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: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/)
#decentralisation #federation #fediverse #SmallWeb
(And if you take that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you arrive at the idea behind the Small Web: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/)
#decentralisation #federation #fediverse #SmallWeb
What is the Small Web?
Today, I want to introduce you to a concept â and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age â that Iâve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about: The Small Web.Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Sadly, the fundamental design of Mastodon mirrors the design of Big Tech (a server architecture that can support hundreds of thousands of âusersâ) and thus inherits its success criteria.
I feel itâs 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
user not found
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Ricardo
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •A single instance that can scale to host hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people, is not a design success in decentralisation, itâs a design failure. (Itâs a design success in #BigTech.)
CC @Gargron
#decentralisation #centralisation #federation
Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •https://mastodon.social/@aral/2160843
#mastodon #federation #decentralisation #centralisation #design #singleTenant #SmallWeb
Hippo đ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •https://scholar.social/@badri/109273595283228563
Does it say something that I took "we should get people off mastodon.social" as an established fact rather than a new revelation? đ
Badri (@badri@scholar.social)
Scholar SocialValhalla_Dev
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Jigme Datse
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Gabriel âïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Dragon đ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •That said there are plenty of other things that waste energy about
sudo ÎČÏαÏÏ ÎșÏÎșλÏΌα :kafeneio:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@Gargron
sudo ÎČÏαÏÏ ÎșÏÎșλÏΌα :kafeneio:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to sudo ÎČÏαÏÏ ÎșÏÎșλÏΌα :kafeneio: • • •https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/100542567698346975
ar.alđ» (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)
Aralâs Mastodoncasey is remote
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
Wolfgang
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Die KrĂ€henpost
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Die KrĂ€henpost • • •(It comes down to your definition of âworking.â If we manage to recreate twitter.com on mastodon.social, I wouldnât define that as âworkingâ but as âfailed.â)
Sam Deane
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •David Wynn
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Dr. Quadragon â
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •> 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
j
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to j • • •* with finite resources (an interesting one to think about⊠đ€)
Nemo_bis đ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •https://fedidb.org/network/instance?domain=mastodon.social
FediDB - Developer Tools for ActivityPub
fedidb.orgn8chz â¶âș
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •william.maggos
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Is there any server software optimized for single user instances?
Eric Prenen
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •KitKat
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •It implies also making interoperability between servers seemless.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426897
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.comDavid
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Ralf Rottmann
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •AlexanderLFrancis
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •tursiops
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Nika2022 đ¶đ¶đâïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Willis Jackson III :verified:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Mattias Schlenker
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Maarten den Braber
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Mark
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
Jimi Viita-aho
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Jennifer Harrison
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Jennifer Harrison • • •I think what I was saying was about âdecentring yourselfâ (as in making things that donât rely on you being at the centre to be successful) but decentralising yourself sounds good too :)
PS. Hugo (@mastohost hosts mine and heâs great, in case you donât want yet another server to admin).
Jennifer Harrison
in reply to Jennifer Harrison • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Jennifer Harrison • • •(I also wish it was just about writing lines of code. Itâs not. Itâs 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.)
Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •ottonafo đșđŠ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •what keeps me from doing so is that i don't wanna lose my posts in this process (which'd be the case afaik) as i frequently dig up older threads for various reasons.
Aral Balkan
in reply to ottonafo đșđŠ • • •See https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
Moving or leaving accounts
docs.joinmastodon.orgAral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Peter :antifa: đđđ (@pludikovsky@chaos.social)
chaos.socialJuan Luis
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Nick :linux: :fedora:
in reply to Juan Luis • • •Lost all my Toots from the old instance, and it would not let me transfer my followers because there was some backlog processing taking place at the time.
Really a terrible experience that should have more work done to improve it.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Nick :linux: :fedora: • • •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 yearsâ worth of posts had I not seen this and tried it myself too. Iâd expect a migration feature to migrate all my data. The flow should guarantee this.)
CC @Gargron
Nick :linux: :fedora:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/981
Import toots from CSV · Issue #981 · mastodon/mastodon
GitHubAndreas K
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Darshak Parikh
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •This small instance Iâm on (<800 users) was unaffected by performance issues during the Twitter exodus, which is the whole point of federation.
Rokosun
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.nzAral Balkan
in reply to Rokosun • • •Lohan Gunaweera
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Al
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Al • • •Ethan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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
Elliot
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Kye Fox
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Mauve đđ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •gergo
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •alec timmerman âïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •killdang :verified_mastodon:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Stephan (moved house)
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Max
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •kcarruthers
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Christian
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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!
psyBunny đ°
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to psyBunny đ° • • •Martin Mazur đĄ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •This way it can fit everyone - both the specialist and the generalist.
Having large generic instances is also a good way to get started - for example Iâm almost sure Iâm on the wrong instance; yet I donât really know which one would be the ârightâ yet.
Raine
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Adamas Nemesis
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •ehballah đșđŠ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Tremarctos Ornatus
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Sexybiggetjeđ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •larryfeltonj
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Oblomov
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •larryfeltonj
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Alex Standiford
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Guy Montag
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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
Guy Montag
in reply to Guy Montag • • •There are already constant stories about how hackers can break into home WiFi networks, yet I know very few people willing to configure their own WAPs. That sounds much less daunting to me than saying someone has to build their own Small Web. 2/2
Aral Balkan
in reply to Guy Montag • • •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.
