Right now it feels like I am splitting myself between two “games”. The first being of course my whole re-roll nonsense over in New World. The second is engaging with the explosive growth in the Fediverse community. There have been mass migration phases in the past, and I’ve seen five of them to my memory since joining in 2018 including the one I was part of. However, we’ve never seen anything close to the level of migration that is happening right now. There is a bot over on one of the crypto bro instances that tracks incoming users on an hourly basis, and while I don’t follow it for reasons… I think we have all been keeping tabs on it. Right now the fediverse as a whole is seeing a growth rate of somewhere between 1200-1500 users an hour… and that is a 24/7 tick of new incoming users.
Our admin Stux over on Mstdn is super transparent about the growth our instance has been experiencing as well. This is one from yesterday showing that since October 5th, we’ve gained just shy of 20,000 new users. I’ve done Patreon options my entire time on the Fediverse, first with support to Elekk.xyz and now actively supporting Mstdn.social each month. However, with the influx of new users, I’ve felt like I needed to chip in a little extra on the side to help out. It isn’t much but I figure when you were personally paying around $500/mo in hosting charges that anything helps. The weird thing about all of that is… I would never pay a dime for anything Twitter provided, but I am more than happy to help out the human beings running the Fediverse. Of course, no one is expected to pay a dime, but I figure if I am going to use something I should support it.
I will say that all of the activity has wreaked havoc on my actual in-game time in New World. The Mastodon client bloop sound is so contagious and happy that I have to alt-tab over and look to see what is going on. I’ve also found myself spending my time laying in bed waiting for the melatonin to kick in serving as a part greeter and part technical support as I surf the local feed. That is one of the things that makes the experience of the Fediverse so wildly different from Twitter. You can say ANYTHING publicly on your instance and it is going to potentially garner interactions because everyone on that instance can and regularly does check the activity feed. It makes the entire experience feel like local is some sort of guild chat, and federated is general chat… often with similar results. The weirdest thing that happened yesterday is Kathy Griffin “rolled” on our instance, but there is a limit to how much impact a single user can have.
It has been a wild week and typing this… I just realized that it has only been a single week. So much shit can go off the rails in so little time when it comes to Twitter. With layoffs looming on the horizon this morning for the folks at that company, I sort of expect the migration will only pick up momentum from this point forward. At this point, I have at least spiritually migrated, even if I have yet to nuke my Twitter account. It isn’t where I am actively spending my time and on average I am poking my head in once or twice a day to see if anyone has messaged me. That account is mostly a punctured balloon that is slowly letting out air as follow-for-follow mindset folks notice I deleted them in my culling over the weekend. It will be interesting to see what happens now, given that the Fediverse is not exactly the sort of place for brand building and marketing… and seems to aggressively reject both.
One of the things that I do think is a shame, is how focused the news seems to be on Mastodon. The is a specific reason why I keep referring to it as the Fediverse and not by that single platform name. ActivityPub is a protocol that the Fediverse operates on, and your window into that world can look like so many different shapes. if you want a more blogger-type experience then maybe Write Freely is your jam, or if you really like Instagram and are more visually focused… then PixelFed is your home. If you like creating music then maybe FunkWhale or video maybe PeerTube, and in all cases, you can communicate with everyone on any of those platforms (pending there is an active federation between your instance and theirs). I prefer using a Tweetdeck-like interface, so Mastodon/Pleroma-based instances fit the bill for me personally, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to view the Fediverse through those parameters.
I figure I will close out the week… and this blog post with a Gracie palate cleanser. She has figured out how to climb our entertainment center and crawl into the cloth boxes… shown is her in the box on the top shelf. Now she is trying to figure out how to climb out of the box and get up on top of the entertainment center… a place we previously thought safe from cat “intervention”. Maybe we won’t have a tiny Christmas tree up there this year… time will tell. Anyways basically the point of this post is that I am greatly enjoying this influx of new people into the Fediverse because everyone seems to be so damned grateful to be away from Twitter. It is refreshing to just have chill human conversations with strangers again, and it reminds me in so many ways of hanging out on IRC and talking to completely random people for hours.
This might not be everyone’s jam, but it certainly seems to be mine. For those still on Twitter, I wish you luck in the coming strife. If you have any questions about the Fediverse in general, I am poking my head into my Twitter account periodically so feel free to DM, or of course, drop a line below in the comments.
This is all quite fascinating. Prior to your articles mentioning it, I hadn’t heard of the Fediverse. I am going to need to check out its many branches. Thank you for publishing this information.