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I have a lot of follows, followers on Mastodon.social.

You should know that because of its spam problem, it is getting widely defederated.

If #Friendica had an equivalent to Mastodon’s “Limit” functionality, I would have already done that. Alas it only has the nuclear option.

But if the spam problem continues, I’m not gonna have a lot of choice.

If you are on Mastodon.social, you might want to move, and sooner rather than later, because it’s going to get increasingly hard to.

in reply to Sarah Brown

No point in moving. I've moved twice already, and the problem will only follow the crowd. If Mastadon turns out not to be the web-based paradise people thought it was, well there's a surprise! I just block and report the spammers, not a lot else I can do.
in reply to Susan Lewis

When I say "I block and report" I mean the one time it has happened to me.
in reply to Susan Lewis

@SusanLewis So here's the thing: when (not if) I defederate from it, our connection will be severed, along with everyone else I follow there.

Which will suck, but I refuse to put up with its spam.

in reply to Susan Lewis

@SusanLewis I think you're missing the point. Because Mastodon.social has positioned itself as the "default instance", it's attracting the spammers. They won't go to smaller instances because they will get stopped immediately.

But right now, Mastodon.social is the loud neighbour throwing parties at 4am of the Fediverse and smaller instances are increasingly coming to the realisation that its' easier just to completely cut it off.

Right now, you can still move, but one nasty side effect of de federation is that you can't port to a server that's defederated you.

If you pick the largest instance you can find, then yes, this problem may well follow you. If you go to a small instance, which is how things are supposed to work anyway, it won't.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown

@Sion [main] In terms of "the fediverse that isn't Mastodon", it's quite popular. Of the types of servers I federate with, it's the 4th most popular platform. Here's the top 10:

Mastodon - 8292 servers
Pleroma - 481 servers
Akkoma - 286 servers
Friendica - 273 servers
Goto Social - 212 servers
Calckey - 146 servers
Misskey - 141 servers
Hometown - 136 servers
Wordpress - 96 servers
Pixelfed - 66 servers

And then noise.

in reply to Sarah Brown

What I don’t quite understand is how the problems with mastodon.social don’t appear to be there with mastodon.online even though as I understand it the two instances are effectively equivalent.

I would probably attempt to migrate to friendica but tuits and I don’t know if there’s a documented migration route.

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@Alexandra Lanes The mastodon "move account" process does not work onto Friendica.

You can pull your follows in easily (save CSV, load CSV), but it won't bring your followers. Best thing to do is to announce what you are doing, and then ask people to refollow you.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Yeah. I do wonder whether one could concoct a script which sent out the correct ActivityPub messages but… tuits.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@Alexandra Lanes Anyhoo, just subscribed to a relay on our little Friendica node, so awaiting the firehose.
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown

@Sion [main] Mastodon got the press and because it's "like Twitter" (Friendica is "like Facebook"), it's where everyone went when Twitter imploded.

Friendica also has far fewer active developers, so has a bit of a steeper onboarding process. It is getting updated though. Uploading images was laborious as hell prior to the current (2023.03 Giant Rhubarb) release, for example. Now it's lovely: just drag and drop an image.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown
@Sion [main] Friendica, it should be said, has groups.
Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Sarah Brown
@Sion [main] You can use them from Mastodon. You can't create them from there though.