made commitments and promises that at enough percentage he refuses new business to encourage instance diversity. I believe he does encourage large instances to split, too. (Not for technical reasons.)
@Tamitha
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Christian

I wouldn't see it to bleak though. When I arrived here, I welcomed the presence of a bigger server to get started. Soon after I looked for peers (for me in science), got signposts, and ended up at the present server, which is much smaller.

I am sure that many others will have the same journey.

I know you advocate the "small web", and well, such journeys may make people more comfortable with the idea in the medium and long run!

in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Oblomov

Eh, you may change the motivation behind the need to optimize Mastodon's hardware requirements, but that's something that still needs to be done, because the best way to get more servers is to allow Mastodon to run “everywhere”, and the more efficient Mastodon is, the more it can run “everywhere”. But as a consequence, it will inevitably support more people on larger servers.
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Guy Montag

The Small Web as described in the article sounds good, but I'm having trouble picturing how to convince people join in.

I don't think anyone today is under the illusion that Google, Facebook and others are altruistic organizations. But the majority of their users accept the intrusions of privacy and lack of control in exchange for simplicity. It takes only a few seconds and no debugging to sign up for an account. 1/2

in reply to Guy Montag

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@Montag Well, first off, Grandma could be a computer programmer for all we know, so let’s say someone who is not versed in the technical aspects of computing (like a brain surgeon, for example). With that out of the way: if they have to configure a database, you’ve already lost.

If they can sign up for it as easily as signing up for Facebook and use it without having to maintain it, you have a chance at winning.

We’re trying to build the latter :)

@Guy Montag
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

max frühschütz – нет войне

the thing is, a lot of people want twitter and in the public consciousness mastodon kind of took place at being the ethical alternative (it helps that is not controlled by musk)

but essentially what (i feel) most people want is:

- a free (as in beer) twitter-like thing (as in: a digital public town square)
- a non-algorithmic timeline (chronological for the win)
- incentives to not turn every discussion into flame wars

the concept of instances is one abstraction step too much for most.

in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽

I have to say - I have been very intrigued around starting a server of my own, but I don't really know what I'm getting in to. I'm not used to managing my own personal infra, servers etc. I've done so before when I was a lot younger - but have landed very much in the "these aren't the problems I want to spend time on"-camp.

Perhaps it's a mindset shift? Maybe I'll value that more and take the steps for myself, because I see the importance of small over big?

in reply to Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@pavsaund The thing is, you shouldn’t have to know what you’re getting into in order to do it. The fact that you need all that technical knowledge to get started is a failing on our part as designers/developers. We’re working on fixing that but in order to do so we must design technology differently (so it can be owned and controlled by people themselves not by others for them).

In the interim, there are folks like @mastohost that make it easier to host the current alternatives :)

@Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽 @Masto.host
in reply to Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽

mastodon - Link to source

Simeon Nedkov

@pavsaund I’ve gradually shifted into that camp as well. Spent years running my own Nextcloud server and got tired of all the tiny things that kept popping up. At the end I bought managed Nextcloud to be rid of them and one day realized: that’s what Dropbox has been all along.

I’m not saying Nextcloud should not exist because there’s Dropbox. My point is that running/owning alternatives to Big Tech should be as hassle free as using Big Tech itself.

@Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽
in reply to Simeon Nedkov

mastodon - Link to source

Simeon Nedkov

@pavsaund I think we should promote “hassle free Mastodon” experiences instead of “run your own server”. The latter screams “work I don’t want to do” at me.

The underlying implementation can stay the same. It’s a matter of packaging the thing, meaning: you tell customers that they pay for and create a Mastodon account but under water you spin up a new instance for them.

In this scenario you are creating personal servers for everybody without them knowing (because they don’t care).

@Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽
in reply to Simeon Nedkov

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@simeon @pavsaund You’ll get no argument on that from me ;) ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-s…

(Apart from perhaps that we should also be looking at designs that aim to make doing what you describe as easy as possible. It’s much easier to set up a system that’s explicitly designed to serve one person than one that is designed to serve 1-100,000 people. The complexity involved is orders of magnitude less in the former.)

#singleTenant #SmallWeb #decentralisation #federation


What is the Small Web?

Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about: The Small Web.
Aral Balkan
#federation #SmallWeb #decentralisation #SingleTenant @Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽 @Simeon Nedkov
in reply to Simeon Nedkov

mastodon - Link to source

Aral Balkan

@simeon @pavsaund Thanks! A mastodon-instance-per-person would likely qualify but is unrealistic and would be both overkill. Mastodon’s architecture mirrors that of Big Tech. It’s a server capable of supporting one to several hundred thousand people on a single instance. That’s very different from a system designed to support just one person. The latter has orders of magnitude less complexity and requires similarly fewer resources.
@Pavneet Singh Saund🤘🏽 @Simeon Nedkov
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

stop genocide punch nazis

We should have a few BIG landing-pad servers for new people, always.

"Find a nice server" is an impossible first step.

"Make an account on any of these big servers, it doesn't matter which. Later when you notice all the most interesting people hang at x.y, move there. No biggie." is what the advice to new users should be, IMO.

#federation #fediverse #decentralization

#fediverse #federation #decentralization
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

David Andersen

If I may politely disagree? Many of the same optimizations that could help mastodon.social have more users also make it so that running a different instance is cheaper.

It's worth differentiating "scaling by being able to use EVEN BIGGER hardware" (not so awesome in this view) vs "scaling through optimizations" which is a strict win. It's great if you can host a good-sized instance on a $100 machine.

in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

jlindgren

I agree, but the hard part is the vast majority of people aren't techy enough for this.

As such...I do wonder if there is a hole in the ecosystem for an easy "create your account on one of these pre-configured domains" site, kind of like freedns.afraid.org does it.

That way users would maybe be spread out among those pre-configured instances rather than the singular monolithic one.

(scrot attached for reference)

an image of the "new subdomain" wizard on freedns.afraid.org, displaying that you can enter any text for a subdomain and then select from many base domains
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Matthijs De Smedt

I think we need Decentralized Identity to finally happen more than anything. There's no reason why, in this age, the Fediverse still works like E-mail. With all our data and identity stored on a single server identified with a traditional user@domain URL.

Once you can use your private key to interact with your identity on any server at any time, that's when #decentralization can really kick off. Mastodon.social down? No problem! Just seamlessly continue from another server...

#decentralization
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

infinite love ⴳ

i've had thoughts about reworking the old concept of relays into a sort of overlay network -- joinmastodon could essentially work like an irc network in having servers that users connect to round-robin, but discovery could be handled at the central gateway service. that way if the central service goes down, you can still use your server, you just get a less complete view of trends and it becomes slightly harder to find profiles. then it should matter less where you sign up.
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Dylan McCall

One thing that would help me move off mastodon.online is a way to migrate accounts that works in an adversarial environment. So, “I don’t have any access to my old account, but I do have this certificate.”

I like the idea of moving my account around freely between small instances, but I feel like I need to be picky because I don’t have the energy to deal with them shutting down or having weird admins.

in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Desikner

@max We want to drink a beer in a crowded pub, never in an empty pub. We live in cities or villages and not alone in the countryside. People are social, we want to belong to a group. That's why people flock to mastodon.social.

It doesn't help that most of the media has been reporting and promoting Mastodon as an open-source Twitter alternative without mentioning the fediverse or it's decentralised nature.

@max
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Nick

I don't think Mastodon should ignore the needs of large instances. If a community is built up, the platform should support that.

I agree that it shouldn't cater only to large instances, but saying that Mastodon shouldn't optimize for that use case also isn't right either imo.

The platform should support however you want to use it. Self-hosted private instances, small communities, and large communities should all work well.

in reply to Aral Balkan

hometown - Link to source

rosano

it sounds like you're not necessarily against big servers, but cautioning thay they might push the direction of the protocol or make it harder to cultivate an ecosystem of smaller ones. i would say it needs to be easier to start smaller ones and i'm not sure how that becomes zero-effort or within reach of less technical people. systems like these easyindie.app are useful for making it simpler but it's still requires server admin; is smallweb possible without it?
in reply to Aral Balkan

mastodon - Link to source

Lucien Knechtli

Mastodon meta

when I decided to switch to mastodon from birdsite, this was my experience:

* Google mastodon
* look at the very limited list of "endorsed instances"
* find almost nothing applicable other than the general ones, with furry and foreign making a large appearance
* join the largest general instance I could find, because who has time to read 3 blog posts to understand why it doesn't matter?

1st step: fix that list or link to a better one

⇧