Feb 10, 2023 19:00:00

Is distributed SNS, which has grown rapidly after Earon Mask's acquisition of Twitter, sluggish?

After Elon Musk's

acquisition of Twitter, it is reported that users who are worried about Mr. Mask's Twitter reforms are moving to open source distributed SNS such as Mastodon and Discord one after another. Mastodon announced that the number of active users reached 2.5 million in December 2022, but some media outlets have pointed out that these decentralized SNS are sluggish.

Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is 'Slumping,' Despite Massive Increase In Usage | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/08/lazy-reporters-claiming-fediverse-is-slumping-despite-massive-increase-in-usage/

Josh Nicholas of the news site ``The Guardian'' said on January 7, 2023, ``Since November 2022, more than 1 million users have migrated from Twitter to Mastodon, but many of them have not taken root and are active. The number of users has decreased by more than 30% from its peak. '

In addition, Wired's Amanda Hooper said on February 7, 2023, ``The number of active users who have moved to distributed SNS such as Mastodon following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has decreased by more than 1 million. 'This suggests that a decentralized platform is not a direct replacement for Twitter. '

According to Mike Masnick of Techdirt, a technology news site, these articles said, ``Since November 2022, when Mr. Musk acquired Twitter, Mastodon's users have increased, but many users have not settled in Mastodon. So Mastodon and other decentralized social networks are proving to be in a slump.' But Mr. Masnick says, 'These articles are wrong in many ways.'

Distributed SNS such as Mastodon is called '

Fediverse ', and each platform can interoperate while maintaining independence. According to Masnick, users who left Twitter moved not only to Mastodon, but also to Pleroma , Pixelfed , Misskey and others.

According to The Federation , which tracks actual usage of Fediverse, since November, when Musk bought Twitter, the number of active users has skyrocketed, peaking at about 4 million. Although the number of active users has decreased since January 2023, it can be confirmed that it exceeds the number of active users before November 2022, about 600,000.

Masnick said, ``There are about 1.3 billion accounts on Twitter, but only 368 million monthly active users. No one calls it a slump.Therefore, Fediverse, which has grown from 600,000 active users to more than 2 million in just two months, cannot be considered a 'slump.'

Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, many developers have moved to Mastodon, and many new and easy-to-use client apps have been released. According to Ross Shulman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , ``Fediverse can offer a variety of useful services not only because of its position as a Twitter clone, but also because of its nature as an open source platform. It is misleading.'

“Moving users from Twitter to Fediverse and sticking with them is no easy task, but the speed at which useful products and services have been developed on Fediverse in recent months has been remarkable,” Masnick said. ' said.