I’ve said on a few occasions that I am a big fan of the fediverse. This is not to say that I think that the fediverse is perfect. There are certainly flaws in how the various platforms work, often due to technical limitations inherent to federated systems (more on this later).
And one thing that I feel like is a missed opportunity, is rethinking the presence of metrics such as number of followers or likes. Only some of the smaller platforms allow you to hide some of these.
Regardless, followers, likes, favorites, reblogs, and boosts, depending on how your platform of choice calls them, are still a big part of the social media experience. And while I certainly don’t like to promote unhealthy internet habits, there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from these numbers.
Here’s a closer look at some of the most popular posts that I was able to find.
- the top four posts by the number of reblogs/boosts:
Hypothesis: The Fediverse consists almost entirely of adults.
I expect most youths are drawn to the large corporate social networks; but those of us who took the effort to come here have likely experienced the Internet before most of those existed.
Of course, the only way to test this is by collecting data using the most scientifically rigorous method available to me: a Mastodon poll, lol
(I expect this will only reach English-speaking Fedi, but do boost if you’re able)
⬇️ What is your age? ⬇️
This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who’d left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it’s really interesting and often kind of wrenching.
https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
When an app asks for permissions, the OS should not only let you answer yes or no. Every category should have a “yes, but feed the app fake data” option.
Want my contacts for no reason? Have these generated fake ones! Wanna listen to my microphone? Here’s random ambiance sounds! Location? I’m on a tiny 5x5m island!
Hell yeah! Put it all in your databases mfers!
Actively punishing services wins over boycotts any day. Didn’t want that junk in the database? Don’t ask for it!
“Piracy can’t be stealing if paying for it isn’t owning”
This is increasingly how it feels, when things you “own” digitally become inaccessible, and when shows which are locked in streaming services can get delisted on a whim, disappearing forever.
Thank you @Illuminatus for this quote.
[Edit: In case this wasn’t clear, this is about entertainment and digital ownership, not physical goods]
- most likes/favorites:
Because these billboards are just monitors rotated 90 degrees, they’re invisible to polarized sunglasses. It’s like a real-life ad blocker!
This photo is the Norman Rockwell moment for SF 2023:
#innersunset#goodneighbors
I just read another news article about why mastodon didn’t make it and is dying. It’s very sad to hear and probably explains why I have to keep adding more server capacity to handle all the people quitting mastodon.
When an app asks for permissions, the OS should not only let you answer yes or no. Every category should have a “yes, but feed the app fake data” option.
Want my contacts for no reason? Have these generated fake ones! Wanna listen to my microphone? Here’s random ambiance sounds! Location? I’m on a tiny 5x5m island!
Hell yeah! Put it all in your databases mfers!
Actively punishing services wins over boycotts any day. Didn’t want that junk in the database? Don’t ask for it!
- and these inspired the most conversation:
Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years. ❤️ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/
This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who’d left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it’s really interesting and often kind of wrenching.
https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
Hypothesis: The Fediverse consists almost entirely of adults.
I expect most youths are drawn to the large corporate social networks; but those of us who took the effort to come here have likely experienced the Internet before most of those existed.
Of course, the only way to test this is by collecting data using the most scientifically rigorous method available to me: a Mastodon poll, lol
(I expect this will only reach English-speaking Fedi, but do boost if you’re able)
⬇️ What is your age? ⬇️
Who learned to type on a real typewriter?
Please boost for a wider demographic.
The charts point to a bit of an overall decline in activity over the past few months. And looking at the most popular posts, there is a mix of topics, with a slight bias towards discussing the fediverse itself.
Methodology and a note on accuracy
I built the dataset by downloading posts that were shared by @trending_bot@tomkahe.com and @trendytoots@mastodon.social. Some of the more recent posts from the dataset had a rather low number of likes. If you’re familiar with how the fediverse works, this won’t be a surprise, but when a post is shared by someone from a different server, that post is essentially copied over, and this is how things can get a bit out of sync, with replies missing, or the number of likes and shares lower than the original post.
So for a subset of the posts in the dataset, I decided to refresh the stats using Mastodon’s statuses/:id API endpoint, which other platforms also implement for compatibility.
With that being said, this process is clearly not perfect, as there could be posts that either of the bots did not catch, and the timeframe is also limited to when these bots have been created. Therefore rather than providing a definitive answer to “which fediverse post has the most like”, this study instead highlights the technical challenges of answering such questions, and gives a more of a general idea about the reach within the fediverse.
Finding the post with the most likes or shares on decentralized social media is not an easy task, but makes for a fun Fediverse Exploration.
https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/most-popular-fediverse-posts-june-6-2024-edition/
#fediverse#FediverseExplorations#SocialMedia#likes#favorites#boosts#reblogs