Weâre trying to build the latter :)
Aral Balkan
Unknown parent • • •Mastodon is what Mastodon is at this point and I donât see it embracing #degrowth (although Iâll be the first to sing it praises if it does).
Iâd love to see more single-tenant ActivityPub implementations (and hopefully theyâll support the migration protocols implemented Mastodon).
max frĂŒhschĂŒtz â ĐœĐ”Ń ĐČĐŸĐčĐœĐ”
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
Pavneet Singh Saundđ€đœ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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?
Aral Balkan
in reply to Pavneet Singh Saundđ€đœ • • •In the interim, there are folks like @mastohost that make it easier to host the current alternatives :)
Simeon Nedkov
in reply to Pavneet Singh Saundđ€đœ • • •Iâm not saying Nextcloud should not exist because thereâs Dropbox. My point is that running/owning alternatives to Big Tech should be as hassle free as using Big Tech itself.
Simeon Nedkov
in reply to Simeon Nedkov • • •The underlying implementation can stay the same. Itâs 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 donât care).
Aral Balkan
in reply to Simeon Nedkov • • •(Apart from perhaps that we should also be looking at designs that aim to make doing what you describe as easy as possible. Itâs much easier to set up a system thatâs 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?
Aral BalkanSimeon Nedkov
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Would a Mastodon-instance-per-person qualify as Small Web or are there other things to consider (as well)?
Aral Balkan
in reply to Simeon Nedkov • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •biffbiffbiff đĄïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan reshared this.
Aral Balkan
in reply to biffbiffbiff đĄïž • • •Aral Balkan
Unknown parent • • •;)
stop genocide in gaza
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •"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
Aral Balkan
in reply to stop genocide in gaza • • •stop genocide in gaza
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •If someone needs email it doesn't matter which provider they get, as long as they pass certain minimum criteria.
If someone needs Mastodon, unless they go on a big server it DOES matter where they go.
kcarruthers
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Zachary Neal
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Zachary Neal • • •Initially set it up myself but I donât need another server to maintain so very happy to let @mastohost do it for me :)
Ewan Donnachie
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Perhaps a suitable general server could be "suggested" for people so that the don't all sign up to the "canonical" instance? They can always switch later, in their own time, when they're in a position to make an informed decision.
Kris Mitka :java: :rust:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Kris Mitka (@mitka@hachyderm.io)
Hachyderm.ioDave Briggs
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •ŃĐČĐ°ŃŃ ŃĐ°ŃĐ°ŃĐžĐș
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •p.s. i'm not saying this is or should be the goal, just pointing out how lines of thinking don't always end where one thinks they do
Aral Balkan
in reply to ŃĐČĐ°ŃŃ ŃĐ°ŃĐ°ŃĐžĐș • • •n8chz â¶âș
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •kaip :xmpp: :archlinux:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Brett Camper
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Blake Eastman
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •David Andersen
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
toallpointswest
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •michael miller jr
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •The idea of setting up my own instance is appealing... but I don't think I fully understand the required investment yet.
BestWeather
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •jlindgren
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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)
Matthijs De Smedt
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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...
OpenDNAâïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Jason Green
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Jeena
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aaron Parecki
aaronparecki.comKuJoe đ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I appreciate you taking the time to point this out to better improve the Fediverse.
Aral Balkan
in reply to KuJoe đ • • •doomy đŠ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to doomy đŠ • • •The more complexity you add to handle vertical scale the harder you make it for individuals to self host.
All that said, Mastodon is what it is. Likely too late to change course now. But hopefully weâll see more interest in single- tenant fediverse clients going forward.
Karl Steel
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Karl Steel • • •Wiredfire :BA:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •infinite love ⎳
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Alison Hearn
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Dylan McCall
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I like the idea of moving my account around freely between small instances, but I feel like I need to be picky because I donât have the energy to deal with them shutting down or having weird admins.
IgorPorađșđŠđȘđșâïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Thousands of servers just confuse people and make the network less efficient
Desikner
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
Dizzy
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •PseudoRandom#:popos:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Yes you want fewer people/server and many servers. BUT, you also want those servers to be able to serve as backups to a few other small servers, too. A decentralized torrent like redundancy to minimize impact of single node failure. THAT's old school small web. :)
JoĂŁo Almeida
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •And aren't the more generic servers always going to be more crowded than the niche ones?
Nick :linux: :fedora:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •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.
Delajorđ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Where does the slider land?
Netux
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Could sync browsers, leave notes, run a little blog.
As long as you turned it on, the browser connected to their server and it functioned like dns to direct you directly to the endpoint.
Paul Sutton
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Kye Fox
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Swamptin
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Michael Brooks :verified:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Adamas Nemesis
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Grant đșđŠArmUkraineđșđŠ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Manorial Meerkatâïžđ°đïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Rally Vincent đłïžââ§ïž
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Karen E. Lund đđ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Like... yeah, I've been on Mastodon for four years and it never occurred to me that I'd want my own server. I feel like an underachiever.
Denny VrandeÄiÄ
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Jason Tucker
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Joeri Vlekken
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Daniel Quinn
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Refurio Anachro
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@aral
arealibrarian
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Shoq
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •rosano
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Lucien Knechtli
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Content warning: Mastodon meta
* 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
Chris Lombardi
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Mattias Schlenker
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •